Post by enomus on Apr 9, 2017 21:53:20 GMT 1
(Name subject to future change)
Inspired by a DRB discord chat
enomus tactics (ET) is a turn-based strategy game. Two players build a team of 3 characters to fight each other in a tactics map. The rules for building characters and for how they interact will be based on DnD, though the details are still to be defined.
Building characters will happen separate to the game itself, similar to deckbuilding in card games.
Other than the above, which is the foundation, everything is still very uncertain. Below are many ideas we talked about, but none of them are set in stone
Maps: A layout of the battlefield with marked points A1, B1, C1, A2, B2, C2. At the start of the game, each player will get info on the opponent's team (classes and races) and then they will assign their characters to these starting points. There will be more than one map, and they will be significantly different from each other. There is no changing your character's builds post map selection.
Terminating factors: There need to be secondary ways of winning a game other than killing all of your opponent's characters. Otherwise, there is the risk of running into matchups where the game just never ends. Right now, there are multiple ideas on how to do this, and we will probably try having different goals for different maps. Here are some ideas
1) Each team has an objective in their "base" which the opponent must destroy
2) Control a specific map location for an amount of rounds
3) Steal and item from the opponent's "base" and return it to your own
4) At the center of the map is a powerful neutral monster that drops a special item when it's killed. The item can be used to boost your team's fighting capabilities, or if you accumulate n items without using them you win the game. The monster would respawn a number of rounds after being killed.
5) Assymetric goal: Player 1 needs to take control of a map location in X turns, while player 2 needs to defend it
--
Potential problems with using DnD rules:
Reactions: It is annoying in turn based games to have your turn interrupted to give the opponent a prompt. This is something that would have to happen very often, mainly to ask players if they want to do an Attack of Opportunity (AoO) in many scenarios if they want to cast Counterspell when their opponent casts a spell. One possible solution is to automate these actions: for example, AoO happens automatically when possible. Counterspell would be something you have to queue as a swift/bonus or free action and then you will automatically counter the next spell cast within a time frame. Alternatively, a character could automatically counter spells that meet a certain criteria, or we could just not have it in the game.
Planar/Ethereal: Remove from the game as is very uninteractive, and creates problems with some of the goals.
RNG: DnD has a lot of rng (rolling dice), which is good because it opens up space for emergent narratives. But we're trying to turn it into something competitive here, and the amount of rng could be very frustrating for a large subset of players. However if we remove this aspect, it becomes very hard to say that the systems are based on DnD. And that's losing a maybe powerful marketing tool. The best option is probably some middle ground (I don't think 0 rng is a good idea for this game anyway), or maybe turns out even the normal amount of rng is not that excessive.
Inspired by a DRB discord chat
enomus tactics (ET) is a turn-based strategy game. Two players build a team of 3 characters to fight each other in a tactics map. The rules for building characters and for how they interact will be based on DnD, though the details are still to be defined.
Building characters will happen separate to the game itself, similar to deckbuilding in card games.
Other than the above, which is the foundation, everything is still very uncertain. Below are many ideas we talked about, but none of them are set in stone
Maps: A layout of the battlefield with marked points A1, B1, C1, A2, B2, C2. At the start of the game, each player will get info on the opponent's team (classes and races) and then they will assign their characters to these starting points. There will be more than one map, and they will be significantly different from each other. There is no changing your character's builds post map selection.
Terminating factors: There need to be secondary ways of winning a game other than killing all of your opponent's characters. Otherwise, there is the risk of running into matchups where the game just never ends. Right now, there are multiple ideas on how to do this, and we will probably try having different goals for different maps. Here are some ideas
1) Each team has an objective in their "base" which the opponent must destroy
2) Control a specific map location for an amount of rounds
3) Steal and item from the opponent's "base" and return it to your own
4) At the center of the map is a powerful neutral monster that drops a special item when it's killed. The item can be used to boost your team's fighting capabilities, or if you accumulate n items without using them you win the game. The monster would respawn a number of rounds after being killed.
5) Assymetric goal: Player 1 needs to take control of a map location in X turns, while player 2 needs to defend it
--
Potential problems with using DnD rules:
Reactions: It is annoying in turn based games to have your turn interrupted to give the opponent a prompt. This is something that would have to happen very often, mainly to ask players if they want to do an Attack of Opportunity (AoO) in many scenarios if they want to cast Counterspell when their opponent casts a spell. One possible solution is to automate these actions: for example, AoO happens automatically when possible. Counterspell would be something you have to queue as a swift/bonus or free action and then you will automatically counter the next spell cast within a time frame. Alternatively, a character could automatically counter spells that meet a certain criteria, or we could just not have it in the game.
Planar/Ethereal: Remove from the game as is very uninteractive, and creates problems with some of the goals.
RNG: DnD has a lot of rng (rolling dice), which is good because it opens up space for emergent narratives. But we're trying to turn it into something competitive here, and the amount of rng could be very frustrating for a large subset of players. However if we remove this aspect, it becomes very hard to say that the systems are based on DnD. And that's losing a maybe powerful marketing tool. The best option is probably some middle ground (I don't think 0 rng is a good idea for this game anyway), or maybe turns out even the normal amount of rng is not that excessive.