Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Campaign Website

It has been a while. Work and graduate school have kept me rather busy. This post is to briefly go over something new I tried to do for a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) campaign I am running. I created a website for the campaign using Wix.com.

My website: Broke D&D

I have had a D&D campaign going on for two months now, yet the group only managed to meet twice. It was decided to switch to an online setting. I found myself still having to either flip through my notebook or juggle computer document every time a player asked a question on my homebrew [custom] world.

There is a preexisting website [World Anvil] I know of that allows dungeon masters [D&D game officiators] to archive information rather than make their own website. I however have experience in web design and wanted more control over the layout.

I was already using WordPress for both a course project and my current job as a graduate assistant for my university. Using Wix.com was honestly me experimenting with other options; I liked it. For a free account, it was more intuitive, so I decided to publish the website.

My players so far seem impressed by it. I'm still working on webpages that can be lore and history of the world that any of the players can find on their own. There is some more behind the scenes infrastructure I need to make: surplus quests, roll tables, regional monster compendiums, et cetera.

For now, I am quite happy with this D&D website I made. Most importantly my players are happy with it. Doing things that make the game run smoother for the players is valuable to me; having the dungeon master not stumble through notes all the time is one way of accomplishing that goal.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

New Dungeons and Dragons Session

Been a long time since I posted, graduate school make one busy. I'm updating to state that I finally got a team together to play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). We played last night [08 September 2018] at a local venue from 18:00 to 22:00. One player was a veteran of the game and two were new but everyone had fun.

Figure 1: Quest Board I made for party.
I created a thematic way for the players to pick their first quest, they selected the one from the old knight. The party consisted of a Human male doing a homebrew class called "Gunslinger," A Gnome female playing a Bard, and a Fire Genasi female Druid. All of them started at level 3 too.

The quest involved a lot of roleplaying to figure out more of what was going on at the old knight's manor. The party split up and talked to the various staff members. I managed to get them invested in the story of what was going on.

The last hour of play involved the party fighting a cursed adventurer who was forced to kill the knight. The party managed to defeat their opponent but the knight was killed too. We ended the session with the party in the woods next to the dead knight.

We are all trying to figure out when we can meet and play again now. Hopefully next week or the one after that.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Caravan: New Prototype

It has taken time, but a new prototype of Caravan has been made. It has a 'board' to play on and updated cards. The cards took me considerable time as they needed to be printed, cut out, glued onto notecards, and then trimmed to size. I developed a bruising on my fingers from having the use scissors for several hours straight.

Fig 1: Prototype

The board just has large paper with sections of the game map tapped to it. It is not anything special and will require more graphical work in the future. I can say though that with this new version of everything a much more severe focus on testing mechanics can begin again. For now, I will be researching heuristics for cards game to see if that helps me come up with a way to balance things.

Fig 2: Action Cards

Fig 3: Barter Cards

Monday, June 11, 2018

Redesigning Cards

Been redesigning cards for my board game. Initially the cards were meant to be laid out in front of the players, so they had a horizontal layout, figure 1. There were both Barter Cards and Action Cards, one is for getting points toward winning the game and the other toward enhancing or disrupting barter cards.

fig. 1

The greatest issue with the Action Cards were their text. My testers indicated confusion at what part of the text was for flavor/theme and what parts were to describe what the card did. The other issue was how players preferred to hide their cards, so a new vertical layout was needed to make holding the cards easier.

fig. 2

The first redesign went with minimal changes. The card was made vertical and the non flavor text was bolded. The card comes off as rather clunky in design. Just a big rectangle with a dividing line and text scrunched together. It does not read smoothly.

fig. 3

The next redesign option removed flavor text and centered all the text. The card name was placed just above the text to keep things together. The blocky style remains, but there is less text that is also larger and easier to read.

fig. 4

The final design is what was decided upon. The blocky design layout was removed. The title 'Action Card' was reduced down to a single 'A' in the corner. The text is still centered but flavor text was both reduced in size and italicized. This design for Action Cards allows the eye to travel freely across the card, while the previous blocky design tended to make people stop scanning the card due to the dividing line on it.

fig. 5

Next comes the barter card redesigned layout. The initial barter card design. figure 5, was relatively simplistic. It was just meant to convey the item and points received from selling it. The main change required was to allow the card to be easy to read in hand but also on the board, whether when deciding to draw the card from the open market or disrupt another playing selling a card.

fig. 6

The title text 'Barter Card' was removed as the back of the cards will have an indicator of what card type they are. The vertical layout of the card reads the same as the above Action Cards, except there is no text beyond the item name. This change allows for the symbol of the item to be larger and easier to see. The horizontal layout is simply a triangle in the corner showing the value of the card '1 point'. Also, the font for the cards overall were changed from Lancelot to Almendra because the former's font made '1's look like 'r's.

That is all for this update. Eventually I will put more work into my table-top game [Asteria Rising] or make a post involving Dungeons & Dragons again, but for now I am placing my energy into the board game while I have plenty of time.

Farewell, enjoy your day.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Caravan Map Progress

I have gone back to doing work on my board game Caravan. To recap, it is light economic game where the players are all in the same trading caravan. The goal is to win by getting the most profit by the end of the game. The below image is the most up to date version of the new map.

The map was initially drawn on four different pieces of paper one had to put together before being able to play. This new digital version in Paint.Net will be printed out on 11'x22' poster/card stock once it is completed. That is more of a polishing act for the game, having an actual board for the board game.

The main difference between the new map and the old one is the reduction of 'trade spots,' where players stop to go through a round of selling and buying before. There used to be approximately 31 spots on the map; it now only has 16. The 'trade routes' are also easier to manage as each one only take size rounds of play when getting from the top part of the map to the next, making game time more consistent than before.


