Final Rules!

Well After some more playtests and all that malarkey I decided to go for it an add the abilities, their fairly similar to the ones proposed in the previous post but for clarity Ill quickly recap the ones that did make it with a rules excerpt:

"Pinging - An acolyte with this ability has the ability to deal damage directly to an opponents acolyte directly when you play it. You are limited to targeting only one opponent and may only target their most recently played acolyte. This damage may kill that acolyte (no, you may not Ping the body). The cards with this ability, and the damage it does are:

• Threes - These Ping for 2 damage.

• Fours  - These Ping for 1 damage.

Tip: The Ping value plus the Acolytes value add up to 5."

and...

"Displacing - An acolyte with this ability can remove an opponents acolyte from the current fight. Set that acolyte aside and do not add its value to that players total. This acolyte cannot be harmed by damage at the end of the fight. You are limited to targeting only one opponent and may only target their most recently played acolyte. Displaced acolytes are added to the infirmary at the end of the fight as usual. The card with this ability:

• Only Twos have this ability (they need something the poor blighters)"

So there we have it (well here actually with a link to the final rules):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_WsMXp1ejBOJ6sfZ2AOIrkVlVeblGT_hZklSL4bIc4A/edit?usp=sharing

Protection ended up not being added as it was unnecessary, and the targeting restriction (of last played acolyte) was added for a bit of mind-games and depth to the gameplay. So far I have found the an opponent restriction to be one of the more interesting as it really add to the politics. Additionally adding in physical destruction to this makes the politics all the more entertaining. Of note, playing Face-Cards and Aces is now very risk if you are unsure of your opponents acolytes, I've seen vendettas that used to be against Ace's and Face-Cards now swing towards 2-4's!

Well i hope you have enjoyed this project, and enjoy the game too!

Cadaver Claim - New Rules (Post-Testing)

So here we have the revised version of the rules, based upon the feedback session:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-dL059OtNIrNEd2y_yd2_KrTLhPx8rF-6kjxm3cn3XM/edit?usp=sharing

Ill talk you through the key changes

Gameplay Pace & Destruction

• Number of players is now limited to 3 (4 can work, but 3 is the core recommended).
• First place of a fight no longer stays behind to beat up their opponents acolytes, they are too busy carting off the body. Now the damage dealing is a prize of sorts for 2nd place. This adds a bit of extra depth as, even when 1st place is assured people can still fight over 2nd place and the rights to beat up acolytes.

Combat

• Players can now also play a card of the same number atop each other, this allows them (with some forethought) to switch between colours mid fight.

Decay

• The decay free period has now been upped from the first round to the first two.

Adding new abilities to cards was skewing the balance a tad to much and was making the game a bit less 'pick up and play'. The concept is still likely to be explored, maybe to add a bit of value to the lower number cards. A couple of ideas were:

• Setting Aside (displaces an opponents, only one mind you (politics!) acolytes from the fight - whilst displaced they do not add their value to the fight, but cannot be harmed at the end either)
• Pinging (when you play the card it deals damage (pings) to an opponents, again only one (more politics!) acolyte directly. The value would probably be capped at 1 or 2, but would be a really nice 'out' to Face-cards and Aces)
• Protected (Simply put, this card/acolyte can't be affected by abilities, a difficult one to evaluate as it could be very narrow if their are only a few abilities, or could be really good if their are a lot.
• Not an idea to include, but rather an idea to certainly not include: healing (it's counter to the Auto-Destruction theme, and also a pain to implement, I can't un-rip a card...)

Trying to make decay every other round was a pain for the players to remember all the time, simplifying it to just 2 safe round made it easier to play.

So there we have it, enjoy!

Testing (and all that Jazz)

So I eventually managed to get some people together for some formal testing of Cadaver Claim and a feedback session.

In all it went down pretty well although certain things were highlighted:

Pace of Gameplay & Destruction is currently to rapid/much.

Given that destruction is meant to be sacrilegious, doing it 'all the time' can diminish the value it has and the effect it brings to the game. Additionally as destruction is a 'big' part of the game, doing it a lot of the time makes the game feel quite busy, with too much going on at times. Additionally the rate of destruction of absolutely annihilating the pack of cards, leading to most games ending not due to a player getting a winning score, but because the tower had run out.

• Having 4 (or more) players really limits the card pool for the tower, especially when you have another players worth of destruction to consider.
• Given that each combat had at least 3 player (so at least 75% of the player base) causing destruction, it was just too much.

