Monday, March 9, 2009

Game Challenge 7

Battlefield: The Next Dimension

Set Up:

•Before play begins, each player has two raised land masses, nine barrier stones, and three characters.

•Each player takes turns placing their raised land masses first, then each of their nine barrier stones. Each raised land mass and barrier stone may be placed anywhere on any of the planes on the board.

•Each player then takes turns placing their characters on the board. Characters may be placed anywhere there is not a barrier stone, but each of the three characters must be placed on a different plane from each other. Each character also begins play with 50 HP.

Once the board is set up, you should have three levels, eighteen barrier stones, four raised land masses, and three characters (each on a different level, or plane).

•Each player draws five cards to their hand.

•Finally, each player rolls 1d6, and whoever rolls the lower number decides who goes first.

Game Play: Game play will be described below, and each section of play will be described in more detail later on.

1. Move
2. Attack
3. Move
4. Place Traps
5. Draw

Each player follows these stages of play until someone wins the game.

Move:
•The player rolls 1d20 to decide how many squares they are allowed to move.

•A player may choose to split this move over each of their characters, or only one of their characters.

•Each character may move, and attack, and move again.

•Each character may move, and attack.

•Each character may attack, and move.

•If you move a character, and then move another character, the first character moved, may not be moved again, or attack, for the rest of this turn.

•The last character to be moved must move the rest of the available squares if possible. If completing the move becomes impossible, the rest of the move is forfeit.

•A player may choose to move their character to a new plane. This may be done by giving up five of the rolled moves. To move to a new plane, you must give up five of the rolled moves, and then place your character one plane above or below your current plane in the same location the character was located.

•A player may not move onto a square occupied by a barrier stone, or another player. There is no special rule for moving to a raised land mass. Treat a raised land mass as level ground for moving purposes.

Attack:
•A player may play one attack card or magic card per character per turn.

•A character may play any special cards at this time.

•If the character has any, they may play up to one God card at this time. However, playing a God card means forfeiting the right to play any other cards, except trap cards, this turn.

•A player may choose the character from which the attack originated from.

•Any attacking character may only attack once, unless stated by a special card.

•If a character is moved, and has not attacked, but another character has been moved, the first character may not attack this turn.

•Each attack card lists three things.

Damage: The damage done to an opponent hit by the attack.

Plane: The planes that are affected, or may be chosen when the attack is used.

Elevation: The elevations on a single plane that the attack may be used on.

+1: Can hit someone on a raised land mass from ground level only.

0: Can hit someone on ground level only.

-1: Can hit someone on ground level from a raised land mass.

Ground level is considered anything not a raised land mass.

Place Traps:
•Once all moves and attacks have been taken for your turn, you may then place any trap cards you choose.

•Choose which traps to place and state you are placing a trap. Lay the card face down on the table.

•Once a trap card has been placed on the table, it may be played any time during your opponents turn. Each trap cards effect is only good for one character, but stays active for the rest of your opponents turn.

•Once your opponents turn ends, any used or unused trap cards are discarded.

Draw:
•To finish your turn, you must draw two cards from the deck to your hand.

•You may only have five cards in your hand at a time. If drawing two cards will give you more than five cards, you may only draw the number of cards that will give you a hand less than or equal to five cards.

Extra Rules:
•Should the deck become exhausted, shuffled the discarded cards and draw from them.

•A barrier stone may not be moved except by magic. A stone may not be placed on a spot occupied by another stone, or a character.

•Attacks cannot pass through a barrier stone or raised land mass. The exception is the Bow and Arrow. A Bow and Arrow can be shot over a barrier stone. However, the Bow and Arrow can be shot from a raised land mass, not over it.

•The game is over when one player has no characters left alive.

Cards:

Magic

Black Blast: Every black square on every dimension erupts with a bolt of energy. Any character, yours or your opponents, on a black square takes damage.
Damage: 1d10
Plane: All
Elevation: Any

White Destruction: Every white square on every dimension erupts with a bold of energy. Any character, yours or your opponents, on a white square takes damage.
Damage: 1d10
Plane: All
Elevation: Any

Fire Cross: Fire blasts from the chosen character in all horizontal and vertical directions. The fire cannot pass through a barrier or raised land mass.
Damage: 1d12
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0

Hail Storm: Choose a single vertical or horizontal direction from the character. 4 squares in that direction is the front center of a 3x3 grid in which hail stones fall.
Damage: 2d6
Plane: Current
Elevation: Any

Teleport: This card lets you move one character to any square on any dimension for the cost of a single square move. You may continue moving the rest of your move once this card is used.
Damage: 0
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any Magic

Telekinesis: This allows you to pick up a single barrier stone and move it to a new location on the same dimension.
Damage: 0
Plane: Current
Elevation: Any Magic

