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Post by Dave on Mar 11, 2011 15:12:44 GMT -9
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cabo
Apprentice
Posts: 39
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Post by cabo on Mar 11, 2011 18:34:56 GMT -9
Just downloaded and did a very quick scan...
I love the small "cheat" sheets on the last page, you picked the information that is really needed.... this was a much needed addition
Adding the warning that this is a up/down game and was a good idea.
A bit sorry to see the return of the pick one contract and live with it since I finally won with the previous modification of draw three.
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Post by Dave on Mar 11, 2011 19:08:15 GMT -9
There were a couple of goofs on the 1.4 cards (nothing major), so I've just uploaded a fresh version. If you've already printing the 1.4 cards, pencil in these changes: Arax (mercenary card) doesn't have a star in the corner. Settlements card: Move Arax to the Town. Move Kirsash to the Village. A bit sorry to see the return of the pick one contract and live with it since I finally won with the previous modification of draw three. It's going to make the early game tougher, but I'm hoping that some failures are going to make players appreciate their successes a little more. And once you win a contract and have some money to spend, you have the option of rejecting contracts. |
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Post by Dave on Mar 11, 2011 20:48:59 GMT -9
Here are some new contract cards I'm working on. They aren't included in Version 1.4, but they will probably appear in the next version. I'm trying to add some "choose your own adventure" aspects to the game, so the contracts deck will include some non-combat encounter cards.   |
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Post by sharanac on Mar 12, 2011 0:43:30 GMT -9
New encounters are great. Continue in this direction  I also like new card costs. I only think that distraction is too useful to be 8g. I would give it 10, maybe even 12. MODIFICATION And one more thing... With these cost changes you should definitely state in the rules that you CAN mix budget money with your own. For example, in Pit fight you have 10g budget, but you CAN add 4 from your reserve to purchase Juice of Joraa... If you do not state it directly people will tend to forget it, and this is important for success in some contracts... I know it from personal experience |
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Post by Dave on Mar 12, 2011 7:00:02 GMT -9
New encounters are great. Continue in this direction Cool! I haven't come up with a lot of encounter ideas yet, but one day I'm sure there will be a flood of them. I think it's a fair price since Distraction is now one-use-only. It's mentioned in two places in the section on budget, but I'll add an example to try to make it stick. |
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Post by Parduz on Mar 12, 2011 7:14:04 GMT -9
You go faster than what i can... i hope to have the time to give to the new version a try.
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Post by sharanac on Mar 12, 2011 7:34:50 GMT -9
I missed the fact that it is one use only  Too bad, I used it all the time, it was my favorite tactic card when it could be used in every turn.  Now I have to think another tactics for difficult jobs  . ;D |
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Post by Dave on Mar 12, 2011 8:21:09 GMT -9
Haha! That's what playtesting is for. If you tell me things are too easy, I make them tougher.
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Post by sharanac on Mar 12, 2011 9:02:20 GMT -9
You won't hear me complaining about it. I feel that the game difficulty is just right now. This is one of the tings I realy like about this playtest: I have to change the way I play in the process. Old tactics no longer work, and I constantly have to think on my feet to win the game. Keeps my mind busy... When you purchase the finish game you do not have this experience. All you have to do is find the winning combination once, and stick to it... So thanks for letting me being the part of creation process
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Post by Dave on Mar 12, 2011 9:19:50 GMT -9
And I'm really grateful for your help, and everyone who has contributed so far. That includes verminking, who won't take credit but corrected a ton of typos in the rules. Thanks, Mystery Person! Seriously, thanks to everybody. experience. All you have to do is find the winning combination once, and stick to it There shouldn't be a single winning combination. If you're winning the game using the same four mercenaries every time, using the same tactics every time, then I need to make some changes. |
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Post by sharanac on Mar 12, 2011 10:35:53 GMT -9
Not like this. You can not use same mercs or same tactics card. This can not happen due to the nature of the game. Each game IS different, tells different story. But still there are winning combinations like "use 2 mercs on the same field" or put "2 mercs diagonally to each other. Take care that one has high melee and other high awareness. Give some movement tactic card like JoJ or Misdirection to the merc with awareness" etc...
These are the things I was talking about...
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Post by Vermin King on Mar 12, 2011 10:49:21 GMT -9
Well, I got a bug that set in yesterday afternoon, so my trip out of town is cancelled. If I feel better later on, I'll go through things one more time. When do you have to have your finished product in for the contest?