Proposed Solutions:

• Try smaller player numbers (more limited)
• The player who win's the body already has their reward, letting them beat up other players card is just enforcing their lead (given how the individual players decks work). Limit what 1st place can do when they win a round.

Combat needs a few more options

You could be a bit to limited by the deck you had and the hand you were dealt/drew and it ultimately divulged down to a numbers game. 

Proposed Solution:

• Add a little extra depth to the fights and the combat.
• Maybe certain cards could have special rules/effects.

Decay

The premise and tactical depth Decay added was generally like, but the rate at which it went was too much.

Proposed Solutions:

• Up the 'decay free' duration
• Slow the rate of decay (every other or so)

Naming and 'killing' of cards can be quite fun, especially when people get involved with the theatrics and get a little descriptive. Do need to have pens that can actually draw on the cards properly!

With this feedback I should be able to tweak the rules a bit in order to accommodate. Hopefully I'll have them up and running soon!

Cadaver Claim - First Pass Rules

So this post is a bit of a big one (in terms of news), I have the first draft version of the rules of my game prototype up and running (and sent off to Dayna, scary). I guess some explaining (and filling in) is required.

From the material analysis, case studies, general research and testing I found out that if you want destruction that feels 'important' you really do need that whole 'deface your darlings', if the destruction isn't slightly sacrilegious then it isn't worth doing.

Creative input (especially if it can be 'theatrical') is fun, great fun in fact. If people can be creative, they get invested, if they get invested then destruction matters more. If destruction matters more vendettas are formed, it escalates quickly. This also touches upon another point...

Multiplayer - Traditional games with politics are typically better and more fun, as they often also build upon the creations of the players. But for their to be politics of any real depth, you need more that 2 players, you need 'at-least' a third party. (Otherwise you can't have alliances, betrayals and all the good stuff.)

Ties all these aspects together and you end up with a system where the creative side creates investment, the politics builds upon the creative and the destruction value (which is already quite high and scandalous) becomes involved with the politics as they now have truly permanent consequences.

Given that these were seen as 'necessary' I needed a material that would allow for defacing without being to difficult to replace. Given the wonderful solution Viking Funeral used I hopped on-board the Traditional Playing Card wagon and worked from their (technically I amalgamated some thoughts, concepts and ideas from throughout development into a more complete and playable prototype, but that doesn't read as well...)

Here is a link to the rules (this version):https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mJb5La9u4c2tY6akvfIoRGNv_CFLMNp9owp1k_lt4Z4/edit?usp=sharing

I'll try to be good and save updates as different files so these rules stay the same for development purposes.

A couple of things should quickly be explained, the setting/fluff is fairly early in development (or rather un-development...) and very surface level and without too much depth (ironic as the game takes place in sewers...) Currently the core concept is you and the other players are evil-ish, you have minions and you use these minions to fighter over dead bodies for you (its a tad morbid,but the tone is more Diskworld that truely dark.) I'll do a more in-depth post of the narrative, setting and tone at a latter date as their are good (honest) reasons behind them!

Other Auto-Destructive Games

So what other Auto-Destructive game are out and about?

Arguably a good number of games have Auto-Destructive elements (or can easily been adjusted to do so). Take for example survival games, if you made the number of resources finite (this can be good fun on Minecraft), as long as some of those resources are non-renewable and consumable that the game will have a form of Auto-Destruction where the amount of things the player can do reduces (a form of destruction of function). 

What about games that are truthfully Auto-Destructive? By this I mean the auto-destruction is an integral and designed part of the game, and is preferably both unavoidable and involved within the core gameplay loops.

One example that personifies this is Peter Molyneux and 22Cans's game Curiosity - What's Inside the Box. This 'game' involved a giant multilayers cube comprised of ~69 billion little cubes that players, globally could tap on to remove (all players shared the same mega cube). The only interaction and gameplay was the destruction of the mega-cube and the process was irreversible. People could spent time chiseling out images, buildings, etc... within the cubes, but nothing stopped these being tapped away but other players. Truth be told the game had little actually game play (literally all you could do was tap to remove cube which would give you coins that upgrade you 'tapping' for a brief while, so that it dug out more cubes), but was quite an interesting experiment, especially as the first player to break the bottom layer would be rewarded with a mystery prize (it ended up being they were involved with 22cans next game and gain some of its profits, not too shabby, oh and also the God of their next game, which ended up being Godus aka new Populous, would be named after them.)

Keeping the destruction integral to the core gameplay was an important factor I was looking to emulate within my prototype (to ensure it was actually auto-destructive), I didn't want the destruction to be just a narrative or thematic 'add-on'.

