Rage-design: A Less Shitty Version of Impulse

Board Games
101

Self-Playtest 3

3 players (Hercules [Mine], Ariek [Execute], Piscesish [Refine])
victor: Piscesish

What Worked

  1. Ditching an action to draw a card fixed the card flow problem completely. Like, 100% no issues getting cards. You start with a hand of 4 cards, and for most of the game players fluctuated between 2 and 6 cards. Early on everyone spent themselves down pretty far, someone actually emptied their hand, and someone else held one card in their hand for a while - but it doesn’t take long to get more cards and get flowing again. It did eventually result in a card glut when one of the factions had a strong Draw power, so a hand limit is necessary. The peak hand was 10 and that felt excessively bloated. 6 felt nice and useful without being overly full, so I’m thinking a hand limit of 8, which felt like it was just on the cusp of too much. If you’re holding 8 cards, it’s time to DO shit.

I consider that draw mechanic tested and incorporated:

New Rule: for any action, you may either take the action you are entitled to, or instead draw 1 card

New Rule: discard down to 8 cards at the end of the Cleanup phase

  1. I played this one out in its entirety, and it roughly followed the arc I envisioned the game following - early cooperation while everyone spreads out their machine looking for a way forward, then Dissent starts becoming more common as you no longer need cooperation and would rather break the turn sequence to get ahead (Dissent is resolved immediately and before Assent). Eventually the Impulse starts flipping over as the game marches towards its end state - diplomacy breaks down, and all that remains is exploiting your path.

  2. This game had several combats, so I got to see how it plays out at various conflict size configurations. I had trepidations based on small datasets, but after playing 10 combats, I think my basic combat rules are good. Multiple 2-on-1 and 3-on-2 matches led to victory to the numerically superior force but also at the cost of ships, which is pretty much what I wanted. A 5-on-3 resulted in a sweeping victory. Also, a fleet of 5 Cruisers is extremely dangerous and can basically roll across the galaxy blowing up everyone unless the players make a concerted effort to stop it, and that is also what I wanted, so I’m thinking combat is likely fine. Coming up, I’ll test contrived combats with various fighting Techs to see what happens.

What Could Change

  1. Trade wound up eventually being somewhat useful, but mostly as an afterthought. It was a source of meaningful points, but was still the weakest of the point-generating actions. It’s noteworthy that it took a default card-drawing ability to make an action that can generate points from cards into something useful, and even then it wasn’t really that useful. Currently, Trade is restricted by both size and color - I’m thinking of changing it to just a size restriction, because dumping from your hand is a hard enough choice anyway. There were at least 5 separate times when Trade would have actually been useful were that the case, and that says to me that it can stand to change.

  2. Similarly, Refine was sorta underwhelming because you really just don’t get that much bang for your buck. Right now it’s restricted to one card each time - I’m thinking of changing it to allowing you to refine as many as you want from one color (for X points per gem as normal). That would have made it more useful at least 3 times during the game.

  3. Points for combat are a little boring. One point per blowed up ship, and one point for winning. Big deal. I’m thinking of two different approaches: +1 to the victor and -1 to the loser, or randomized the victor point gain based on drawing cards from among those used to resolve the combat. I think it’ll still stay at 1 point per destroyed ship, but adding some variability to the victor bonus would make combat just slightly more interesting.

  4. Still thinking about changing up action selection so that an action gets picked every round. Planning without taking an action is kinda boring, honestly. I don’t think it’d come up that often, but it would help keep the game moving.

What Didn’t Work

If you didn’t guess from the first 3 points above, the consistent problem in this game was that points gain was slow. It was almost painfully incremental. Hercules did make a 17-point Delivery, but literally had to fight the entire game to pull it off (which is intended, so that’s good), and there was still game to play after that.

Basically, there were multiple big plays that in other games would’ve signaled the end or near it, but then there kept being more game. It’s not exactly bad, but it’s not great either. It did wind up making it more competitive ultimately, but it felt like it took a while to get there.