The idea of the map is to segment it into distinct regions. The southern end is a general temperate region, the northern is a coastal arid region, the western corner is woodland, the eastern corner is desert, there is a body of water, snowy mountains, hills, and transitioning plains separating the corner regions.

Outside the map is a scene meant to imply the map itself is a board being played. The trade spots are tokens/figurines to be placed, but for a surrealism the map also bleeds onto the table as if it was real terrain. It is to overall create a visually pleasing and easy to follow piece for players.

That is all I have for now, enjoy your day.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Combat Engagements

A few weeks ago I promised to post some of my Asteria Rising work. The below is a snippet from my Game Master (GM) section dealing with how to build combat engagements. One of the few people I've gotten to do playtests with me on the game told me I needed to "bottle myself." What she meant was apparently capturing my GM style as both her and her husband were impressed and engaged by it.

This act of capturing a playstyle for others to use has always been an issue within table-top games. A GM has a lot of power and responsibility within a game. They must encourage the party, challenge them, reward them, aid them, create content, remove content, referee rules, and so forth. These items create a rather personalized and situational playstyle for anyone who GMs.

I cannot feasibly create a rules section that dictates how one must run a game. To compromise with reality and what my friend suggested, I have decided to make guidelines to consider. The main concept to look into are engagements: combat, exploration, and social. Most people look at combat as it has the clearest use of conflict, engagement, and the most rules in the majority of tabletops.

The below is the section on Combat Engagements, these guidelines don't involve hard coded mechanics for building a fight though. One thing I noticed playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) was that its method of building encounters [Challenge Rating (CR)] was arbitrary. There are just too many variables to assume a party of five low level people could easily handle a CR of 2.

Asteria Rising does not have anything like CR; the players are in a new environment and do not know how dangerous anything is. They simply need to have successful rolls to determine threat and remember what happened last time they fought a particular creature. This lack of CR for my game means that all three engagements work similarly by being a list of guidelines.

The engagement sections are all in early drafts yet I hope the Combat one should give you all an idea of how I am constructing the GM Section of the overarching document, and how I myself create combat engagements for players in all my games.

Combat

Building combat encounters is difficult as one never knows what the party will do nor what the dice will roll. Honestly, there is no hard-mathematical formula or well-planned method to create the perfect encounter. There are some general guidelines to follow though.
  • Previous player behavior
  • Action Economy
  • Total hitpoints of party and opponents
  • Likeliness for the party to be hit by opponents
  • Total damage the party and opponents can deal to each other
  • Terrain and Tactics
  •  Balancing

The most important trait to consider is how your players have behaved in the past. If players prefer to fight in melee, then you know an engagement with enemies very proficient in melee or with anti-melee abilities would be more difficult.

Next is Action Economy, which refers to the number of actions the player parties and their opponents can take in a round. E.g. a four-player party can attack up to five times a round in an engagement. The more actions their opposition has in a round, the more difficult the combat will be.

Next comes total hitpoints of each side in the combat. You don’t have to have exact numbers but internally gauge what side has the most hitpoints. Typically, combat ends when the opponent losses all its hitpoints. The more hitpoints involved in a combat, the longer that side can last.

Next is the likelihood the opponents can hit the player party. If the opponents have a low chance of hitting, then the combat is easier for the players. High Combat Prowess for enemies increases difficulty.

Next comes total damage done by either side. Four players against one opponent can be made difficult by that opponent being able to cause large amounts of damage with its limited Action Economy. Higher damage increase difficulty for the players.

Next is Terrain, which is the layout of where the fight will be. Particularly weak enemies could thrive in a combat engagement by being out of reach from players. Tactics are the actions taken by opponents in a fight. Due the opponents attack as a single unit or separately? Do they try flanking or attacking the party directly? Terrain and Tactics can give the opponents serious advantages against the player party.

Finally comes Balancing, which is how these various methods are combined to be fair and engaging. You could make the player party fight a hundred opponents that do 1d20 damage each attach, with 5 attacks a round and a thousand hitpoints each. Or, you could try to keep things evened out.

E.g. have the players fight twelve opponents that does little damage, with little hitpoints, but use terrain and tactics to hit and run from the players. Or, have the players fight one enemy with a lot of hitpoints and high damage, but low chance of hitting them.

Do what you can to keep fights relatively fair and even, so the players always feel engaged. Don’t worry too much on the intricacies of it of course, but always keep the guidelines in mind when building an engagement.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

I Made a Thing

This post is gonna be a little brief, but it'll show one of the projects that have been taken up so much time. I was in a class called Software Documentation that taught how to make manuals. The final project was to use a software called RoboHelp 2015 to create one such manual.

I formed into a group of two other people, and we created a system about using three Facebook features: Crisis Response, Fundraiser, and Marketplace. There are two versions of the site, the first is optimized for normal internet browsers. The second is optimized for Google Chrome and mobile devices.

I created the Marketplace tasks, took the all the screen shots (except for fundraiser), did photo editing, did actual editing, did html coding for buttons in each webpage (someone else made the actual Cascading Style Sheet that prefabricated the buttons), I tested the hyperlinks between pages, and chose the layout designs (Robohelp dose not let one customize much, so I picked the most appropriate themes for each optimization system).

Facebook Crisis Survivors
Full Link: http://ualr.edu/kmkuralt/facebookcrisissurvivors/facebookcrisissurvivors.htm

Facebook Crisis Survivors Mobile
Full Link: http://ualr.edu/kmkuralt/facebookcrisissurvivorsmobile/index.htm#t=welcome.htm