Viking Funeral

So in today post we will be looking at another one of the games I intend to do a case study of, and is yet again another of Rob Daviaus creations: Viking Funeral.

So as the images may suggest, VF (Viking Funeral) is certainly in a less serious tone that Risk Legacy, and as the images and name may suggest is about Vikings at a Funeral (who would of guessed). VF is a 2-player card game that uses a, preferably old and even damaged (balance is not important), pack of traditional cards. The cards represent individual Vikings and the gameplay revolves around the funeral of one of these Vikings (cards). It's not as morbid as it sounds.

The problem with Vikings (evidently) is they seem to like fights, even at Funerals. The gameplay (per funeral) starts with one player declaring their like or dislike for the dead card/viking, and the other player either agreeing (with the same coloured viking) or disagreeing (with a different coloured viking). If they disagree their is a fight (surprise, surprise). Fights revolve around players adding more allowed vikings (defenders allowed is same colour, aggressors is same suite), and the player with the highest total value (values of the cards) wins. The winner then gets to deal beatings equal to the remaining wounds of their last viking played (a vikings wounds is the number of symbols of that cards suit - damage taken, so an undamaged 7 has 7 wounds, and undamaged King has 2 wounds).

These wounds are represented by drawing over the suit symbols on the card - one for each bit of damage caused. you can be a bit more theatrical about this if you want a draw some more damage and the like. When a card runs out of wounds, its dead - kill it how you see fit (destroy it, have fun, etc...). The winner of a fight claims all the vikings into his/her mead-hall for scoring (if an agreement happens they go to the highest cards players mead hall)

For Viking Funeral theatrics are encouraged as they add to the creativity and add investment into the cards (sometimes you end up just wanting to kill a particular card, it gets odd like that but is strangely compelling...)

Image References

Viking Funeral Rulebook, Rob Daviau, 2012. Available at: http://media.wix.com/ugd/981066_8dabeacae2821153c6c7e9e10f807b47.pdf

Risk Legacy

So here we are again (and a bit later on), and I've started to do my (more formal versions of) my case studies (woo!). So without further ado I present you (again, for the Nth time) Risk:Legacy (applause) and a brief overview of what I'm looking at.

So Risk Legacy is a version of Risk that has you do all sorts of scary things (for board-gamers) such as ripping up cards, writing on the board and making decisions that are actually permanent (and not just for that round, for all rounds there-after). It's fairly Punk as board games go (it even has a Graffiti style font on the box, the horror)

The general gameplay and core loop is still very Risk (get dude, get countries to get more dudes to get more countries, etc...). Although the new victory condition (get 4 'Red Stars') is a nice change from the infinite grind fest that is classic risk. Where Risk Legacy really gets cool (yes cool) is in the permanent decisions, destruction and customisation/creation. Each player picks a faction (and that's who they are now stuck with for all the games to come, well at least the next 15, and I'll get to that) and picks ONE power up from a card to physically peel off the card and stick on their faction card. You now bin, rip and destroy the remaining powers you with never need them (chilling). Factions can get more powers as more games of Risk happen (its designed to played as a 'campaign' of 15 games - note the list on the bottom left of the board, the winners name gets written here and they get to pick bonuses, funky).

In addition to Factions changing so to does the board, Cities get built (and named by the players, in pen, forever), areas get 'scared' (gameplay changes represented by stickers, un-peel-able stickers) and sometimes whole countries can be removed. All in all, its pretty rad.

So I will likely be spending some time doing a (much) more formal analysis of Risk Legacy and its Auto-Destructive gameplay in the coming week.

Auto-Destructive Games, Influences and Early Steps

So the Analysis has been continuing along with some 'very' early concepts and prototypes (mainly revolving around how to have the main game loop involve destruction in some fashion or another). The idea of intentionally spilling a fluid on a 'specific' chart/sheet of paper with drawings on and letting the areas it spills onto be involved in some weird 'your a sangromancer' (blood mage) sort of game (red food dye of course).

Also been messing with the concept of using ice-cubes and building blocks in some form of vs. Jenga game combined with curling (elastic band - ping ice along table towards opponents, the more melted to more slidey but less weight it will have)

The issue with some of the early concepts I have had is the value of the destruction. As the stuff had be made to be destroyed (and had little value) it wasn't all that satisfying to destroy it. It lacked the 'deface your darling' value that Rob Daviau mentions when describing his design of Risk Legacy. One slight exception to this was for prototypes where the player had to build something themselves (thus having invested time, etc...), it's always sad to see something you've made get destroyed (thinking sandcastle and the damn sea!). I think I'll be looking at a design that incorporates a sense of creation and ownership to really give the destruction some weight. Even better if I can fit it in with 'deface your darlings'

(For those who haven't read my Proposal, 'deface your darlings' is a concept that the destruction of objects and things that are owned and hard(ish) to replace is inherently a more valuable experience, and a bit punk. These objects and things being 'your darlings'.)

