Operation Menu
Another Huge Project I Can’t Not Do
Every so often an idea hits me and I am required to follow that path. I have no say in the matter. That thing inside me, that drives me, forces me to follow that crumb and I have no say. It doesn’t mean I have to complete it, although that is the general intent, just that I have to run it out and see where it goes.
Well, that has happened again. Several weeks ago, in fact, and I have been chasing it down that road. Don’t even have a name for it yet, so I just have been calling it by the code name MSM (not gonna say what it stands for just yet). All other projects are put aside while I chase one of these, at least temporarily, so my total focus can be put on it.
So what does that mean for all the others? Nothing more than they ever meant. The Game Chef game is pretty much dead. I didn’t have strong feelings for it and when I got sick it pretty much ruined the fun of trying to finish it in time. N.W.G. and Whispering Bluff are still very much alive, but these kinds of long term RPGs slide in and out of active development all the time with me.
So, let’s talk about the new project. It’s gonna be a huge board game (which I plan to sell through The Game Crafter at this point) with hundreds of cards, lots of markers, dice, several character sheets, and three large boards that combine to create a huge playing area. It’s going to be a co-op game, where the players work together against the game and whatever the chosen “mystery” is. The funny thing is, I can’t set the specifics of how to win until most of the rest of the pieces are in place. But I think all that is getting a little ahead of myself. How about we start with some basics.
Every player will play one of the students of a large school of magic (yes, I know this theme is going to sound familiar, but we are not going to mention it anywhere because it’s not that). Each will choose a character, from one of the available sheets, and each sheet will have a number of attributes set on them. They will also choose a starting “Persona” for their character, which are a separate set of cards that add more information about them, including starting items and powers.
Now, about these attributes. Four of them will be relatively stable but are depleted and refilled through play. Those ones are Actions, Health, Hope, and Luck. Actions are spent to do things during your day. Health is just that and is depleted by damage. Hope is a measure of your state of mind and makes things harder when reduced. And Luck is a special thing you can choose to spend to gain bonuses. The other four attributes are more fluid and slide along tracks on your character sheets, like skills they have. These can be raised or lowered through training, special cards, or adjusting them actively. They are Speed, Magic, Brains, and Brawn. They are mainly used to make skill checks for things.
Okay, so I also mentioned special items and powers. These what make up the rest of your character’s starting skills. Powers are special abilities they can use in accordance to what they say. These can as simple as drawing extra cards or rolling extra dice in certain situations to being very special powers that are truly unique to the character. Items are a collection of random or non-random cards they get to start with from one of the several special Inventory decks.
Okay, about those Inventory decks. I plan for there to be five of these decks, most with several sub-types within them. The first is Books, which has General Books, Textbooks, and Tomes. The second is Potions. The third is Items, which has General Items, Food, and Weapons. Fourth is Artifacts, which are basically rare and powerful Items. And finally there are Spells, which come in Enchantments, Invocations, Conjurations, Divinations, and Curses.
All together this makes up what you play in the game, but doesn’t really explain much of how the game plays.
Now let me get into some of the basics of how I see it playing, even though this doesn’t explain how it’s won… yet. The main mechanic of the game will be the Check (usually an Attribute or Skill check). You roll a number of dice (six-sided) equal to the number of the attribute or skill being checked and every 1 or 2 is counted as a success. Most checks also have a target number (usually 2), which is the number of successes needed to pass them. What happens when they are passed depends on why they are being made, but the mechanics are almost always the same.
Luck can be spent to get an extra die when making a check. For every 1 Luck spent you get 1 extra die to roll (unless some other power gives them more). The only exception to this rule is if you are making a Luck Check, in which case you can’t spend any Luck to increase the roll. This is because one die is already being rolled for each Luck point, even though none of them are being spent.
The game will also be broken into Weeks, Days, and Segments (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night). Each week starts with a Sunday and ends with a Saturday. Each day starts with the drawing of a daily event card, which has to be put into effect or resolved as the wording on it says before play can move on. Then players assign their Action points (average of about 8 each) to the four segments of the day, with at least one in each. This is done now, and can’t be easily changed later, so they have to plan and think ahead a little. Then come the segments themselves, which include the player’s turns, but first all NPCs have the chance to move.
Players take their turns in sections, with each player performing the required part before moving on to the next one. The order must stay the same in each segment and each player must complete their part before the next can act. First they each activate or perform any turn-based actions they want or have to use. Then they spend all their available Action Points allotted to this Segment to perform any number of legal actions. Then they finish up by performing any end of turn actions they have to or choose to take.
What actions they do depends on where they are and what is available to them. Movement takes an action (and allows movement up to their current Speed), Attending a class takes an action if they are in the right place (and sometimes is rewired to avoid trouble), Activating a location ability usually takes an action, Searching a location takes an action (and allows the drawing of a Search card), Some Items or Spells require an action, Starting a Duel might require an action, and altering the current level of some things (like skills) also would require an action.
So that’s the general outline of the game’s basic mechanics. Not including the victory conditions or goals of the whole thing. The theme is there will be some large mystery going on that the players have to beat, mostly by fulfilling requirements (like finding clues, activating things, etc.), and if they don’t do it in time they lose. The actual requirements and timing of it all is what’s still in limbo. I do think it will have to do with advancing “chapters” of the mystery in the form of flipping cards until either the players can win or they lose. But before I can figure that out I have to have the rest of the game working on some level first.
Now I should get back to working on it, I have a few hundred more “search” results to write. As of this point I am on the Dungeon, set 5 of 12 (with 12 cards with 3 parts each in each set), so there is still a ways to go. So, any comments or ideas on this idea so far? I am sure I will have more to say later.
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