4 November 2012

NaGa DeMon

No, not a D&D monster from the Outer Planes or anything of the sort, National Games Design Month is a blatant rip-off inspired by the success of NaNoWriMo except (as the name rather suggests) you create a game, rather than write a novel. I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and finish off the Goblinquest game this month (The Averaigne setting is going to be too looooong a haul for this, I think).

http://nagademon.com/

Apparently, the organised sort of people who succeed at this kind of venture tend to have clearly defined goals and targets. Things like 'finish the game, make it good' tend to be scoffed at as being too nebulous and imprecise. Tightening up The Plan (TM) a bit while my tea brewed, I came up with these:

  • refine movement rules and decide whether they should be fixed per character, or given by dice rolling each turn
  • test shooting rules more - different shooting dice for different weapons, or shift top dice up by one?
  • Instant kill - yes or no
  • Produce character cards to allow for different dice 'routes' for monsters
  • flesh out monster list to at least twelve
  • Magic items (dead easy, just +/- to dice rolls)
  • Magic spells - got a couple of ideas here but basically a very strong ranged attack which reduces the top dice of the caster as if they had been wounded, because my physics teacher brain says that conservation of energy means magic should take something out of the wielder ("A balrog... What an evil fortune! And I am already weary"). Yup, that's right, I'm worrying about the science of magic for a game for schoolkids - my Geek is always set to eleven!
Is there anything I've missed off? I have some grandiose plans for a modular game board, but even I recognise that they're not a priority or even necessary for the NaGa DeMon project.

Get designing, you lot! Oh, and any feedback or suggestions on the above would be very welcome indeed.

Happy geeking,
Rab

4 comments:

  1. Oh I don't know - finish the game and make it good sound quite focussed to me. The motto for my classroom is "Work hard and be nice to people"!

    I think I like dice rolling for movement - would it over complicate matters if different creatures had different dice levels?

    Just posted some ideas on shooting and instant death on your other post, but different dice levels for different weapons would be good.

    Definitely need some more monsters and stat cards are a good idea. Same for magic items.

    By different dice routes for creatures do you mean Goblins dying quicker by going from D8 straight to D4, or your Giant taking two lost rounds to knock him down a level?

    I think magic should weaken the user as you say but what about recovering dice like other characters do through successful combats.

    The game board sounds fun but I know what you mean! Incidentally where do your dungeon tiles come from?

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  2. "Work hard AND be nice to people" - you set your standards high!

    I like rolling for movement, too, and I guess it fits more with the board game 'feel' than a skirmish wargame, say, where movement is often fixed. Monsters could certainly have different movement; I'll add it to the stat card.

    Magic (and possibly non-magical) items would certainly get cards. I see them as being standard playing card sized, while character cards would be bigger.

    Dice routes - exactly what I meant. I think it would be an easy way to add a point of difference between creatures without loads of extra rules. The 'route' would go on the stat card as the primary bit of information.

    Recovering magic-reduced dice. Hmm. There really should be a way for them to recover, although I think I might limit magic to the bad guys who can't recover dice at the moment, so perhaps it's a non-issue. A point to ponder; thank you. And thank you for all the feedback, it's really useful.

    The tiles are by Billiam Babble from the Lost and the Damned Forum. He sells them as downloads through rpgNow, trading as Inked Adventures. I think they're brilliant and, if this game proves to have legs, I'm going to email him and see if he'll let me use his art for the board pieces.

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  3. I look forward to playing the finished product!

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  4. Thanks Gareth. As soon as I can actually get some gaming time with an adult opponent I'm itching to give CC a go.

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