I think it’s an issue primarily in the early game. Most of the serious points generation started about halfway through the game - prior to that, it was building up and lots of posturing (which is honestly my fault for playing against myself since I’m the fucking king of useless posturing in 4X games), and the result is that we entered what felt like end-stage empires, but the points didn’t reflect that, so we cranked our machines too much.

And the very end of the game was definitely janky because of that. We rocketed to the apex of what our machines could do, and then when the game didn’t end, we all sorta limped to the finish line.

It didn’t really result in any bullshit - the faction that won played the strongest and smartest game consistently, and that victory was largely secured by military dominance. It felt like the other factions had a chance to be competitive primarily because the game went on about 30% longer than it should have.

So either my finish line is too far away (probably could set the game to end at 20 points instead of 30), or earlier actions need to make more points so that when your empire is ready to crank, you can actually rocket to victory (see thoughts 1 - 3 above). That would compress the time window and make the game feel more urgent. The question then will be whether or not you can develop the engine in reasonable step with that urgency. We shall see.

I think I would rather have actions be more powerful than end the game sooner. Ending it sooner makes it sound like I’m saying “this game sucks let’s get it over,” and while it might be the same net effect, I think it’s more satisfying to end a game sooner because someone pulled off something big worth stupid numbers of points. So, that’s probably what I’m gonna play with - screw around with points generation from actions as I’ve talked about above and see what it does to pacing.

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Other Miscellaneous Thoughts

On Mining

I have a few actions that involve doing 1 + X (where X is the size of the card) of a thing. So Mine 1 is draw 2 put 1 in your Minerals - Mine 3 is draw 4, put 1 in your minerals.

Mine specifically was kind of scattershot (though I played my own rules wrong so go me, I have to try it again with the right action). The issue it creates is that significant parts of the game (many Techs, Refine, Deliver) center around not just having Minerals, but also having the right ones, and it was so random that it was sort of difficult to intentionally build a collection of Minerals to support a Tech.

I’m vaguely entertaining the idea of “draw two keep one” is the action, and the size is the number of times you do it. So Mine 3 would be “draw two keep one, 3 times.” That would make Techs like “keep one more when you Mine” super powerful in conjunction with strong Mine actions.

This would also apply to Plan, and maybe Draw. Right now Draw is just “draw 1 + X cards,” but also I don’t think Draw needs to be much more than that anyway?

I’ll screw with that at some point and see what happens.

On Size 2 Techs

Most of these are “for every two of this gem you have, get one of this thing.” I did those as placeholders mostly, but I’m thinking about GtR style “when you do this action, also take one from your hand.” Again, Mine and Plan seem like perfect candidates for that.

I’m also thinking that instead of revamping Trade, maybe I could take that idea of going through the discard pile and make it a Tech instead. Seems like Size 2 is the place for that. Spice it up, make things less samey.

On Overall Progress

I feel like I’m maybe a handful of solo playtests away from needing to play this with other humans going forward. Right now I’m figuring out flow and actions and fixing broken things, but the really big questions are going to hinge on what’s fun and feels right, and that simply needs more humans to suss out.

Stupid COVID.

I’ma have to work on updating TTS. Or maybe I’ll fuck with Vassal or some kind of 2D engine, cause damn is TTS terrible for tucking-intensive games.

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Is it possible to play a game with no victory points, but keep track of what each player achieves each turn? Then, when it gets to the point that each player has done one crazy “big” thing, or two/three satisfying cranks of the machine, you mark that as a possible end point. Then back-solve for how many points each thing could be worth and how many you need to end the game at about that point.

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I actually 90% wrote a panel about exactly how to do this, and if PAX Online doesn’t want it, I’m just going to put it on YouTube.

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Totally doable! In fact, I did a soft version of that in the partial game. The victory points have literally no effect other than dictating when the game stops, so it’s trivial to ignore them and play the game by “milestones.”

