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.

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.

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

Been Busy

Been busy with my final semester of university. There has been progress on my game Asteria Rising though. The main work that has been done so far is tweaking the various items in the game, the abilities, the character creation, and creating guidelines in the Game Master Section for engagements (combat, exploration, and social).

Once finals are over there should be a complete draft of the engagement section in the game document. I will post it so people can see what guidelines I have. The guidelines at the moment are for general table-top engagements, so feel free to use them as much as possible when posted.

See you in a few weeks.

Playtest Done

I finally got to playtest Asteria Rising. Feedback seemed overall positive from the two players. Mechanics are what all my notes were on. I'm going to use the character names the players picked for anonymity, Rutabaga & Q. Not all these notes will make sense as there have been changes to the game since the last update on this blog. I haven't posted for some time though and thought you all could use something to read.

I’ve deduced a couple things from the play test. First, character creation by rolling or using the set up standard array is quick. I am quite pleased to know that despite how involved character creation can be for a table-top mine is able to be done in 30-45 minutes for people who are not familiar with the game.

Second, I found that the playtesters would pick Combat Prowess, Skills, and Character Traits based solely off of the name. Most are descriptive enough in their names to where not knowing their exact role in game mechanics doesn’t cause issues for the players. I.e. athletics deals with physical feats not directly related to combat; intrigue deals with something related to deviousness or politics; hacking is clearly computer stuff; so on.

Third, Rutabaga enjoyed that with class bonuses to Combat Prowess or Skills she could go above the maximum level of 20. I had debated with myself a fair amount if that should be allowed or not. I decided that if someone like Rutabaga wanted a 24 in Mechanics and 25 in Hacking rather than spread those points out for versatility I should let them. It also clearly hindered Rutabaga in areas were she could not use those highly specialized skills, as her character was outside of their element. Rutabaga didn’t feel punished, but anxious to find creative ways to use those abilities.

Fourth, they had some regrets in where they allocated their numbers, but only when they got bad rolls. When they succeeded on really difficult rolls, Rutabaga succeeding on a 1/20 chance roll, they didn’t regret where they placed numbers at all. Rutabaga and Q were also very pleased when they succeeded those difficult rolls as it felt like a true accomplishment.

Fifth, the players seemed really pleased with how firearms allowed combat to be spread over a larger area, yet also how melee weapons did a lot more damage. It’s balance measure I implemented. The more range a weapon has the less damage it does. However, a sniper rifle will do more damage over time than an arming-sword because there can be up to 700 yards of space where the sniper rifle can attack, while the arming-sword needs to reach an opponent first.

Sixth, the players seemed neutral to how armor worked. They liked that Armor Class (A.C.) absorbed damage, when it was them taking damage. They didn’t seem to get the point of armor types giving resistances [half damage] and weakness [double damage] to certain weapon types.

Seventh, they liked that they had a pool of abilities to pick from regardless of the class they picked. One person opted for an extra attack and another a stun effect.

Eighth, I’ve determined that the Engineer is the most difficult class for beginners. The class features are very powerful; however, the player did not keep track of the utilities. They rarely used their weapon feature [allowed them to switch damage types] nor drone [allowed them to scout and do skill rolls even during combat]. It is a powerful class but also the most involved.

Ninth, it took players a couple rolls to get used to the dice system. The rolls use a twenty-sided dice, yet it success is not determined the same way as in Dungeons & Dragons, which they were more accustomed to. One player figured it out after three rolls; the other took twelve to adjust.

The playtest was successful. The players really did enjoy themselves and want to play again. That desire is the most useful information, as table-tops are expected to have replayability. True, there are one-shots [one time sessions], but people do play campaigns [a series of play sessions] or multiple one-shots.

Asteria Rising: Update 11

Usability testing is important for a game like Asteria Rising. There are numerous interconnecting parts at play. Testing on the current Alpha [v0.17] began a few weeks ago. There has been a play test of combat and a test of character creation.

The character creation was tested by posting both a survey and the character creation portions of my the game. I will be posting those here just to show everyone a big behind the scenes look. Honestly, I have not gotten much feedback. The big reason is most likely the size of the document; because definitions for Skills and Combat Prowess needed to be included, the document is 71 pages and very involved.

Those who did test character creation found the process easier than other table-top role-playing-games. Luckily, one only needs 3-5 users to test before data variations on usability decrease exponentially. Well, I guess it would technically be logarithmically. I do not have that textbook on hand to cite this information; however, just know for general usability testing one only needs a handful of people form the target demographic. Large bodies of testers is only useful when compiling data for scientific research.

Tester found the way I laid out tasks for character creation rather helpful; my main reason for the prototype test did well. Testers enjoyed how the Character Traits aspect functioned, so it was good of me reverse engineer that from Greg Stafford's King Arthur Pendragon game. The change in the character sheet layout was appreciated as well, now role-play and combat elements are more evenly consolidated.

The most notable suggestions I received where: make the Skills portion of character creation like the Character Traits one; expand the Combat Prowess to have more specific items; make the rolls for character creation less swingy.

Moving on to Alpha v0.18 will result in me changing the class system greatly, yet the layout of the character sheets and most of character creation will be unchanged. The alterations to player classes will be to what actions they perform and how they level.

Feel free to test character creation and take the 5 question survey. I probably should have posted it here, but I forgot. . . My negligence aside, even with the changes I'm making any commentary is still appreciated.

Enjoy your day.

(Files have been removed)

Hello

Giving this small post to let people know progress on Asteria Rising. This post is not an update on game mechanics, but those have been worked on. A test of the combat system was done 27 February 2018. The test revealed an issue with the combat, which has been fixed.

The game has also expanded character creation to have visual examples. Each subsection in character creation gives the basic information one needs on how to make a character, followed by detailed tasks with examples.

My plan has been to employ software documentation techniques, like those seen in instruction manuals for computer software. The character creation has been tested by one person, and the tasks worked very well. The only issue the person had was not knowing how valuable the skills they were rolling for were; thus, they were not sure what skills should be prioritized.

I am in a game designer group on Facebook. I plan to release the character creation information to them with a form to fill out. This will give me much needed data on the character creation section. I want character creation to be easy on users because it will be the first thing players encounter with the game. If the character creation is difficult, people will not want to give the game a chance.

My desire, is for the next true update on Asteria Rising to state the data I collect on my character creation section. That is all I have for the blog for now; I'm rather busy with school and continual revisions of Asteria Rising.

Thanks for reading.