The analysis has found me an interesting one: traditional playing cards do have a lot of usable inherent values (and may well have some of that deface your darlings vibe that I'm looking for).

Traditional Games & Material Analysis

One thing I feel I hadn't explained properly in my previous posts was that the game prototype I'm looking to develop is a traditional game, and by this I mean card/board games.The reason for this came about during my research stage in which during Siegel's (2006) research of Auto-Destructive and Auto-Creative art he notes;

“...destruction of physical objects is inherently more valuable an experience 

than the destruction of a simulated object”

Putting it down to the time and effort required to create something physical, compared to the ease of recreating a simulated object.

This plan to develop a traditional game should help to explain some points mentioned in the previous post: the case study of two traditional games (rather than Auto-Destructive video games such as Curiosity (22Cans 2012)), and the material analysis.

In the original Auto-Destructive manifesto Gustav Metzger (1959) mentions a list of potential materials that can be used, as well as mentioning some potential methods of destruction:

"Materials and techniques used in creating autodestructive art include: Acid, Adhesives, Ballistics, Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Compression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics, Drop, Elasticitv, Electricity, Electrolysis, Electronics, Explosives, Feed-back, Glass, Heat, Human Energy, Ice, Jet, Light, Load, Mass-production, Metal, Motion Picture, Natural Forces, Nuclear energy, Paint, Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure, Radiation, Sand, Solar energy, Sound, Steam, Stress, Terra-cotta, Vibration, Water, Welding, Wire, Wood."

Using this idea to form the basis for analysis I started doing my own, looking for potential materials that could be used for traditional games, how they can be 'destroyed' and also inherent values to these materials/methods.

Rather than post up a big chart here I'll pop in some (brief, simplified) examples:

Material

Paper

Inherent Values

Easily Obtainable

Customisation

Easy to Destroy (+ ve and - ve)

Can be used to create

Writable

'Ethical' *

Sides

( * Ethical refers to the issue of Auto-Destructive games potentially being consumable and thus costly to the players, (an issue Rob Daviau touches upon in his design for Viking Funeral), ethical materials/methods are either cheap and/or easily replaceable, reducing this issue.)

Material

'Event' Cards

Variables

X-Mas/Religious Holidays

Birthday

Get Well

Congratulations

etc...

Inherent Values

Come with values that can be used for gameplay:

• Year
• Date
• Gender (Too, From)
• Older/Younger (Too, From)
• Length of Message (Lines)
• Word Count (All, Handwritten, Auto)
• Can also be used for is handwritten greater than auto (and vice-versa)
• # of People Too/From
• Colours & Images

See paper, although is slightly less 'ethical', at the same time what else do you do with old cards...

I will be continuing this sort of analysis (with such wonderful things such as Train Tickets and Traditional Playing Cards) whilst also looking at their value for making a game as well.

Auto-Destruction (Introduction)

Hello again!

So the purpose of this series of blogs is to discuss the development of my innovation project during Semester 2 (having spent Semester 1 doing research which I will touch upon from time to time).

The innovation question I elected to take on was:

"How can Gustav Metzger's 1960's Auto-Destuctive art movement be used during the development and design of innovative game prototypes as both a catalyst for innovation and inspiration?"

With this I then set out my Aim as:

"The aim of this research is to explore and gain an understanding of how art movements, with particular focus upon Auto-Destructive, can be influential in the development of innovative games."

With the Objectives:

• Investigate and analyse the influence art movements can, and have had, upon the development of different games.
• Investigate the Auto-Destructive art movement and determine how it could be used as an influence in the development of innovative games.
• Using information from the previous objectives, conceptualise and develop game prototypes based upon influence from the Auto-Destructive art movement. 

So by the end of Semester I had finished the project proposal, including the literature review and research that really hit upon the first two objectives.

Throughout the upcoming weeks I will be looking at doing some further research, notably case studies of the two (arguably) auto-destructive traditional games; Risk Legacy (2011) and Viking Funeral (2012) (both developed by Rob Daviau), before moving onto the development stage.

During the development stage I'm looking to identify and analyse potential materials and approaches that can be used/taken, before beginning developing an auto-destructive game prototype of my own.