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http://www.tabloro.com/#top

Well how about that.

Super rough, but the lack of features is actually exactly what I’m after here. It basically looks like shared image manipulation using layers to give pieces priority. It’s buggy and missing functionality, but I’m gonna play with it and see what happens. It might actually be less annoying than TTS.

EDIT: Welp, this would be perfect, except you can’t rotate cards because of a bug, and the dev seems to be MIA. It’s open-source so I guess hypothetically it could get fixed but ehhhhhhhh there are probably other solutions out there.

EDIT2: OK maybe not, looks like someone on github fixed it, but it’s not pushed to the main website. Will fuck around and see what happens.

EDIT3: The github fork is promising, or would be if I knew what the fuck I was doing. Time to learn a thing. Stay tuned.

EDIT4: After fucking with this a bunch, I gave up and used Tabletopia instead. My goal was a free browser-based interface to support wider playtesting (when I get there), and Tabletopia is that exactly. TTS is better, but people have to pay to play sooooo.

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One thought, it’s been a long while since first following your progress here, but especially now with a digital prototyping engine as a possibility, have you considered recording and narrating a playtest to put on the Tubes? or doing even a twitch stream of one? Could always do it privately (I think). I’m both very interested in watching such a thing, (as trying to follow the textual explanation is a little overwhelming without visual aids) and guess it maybe could help you in your process to go through that excersize?

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Solid thought. I kinda don’t want to share that till it’s less shitty though. But a rules explanation video with visual aids would probably be hella useful. I’ll think about that after I get the current assets up and running.

And yeah, the text is kind of…a lot. This thread is mostly me talking to myself and I forget sometimes other people are reading and trying to understand.

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I’m totally fine with it being the wall of text to yourself as its useful in that way, don’t feel pressure to try to self-edit for our sake or anything, carry on! But we have been following along best we can all the same. And I’d love to see a rules explanation for sure.

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Right, I wasn’t sure if they had another function in the game, where you could spend them on other things.

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I’ve thought about that, but want to get a playable game first, and then make it decently fun. Once I’ve got that, I’m probably going to take cool ideas and turn them into a bunch of optional/advanced rules - purchasing stuff with victory points could well be on that list.

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So two new things:

  1. I have a playtest version up on Tabletopia:

Tabletopia, overall, is less good than TTS, but it has two clear advantages here: you can play it in a browser for free (so I can reach more people); and it’s sort of a pain in the ass to stack cards into a deck, which means it’s actually easier to tuck cards (grab a card, hold the “U” key, slide it into place) since they won’t snap together.

You can muddle through the rules and play if you’d like, but I will also be putting together a rules explanation video some time next week - I took off from work, so I’ll have free time and brain cycles.

  1. I bashed up a separate document to track all of the current ideas I’m looking to test out via play. They’re in rough order of priority based on how likely I think they are to be good and useful changes. Feel free to peruse and see what things I have rattling around in my brain:

I’m planning to self-test a couple of the larger changes just to confirm how I think they’ll work, but that’ll just tell me how stable they are. I’ll need other brains to help me figure out if they’re any good.

Increasingly I’m coming around to the idea that what I probably have here is two games rammed together (the voting game, and the progressive empire-building engine game), and as @Apreche suggested above I may be better off separating them. We’ll see.

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IS there any precedent (I’m sure there is but can’t think of any being I’m way out of touch with the state of board games) for releasing a plurality of related games that, can either be played combined into one thing, or done on their own as more focused or easily digested experiences? I know in some cases there are expansions that are essentially complete mini games or even stand alone games. And there’s certain games like, say, Spartacus where it really feels like 2-3 different small games stitched into one experience that is more full, and I enjoy that in all those cases! So if those smaller experiences could be made to stand on their own, but then still the same physical parts and rules and everything can be used in the more grand context for those so inclined then that really increases the value.