Trap

Magic Shield: This card places a magic bubble around a character attacked with magic. That character may transfer ½ the damage they would have received to any other character on the board.
Damage: ½ rounded down
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Mirror: You hold a mirror in your hand. If you see a laser blast coming at you, you may use the mirror to reflect the blast back at the attacker, forcing them to take the damage.
Damage: 100%
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0

Forced Run: If the opponent rolls 11 or more on their move roll, you may force your opponent to make the entire move with any one character you choose. The other characters may not move this turn.
Damage: 0
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any Trap

Ballistic Shield: You currently have use of a ballistic shield. If the opponent uses a shotgun to attack you, you may hide behind this shield and avoid all damage.
Damage: 0
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0

Flare: You currently hold a flair gun. If you find a heat seeking missile headed your way, you may fire the flair to direct the missile away from you. However, you still suffer shrapnel damage.
Damage: ½ round down
Plane: Current
Elevation: Any

Special

All out Attack: Give up ½ of your move roll and you may use an additional attack per character this round.
Damage: 0
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Backstab: You sneak up on your opponent and manage to attack in stealth. Because of your cunning, you may use a knife to do extra damage.
Damage: Knife Damage × 5
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0

God

Power of Creation: You may move one raised land mass from its current location to any other location. Move anything in the chosen space to the top of the new raised land mass.
Damage: 0
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Power of Life: You may revive one of your fallen characters from death. They revive with ½ of their starting HP at the exact position they died.
Damage: 0
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Power of Death: You may drain the life of one of your opponent’s characters. This character may be anywhere on the battlefield.
Damage: 5d6
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Attack

Heat Seeking Missile: You launch a missile that will find the nearest opponent. It will find the opponent and explode on impact.
Damage: 1d20
Plane: Any
Elevation: Any

Laser: You fire a laser blast in any diagonal direction from your characters position. This blast will move along until it hits something. The battery on the laser is only good for one shot.
Damage: 1d8
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0

Bow and Arrow: You pull back on the string and launch an arrow any direction from your character. This arrow may travel up to 5 horizontal and vertical squares, or 4 diagonal squares. It lands where you say.
Damage: 1d8
Plane: Current
Elevation: -1, 0

Shotgun: This gun shoots a blast of pellets any horizontal or vertical direction from your character. The square in front of your character is the front center of the 3x3 grid affected by the blast.
Damage: 1d8
Plane: Current
Elevation: -1, 0

Knife: You wield the knife, an easy to conceal and quick to use weapon. You must be right next to your opponent, and can attack in any direction, quickly slashing out or stabbing.
Damage: 1d4
Plane: Current
Elevation: 0


Play Test Notes: It is a fact, Karl and Cameron cannot play games where they are the only two playing. The two set up the board so that their pieces looked utterly epic. The game began kinda poorly as neither of them read the rules completely. I will admit that the move section was complicated and hard to follow. However, as the game progressed, and certain rules were looked up or explained, the game began flowing much better, and shaped up into quite a match. First kill went to Karl, but it looked like Cameron was going to make a come back with the second kill until Karl played the Power of Life card. In the end Karl dominated, though Cameron didn't go down easy.

All in all, it could use some help but felt pretty solid and was a good play test.

If I can get pictures I'll show the world the epicness.

4 comments:

  1. The three tier box set up is -really- interesting! I like the addition of elevated terrain, too, but I think you could make it have a bit more effect in the game than just a minor damage alteration and card blocker...

    Jumping from tier to tier is neat- the game seems pretty well balanced, too. I do think maybe there should be some restrictions on projectile weapons jumping tier, though.


    And, as you already know, the rules on movement were a bit confusing. Also, maybe try printing double-sided so people think, "Oh, it's just one page.." and don't panic. o_o

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  2. Steve,

    I agree with Kate - love the board setup, though admittedly you can't see from the back of the box. I'm thinking we'll either have to not have Karl and Cameron play together or we'll have to get them to play whatever game they test together twice.

    In terms of rules and readability, many players today don't read the manual. Part of this might be the changing culture where rules are communicated differently. As a result, it might be easier to give illustrations and short summaries of the rules, rather than go into great detail.

    Glad you posted the descriptions of all your cards. Did you notice any emergent gameplay involving the cards that you hadn't expected? Analyzing the types of play that can emerge from situations such as this while predicting and designing situations for emergent play is important to game design.

    Devin Monnens

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  3. We played just fine, thank you very much! I thought it was a fun game and I think that we played it just fine. I can't deny that when the rules hit a page, it's hard to give them as much attention, but that's not something you should avoid as a result. We just need to suck it up and read through them.

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  4. Awesome reinvention of the game! I was a little worried watching Karl and Cameron play, but it seemed to turn out great.

    One of the biggest problems that still persisted I think was that the rules were very long, and people didn't want to read all of them and pay attention to all of it.

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