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I feel it's time I shared the cosplay I've been experimenting with as part of my projects.

A new card-design tool and more cosplay https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/diary-31-enter-the-spreadsheet/

Thanks, Jubal, for putting a name to a concept I've been thinking about recently (I'd be interested to know where you got the word: googling it does not give me much).  I accidentally found myself behaving in some of the ways you describe when I discovered that many of the creators in my field, myself included, had defaulted to their personal Facebook accounts for networking. Keeping in touch with people now often involves a friend request: something they may not feel comfortable with. Interacting on a Facebook forum comes at the cost of revealing your personal profile picture to several thousand people. I'm no longer sure where my own boundaries lie between friend, professional contact and potential customer.

Fortunately, my day job prevents me getting sucked into social media maelstroms. Making this sort of relationship-building a healthy and controlled part of your lifestyle is, I suppose, a part of being a creative person in the 21st century.

Another great few days at the UK Games Expo
https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/diary-29-a-shoe-upon-the-other-foot/
https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/diary-30-indieboy/

Thinking about it, proof for me of the combat system comes from the humble Pawn. It captures in a different way to how it moves, meaning there is an independent rule governing its combat.

I too started thinking about Chess after writing that reply. I'm not sure if Chess has a combat system either. Depends on your definition.

The combat system: if your gnome is in the same space as an enemy gnome, you can play an attack action as one of your action cards. Provided the attacker's combat strength is higher, the defender's piece is removed, otherwise the attack action cannot be performed (perhaps the fact that there are no "unsuccessful" attacks is strengthens the "not a real combat system" hypothesis). Apart from a few boring (and usually known to all parties) bonuses, combat strength is very simple: it's the number of played action cards in front of each player. That might be zero, at the start of a player's loop, or ten, towards the end. Unlike in Olympus, in Gnome, players have some control over when their loop starts and ends.

The question of "value" is an interesting one. I haven't worked it out in Gnome yet - the fact that upgraded actions are not better useful than basic actions surprised me. You mention branching: one of my priorities with the action loops is to create something with all the advantages I've described but without causing players to have only one sensible course of action. The mechanics punish players for backing out of one course of action and committing to another after the loop has started. Sometimes, however, the best start to a loop is  one which, though weak, will lead to two possible branches later on. This would lead to a flexible strategy which can respond to opponent's choices.

I accidentally discovered an analysis-paralysis solution https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/diary-28-action-loop/

I know people who swear by this event, but I've never been myself https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire;jsessionid=3lvi1oxie57x2v8jqjj8qr5g?0

Hi both, I haven't quite managed to follow but this RPG your mentioning has reminded me someone who had, with a co-DM, run an entire roleplaying session for about 30 people in one room simultaneously. Somehow he managed to let the players be self sufficient, and he was mostly just referee. So maybe DMing on grand scale is not too much work if you plan it out right?

(Jubal - this was David from our old group)

Jubal - Each of my decks is a different era in history - ancient, medieval etc - so that was the justification for splitting them up. I wondered if this would result in a sudden change in gameplay each time a new era was reached, but in fact the evolution of gameplay remained fluid. Catan is an interesting example, I think you're right the only purpose cards serve, besides practicality, is the ease with which they can be fanned out for a randomised theft. Another plus!

Clockwork - thanks for sharing the video, I really like the idea of new cards evolving out of gameplay. Great way to get the audience involved in the lore. I don't know L5R so I have to say I was picturing MTG for most of it, but I think I got the idea. Bringing out personality through mechanics as well as flavour text is really interesting. I've also been wondering about creating a Legacy game, in which each play through builds on the one before it mechanically and narratively (if that's a word), and using actual playtesting events to influence the plot. For example, if playtesters favoured a certain faction at one point in the design process, there could be a scenario in which that faction is dominant.

[Decks.]

Permitted to gather wood - but for how long?

The Betrayal of the Card
By rbuxton

They're the most important (or only) component in many games: randomisable, concealable, invertible, portable, rotatable, categorisable and packed with information. Cards have huge potential for a game designer, but my mechanics have always lacked something crucial. Take a look at these:

1. A combat system in which players use cards to increase their strength. Imagine a Risk variant in which the more cards you have, the more you can increase your die roll.

2. A second combat system in which strength is tied to how many action cards a player has used this round. Time your attacks for the end of the round for maximum effect.

3. A game in which "worker" pieces are placed on the board to collect resources. Some resources will be off-limits until you hold a certain number of cards.

Have you spotted it yet? I haven't really told you what those cards do because it is largely irrelevant. Only the number of collected cards matters – I might as well use boring counters instead. My playtesters are also getting frustrated by a lack of interesting cards:

Does it matter what's on the other side?

"I completed my quest. What do I get?"

"You get a relic card!"

"Cool, which relic is it?"

"The relics are all identical, we only care about how many you've collected."

"That sucks. Couldn't it be a magical sword or something, which gives me new powers and makes everyone else afraid of me? Wouldn't that be exciting?"

".... I don't do exciting."

It's a good point, but for now I'm preoccupied with something else: Decks. Decks are to cards what cubes are to squares: much more complex, but with many characteristics in common. I recently improved a deck by splitting it into three smaller decks, which had to be used up one after the other. I put the strongest cards in the final deck – this meant that there were no over-powered upgrades appearing early in the game.

This change also allowed me to improve game flow by categorising cards as "weak" or "strong". If the weak version of a card was sitting unloved on the table, the strong card would eventually replace it. But there was another logical way of looking at this mechanic: perhaps the weak card was still present, it had simply evolved into the strong card.

So now we can imagine a new game in which weak cards are drawn early on, but bring with them a deck of two or three strong cards. Shuffle them up with your existing cards, draw them as the game progresses, control your deck so that the strong cards appear after the weak ones. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That's right, watch this space for Pokémon, the Copyright Infringement Game...



Editor's note: You can read rbuxton's previous article, Game Design's Ultimate Challenge, here, which contains some of the mechanics discussed in this piece. All connected!

Dawn of Gnome coming on well https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/diary-27-whats-in-a-gnome/

How I got distracted https://masterofolympus.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/diary-26-curveball/

I found your arguments for the strengths of Low Focus interesting - I'm usually keen for fantasy to be self consistent, but Gandalf in LOTR is important as you describe. I suppose it depends on the context and the amount of the world in question the author chooses to reveal to the reader: does Gandalf count as High Focus if you look at him from the perspective of the wider Middle Earth creation, which is not all revealed within LOTR itself?

I'm not sure I agree with Harry Potter being High Focus - specifically some of the powerful objects/concepts which only appear briefly in the overall plot. If we take such over-powered objects as the Time Turner and Marauder's Map to their logical extremes, don't certain plot elements cease to make sense? For example: couldn't Filch, the caretaker, use Marauder's Map style magic (surely not unique to the schoolboys who first made the object) to keep tabs on who was out of bed after dark, thus making many of the early adventures impossible?