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I know there are things that are close. Glory to Rome has two “modes” of play, and the Eclipse expansions are blocks of “plug and play” rules - add stuff as you see fit. That’s a pretty common way to incorporate different designs into one larger game.

But I can’t think of anything that truly has multiple standalone games combined into one larger game. Usually, that kind of review - “this is like you put two different games together” - is a sign of overly-complicated design. And from a marketability standpoint, it would make more sense to me to break one large game into two smaller games and sell them both.

Root is a bunch of pretty different games played in the same space, but none are really standalone, at least not in a way that would make sense to me.

To be fair, if I just rip out the voting rules, they’re not a standalone game, because there’s no way to win. It’s a way to drive action selection, but you still need to flesh out action resolution. So it’s not quite an entirely standalone game, but wouldn’t take much design to make it into one.

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What you are looking for is known as 504.

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Huh, I guess that’s the logical conclusion of Copycat. I wonder if it’s any good.

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I haven’t actually played it, but @pence has. From what I recall, I was told some combinations are good, but most are meh.

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I guess that’s what I’m getting at if anything. Have two smaller games that could individually be packaged, but maybe they can be combined if you do have both and make one coherent master game from the two.

Like if the Spartacus game had instead been sold as “Spartacus: Intrigue” and has no arena battle segment. You just maintain your villa and slaves and so on, though you would have some gladiators, the “battle” would be removed or abstracted to just some base element. But that game could work on its own without all the dice rolling and movement tactics happening. Meanwhile you could have “Spartacus: Gladiators” (There’s better naming but I can’t remember all that stuff at the moment) which was just all the arena battle elements but maybe turned up to 11 with more weapons and modifiers and attacks, special events, executions and more elements of the actual gladitorial games thrown in. Make it a really meaty game where you’re managing your gladiators and training them between rounds and fighting and having tourneys and so on.

But then if you bought both games and combine the pieces, there’s a section of rules that explains the proper way to do that. Now you’re dealing with both elements, and maybe some of the detail gets stripped out of each portion of the game to streamline play a little, but overall the experience is a good combo that we know works from the game we actually got, for those who like both aspects and want to see how they reinforce eachother.

I’m not saying that that’s the best thing to do here but I definitely think it would be cool to see done in general.

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I did a brief playtest of this in a 4 player game. Each person led 3 times. I think this is definitely the way forward - actions were BIG, and there were a couple of points where I deliberately chose to Assent figuring that it would be popular and I would use it to get ahead of people. I also think the current method of Planning, where it takes your turn, is just fine in this variant, because it’s a consequential choice and also a breather - otherwise, I think decision fatigue might set in really fast because every turn is BIG SHIT.

There were also at least a couple of times I Dissented specifically to keep other people from powering up too hard, and that’s also in keeping with the kind of game I envision. I think this voting mechanic is for sure way more interesting. I definitely want to explore it in a separate, simpler game at some point.

However, I played with removing the basic Dissent action (draw 1 and move or build 1 Transport) and I think that was a big mistake, because when the actions are only on cards, you are completely at the mercy of the draw. It needs to stay, though maybe it could be like the thing with Draw where you can ditch an action to do it? We’ll find out in testing - for now, it stays as-is and doesn’t require a card. That’s cool, it’s weaker than any card action anyway.

So, I think the empowered vote is cool, and you still definitely need some way to take a handful of extremely basic game centric actions without the cards to do it. Moving and building ships are probably the two most vital things in the entire game other than drawing cards.

Anyway, I’m going to update the rules to use this form of voting because even if it’s broken or needs work, it was actually fun. At least I thought so! This will be the mechanism that goes into the rules explanation video.

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An example I can think of is the Total War series. Has a 4x map and focuses down to individual fights between armies. You could play exclusively the 4x part of the game by auto-resolving every battle, and you can also design and play custom battles independent of the 4x part.