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Post by Dave on Mar 12, 2011 11:11:19 GMT -9
Hired Swords Cards Add-Ons:www.outworld-studio.com/hiredswords/pdf/Hired-Swords-Cards-Add-Ons.pdfThis PDF contains 9 new contracts, including new encounters. The encounters are shuffled in with your other sources. Well, I got a bug that set in yesterday afternoon, so my trip out of town is cancelled. If I feel better later on, I'll go through things one more time. When do you have to have your finished product in for the contest? Sunday night, but to be on the safe side I'm going to finalize it tonight. Hope you feel better soon.
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Post by sharanac on Mar 12, 2011 11:22:33 GMT -9
Break a leg on the contest!
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Post by Dave on Mar 12, 2011 11:46:56 GMT -9
First, I play some unconnected contracts, where I test different combination of mercs and tactics. This is even OK with the fluff, because it symbolize the time spent with the old master, before his retirement. These are the games I try to understand the mechanics of the game, to detect "the winning combination". Only when I know how to behave in difficult situation, and when I have the feeling I can beat the game, I go into campaign. This is just my stile of play. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I think it's cool that players can run a quick game of just 1 contract, or spend an hour or two playing out a whole campaign. It's the kind of game that you can play for a little bit and then leave it alone for a while. Congratulations on parenthood! |
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Post by Dave on Mar 13, 2011 17:09:19 GMT -9
I submitted v1.4 as my final design for the game design contest, and I'm looking forward to whatever feedback I get. Working on v1.5 now with the intention of developing it for sale as a print-and-play game. Now I can work without so many limits. I won't be posting the playtest versions publicly any more, but anyone who wants to playtest the game is welcome to. Just send me a private message or email (luminousbeings@yahoo.com) and I'll send you the links. cabo, parduz, sharanac: I'll PM you with the links to the latest version of the game if you want to continue playtesting. So let's think talk about the changes. The encounter cards are adding a cool element to the game. They can help a lot or hurt a lot. I'm going to expand the opposition deck to 40 cards. I'm adding repeats of the Axeman, Swordsman, Spearman, Archer, Reinforcements, and a couple others. I'm also adding 2 new Jackal Trap cards and 1 Fire Wall that will deal damage to mercenaries that try to move across them to reach a neighboring zone. I still have a couple of empty spots left for new opposition cards, but I want to test out the current selection first to see if things should be made tougher or easier. I'll create a quarter-page record sheet to make it easier to keep track of a career in progress. Parduz had some good ideas about this that I want to work with. I don't think I'm going to expand the game "map" at this point. The game works pretty smoothly with just the three locations. I can always release an expansion pack with a larger map and other options later on. |
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Post by Parduz on Mar 13, 2011 23:52:59 GMT -9
I submitted v1.4 as my final design for the game design contest, and I'm looking forward to whatever feedback I get. Wish you best luck! cabo, parduz, sharanac: I'll PM you with the links to the latest version of the game if you want to continue playtesting. Sure! I'm sorry to have not tried your last version, but you run very fast and i was involved in another project. I saw your "call" for an artist. Do you plan to have art also on opponents and "game track" or just on Mercs? |
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Post by sharanac on Mar 14, 2011 0:18:04 GMT -9
Please do! I hope you will add graphics to the opponents. It will make game much more fun when you have a "face" on the cards to hate and blame for your failures I hoped that commercial version wold be with full color cards? Pleas do not forget to design a box where we can keep our cards from the finished edition once we finish playing for a day. |
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Post by Dave on Mar 14, 2011 1:58:52 GMT -9
I am going to start off simple and cheap. There really is no point investing a lot of time creating full-color graphics if the game only sells 15 copies.
So I think I will release the game as a grayscale print-and-play PDF for around $3. If it sells a lot of copies, I'll be encouraged to develop the game further.
To really make the game look great, with full-color graphics, I would need to hire some illustrators. For the quality I expect from a full-color game (the kind you can charge $10 or $12 for), illustrations could easily cost me $500, and probably more. So to make my money back (just for the illustrations), I would need to sell about 100 copies of the game. (My webstores keep 35% of the sale price -- and I still have to pay taxes on the rest.) That is just to break even.
That's not going to happen.
But if I sell a lot of copies of the $3 game, I can release a $2 expansion in the same style. If that expansion sells a lot of copies, I can design another expansion...
Hopefully, if the game is good enough, I can earn enough on it to hire illustrators and create a really good-looking color version of the game. I could get it printed by Artscow or Superior POD. If it's a really well-received game, I would probably approach a few game companies to see if they are interested in publishing it.
But that is long way down the road.
But yes, I will include a box!
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Post by Dave on Mar 14, 2011 2:48:04 GMT -9
I've just written a new Royal contract called Courtly Intrigues. For this job, you'll use Alertness alone to try to sniff out some spies in the prince's court. It's run just like any other battle, but opposition cards with rankings in Melee and Missiles do not act. If just one opposition card with Alertness goes unblocked, it steals valuable information from the prince and your mission fails.
