Fun Project: My Miniature board game? – Part 2

Okay, as stated last time, I had a test run of my miniature board game idea ‘Thieves’. And made some notes from the test game. One note I don’t think I did point out was the slight problem with ‘scale’. Not in the size of the board and stuff but I wanted the game to be either Solo play or multiplayer, where you could play co-op or against each other in being the first to get the loot (or whatever the main goal of that mission is). Problem is I think there is a bit of a problem with that in the level of difficulty.

One Thief vs house of guards is one thing, but when you have more thieves, do you need more guards to balance it out? this is gonna be harder for me to test cause it kinda requires multiple players. So for the time being I’ll more focus on Solo-player or 2 player, where player 2 plays as the NPCs. not really much game play as they are kinda scripted (due to the whole solo-play stuff) but oh well.

One other feedback I had was about not picking up much loot, With the test map’s focus being on getting the special loot item and getting out, there was no real requirement to pick up other loot, though it would be nice. I did wonder about adding minimum loot amount for atleast some missions but this runs into another problem. you have a finite number of loot tokens on the board. When you pick up a lot token, you get a random loot card which may be an amount of gold, or possibly you find something else. So it’s kinda possible that you might have a get 100 gold requirement for the mission, but after all loot tokens are taken, you only have 50 gold so it is impossible to complete that mission. Pretty sure that is the kind situation which annoys players. But I do have loot totals as a campaign mode bonus so it should be okay. I think extra Loot as a bonus more then a requirement is good.

I might be re-going over some details but so far, using my test map, I think the map size isn’t too bad. It’s clearly a early starting map but it’s a fair size for the mission. I have wondered about door sizes though. well, when I say sizes, I mean what they take up on the board. Often, when you have walls and doors, they take up basically no space so you have two squares with a door between them. The walls and door take up no real space and are just a ‘wall’ between two tiles with the door just being a ‘movable wall’ which sometimes blocks, sometimes doesn’t. The other, lessor way of doing doors is they DO take up space. This would have 3 squares, with one being one side of the wall/door, then a square which is taken up by the door, and then the square the other side. When the door is open, it works as a normal square. This gives a bit more space which needs to be moved over.

Now, Currently I’m using the first much more standard method. with the current board being 4 3×3 square tiles, 5 5×5 square tiles, 2 1×5 square tiles. If I worked out the minimal amount of movement to go from the starting square to the main loot item you are after in the test mission, it’s about 20 squares. I don’t think you COULD do it in 20 squares, but it’s possible. Problem is, with the current movement rules, you have 3 action points in a turn. If you use them all to slowly walk, you get 3 D6 rolls, giving a total of 18 squares of movement. That’s most of the map in one turn. If you Sprint, you get 36 squares total (of course, this is if you happen to roll all sixes).

This would probably give the idea that it would be better to limit movement. There is then a problem with that. Say you limit it so you can only move once per activation. Fine. That might make sense.. gives you a possible lousily movement but, that would add to the tactical nature in a way. You would then have either 1D6 for slow movement, and 2D6 for a sprint..

I guess this posts are a bit boring for some.. probably most but I’m fine with them. probably some interesting notes and comments. I don’t have any art created for the game cause.. why would I create the art before I even know if the game is workable? So little I can show off.. next time I do a digital play through test I’ll recorded it and do some comments and see if that’s useful. the art on the mock up is very rough and the whole thing is rough ^_^