Altogether, there are 6 Rustic, 6 Royal, 6 Trader, 6 Criminal, 2 Revenge contracts, and 9 encounters. I have 12 mercenaries and 1 settlements card, for a total of 48 large-sized cards. That leaves room for 4 more cards to fill up 6 sheets of cardstock.
I will try to write 4 more encounters.
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Post by Parduz on Mar 14, 2011 2:51:47 GMT -9
That leaves room for 4 more cards to fill up 6 sheets of cardstock. I will try to write 4 more encounters. You may always build the record sheet to be foldable and having (folded) the size of a card... so it can stay in the same tuckbox. |
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cabo
Apprentice
Posts: 39
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Post by cabo on Mar 14, 2011 5:09:04 GMT -9
Working on v1.5 now with the intention of developing it for sale as a print-and-play game. Now I can work without so many limits. cabo, parduz, sharanac: I'll PM you with the links to the latest version of the game if you want to continue playtesting. Love to continue play testing (like parduz did not have much time for testing the last version...that life gets in the way thing) Looking forward to playing with encounters. |
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Post by Dave on Mar 14, 2011 12:20:01 GMT -9
Just wrote 2 more encounters. 2 to go.
UPDATE: Now just 1 to go. 1 might use that last space for a reusable career tracker instead.
UPDATE: Wrote up another encounter, then created a simple career tracker sheet so you can use just a couple of coins to indicate your current gold and whether you've extorted or blackmailed the prince. (Great idea, Parduz!)
But I miscounted. I still have two spots left. I think I have plenty of encounters now, so I'm going to think about how best to use those two spots. I'll probably create two new contracts.
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Post by Dave on Mar 15, 2011 9:42:42 GMT -9
I'm creating a spreadsheet so I can do some analysis on the contract cards. I have two spaces left on my components sheets, and I want them to be good. So I'm going to take a close look at everything I've created so far, and see if there's anything that I've missed.
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Post by Vermin King on Mar 15, 2011 11:26:58 GMT -9
You are indeed very thorough.
During the contest, do you get any feedback on how it is going?
When is it over? I know that your 'final' product was submitted, but how is the judging done and for how long?
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Post by Dave on Mar 15, 2011 12:02:07 GMT -9
I think the judging lasts about a month, and anyone can cast a vote. I'm not exactly sure how it's being conducted, but I doubt that I'll get a chance to test out the other entries.
I haven't received any feedback, except for a few people who liked the looks of the cards. Feedback on version 1.4 might not be very useful to me, since the game is going to be different with the inclusion of the encounter cards.
After I looked at all the contracts, I was able to see some patterns. There are basically two different varieties of Versus contracts, but all Protector contracts are fairly similar. Some contracts involve travel, and some have an influence on which contracts you can play later.
I've made some changes:
You no longer "blackmail" or "extort" the prince. These two activities are now combined, and you can choose to become a betrayer in various ways. The betrayer keyword is now used to trigger certain effects -- like the Prince's Wrath contract. Most Royal contracts get discarded if you are a betrayer.
I'm also introducing the keyword criminal. If you accept a Criminal contract, you earn yourself the keyword. Most Trader contracts get discarded if you are a criminal.
I've eliminated the complicated rules for accepting Criminal contracts. It used to be that if you failed, your mercenaries had a chance of being caught and hanged. But I've exported that idea to some encounter cards instead. Now, the only special rule regarding Criminal contracts is that you can reject them at no cost (instead of paying 1 gold as usual).
For the first time in a very long time, I've altered one of the mercenaries. Now, when Tiris is in your stable, you can't reject a Criminal contract.
I'm going to look for more ways to interconnect these sorts of things. I have a lot of mechanics that let you be bad guys (criminals and betrayers), but almost nothing that lets your hired swords be heroes. Maybe that's the right way to go, though. You're really never going to be good guys. At best, you'll be self-serving but neutral.
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Post by sharanac on Mar 16, 2011 10:12:05 GMT -9
Drop us a link to a contest page, I am interested in what can be found there....
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Post by Dave on Mar 16, 2011 10:53:10 GMT -9
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Post by Dave on Mar 16, 2011 12:01:51 GMT -9
Version 1.5 is coming soon! I just need to set up the card pages.
I can't be sure of all of the changes I've made since v1.3 and v1.4, so it's probably a good idea to print up a fresh batch. I'm going to.
The rules changes are minor, so the new sections are in red.
Parduz, cabo, sharanac -- I'll send you a PM with the links when they're ready.
Anybody else who wants to test out the game just needs to send me a PM.
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