SuperHero Dice: Roll Into Action

SuperHero Dice: Roll Into Action

My dice game which I have designed, for which I am currently working with a talented artist and creating new SuperHero's and Villians.

Here is a bit of background:

SuperHero Dice: Roll into Action

Background

The Island of Asilo, where contrary to the musings of modern day scholars was where the first humanoid inhabitants of planet Earth dwelled, they were known as the Armonia. The Armonia had fled to Earth and been guided to the Island of Asilo by the great wise one Mentem, the Armonia were a peaceful race and their small home planet was rich in energy crystals called Cubitos, the other races of the outer galaxies had sought to control their planet to gain the crystals, battling each other with the poor Armonia caught in between. The Armonia fled their planet with as many Cubitos crystals as they could, they journeyed far until they found Earth and the Island of Asilo there they lived peaceful lives for centuries, until Mentem the Sixteenth foretold of an impending disaster that would change their lives, the Earth was about to undergo a Seismic event that would change the shape of the planet, their island would be crushed in-between two great continents as they merged together. The great thinkers of Armonia decided the only course of action would be to sink the island under the seas so deep the land masses above would not crush the island; they toiled hard to build a protective cocoon around the island with powerful Cubitos engines to power the islands atmosphere and to sink the island itself. Thus Asilo was forever lost in history until…

When the continents parted again millions of years later, there were great discussions in Asilo on whether to return to the surface or not, they decided that they would gain nothing by returning and stayed under the waves, until one day one of the powerful engines which kept the island below the seas malfunctioned, thus the decision was made to return to the surface, the engineers worked on new technology to protect the Island from any prying eyes, the island rose to the surface and the dome retracted. The island lay a great distance from any known land mass and they thought that they would be safe and could remain hidden, but they had not realised that the Earth itself had new inhabitants; the Human race.

Sea going vessels had been spotted by the lookouts on several occasions so the Islands defences were put into action. The Island had two mist banks that surrounded it, the outer mist bank and the inner mist bank, both moving in opposite directions, those trying to navigate would get confused and sail straight past the island, the sea also moved quicker in-between the mist banks and could push ships back into the outer mist bank.

But eventually the ships became more powerful and one day a ship broke through the two mist banks and ran aground on the Island, the Armonia approached with caution as three figures fell from the ship’s deck onto the sand, thus the Armonia first met members of the human race.

The Armonia learnt as much as they could from the Humans and in return gave the humans a place to live and food, but they were not allowed to leave the island.

The thinkers of Armonia decided that they would need a new way to protect themselves if needed, they could no longer rely on the sea defences, so using an ancient knowledge that had been sealed many aeons before they landed on Earth, they did the almost unthinkable and started to train some of the younger members of Armonia society in combat and defence techniques, using the power of the Cubitos minerals to boost the strength and power of their actions.

Over the years more ships become stranded on their shores and soon it was flying ships that crashed onto the island, some survivors of the various wrecks would mutter about the Devils Triangle and look in fear at the Armonia when they arrived. When they calmed down they would tell the thinkers that Asilo lay in the middle of Triangle of sea with modern day Puerto Rico to the South East, America to the West and Bermuda to the North East. It was known to many as the Bermuda Triangle or the Devils Triangle where many ships and aircraft vanished without trace, they told of other people scouring the seas to try and find the cause of these disappearances and with each new technology that the Human Race would develop the Armonia realised that one day there secret would be uncovered.

A plan was decided upon and the Armonia chose to reveal the island to the human race and ask for a peaceful existence, in return they would take with them any of the humans that had found themselves stranded on the Island.

Thus the Armonia became a part of the history books once more and for a while lived in peace, until some members of the human race found out about the Cubitos crystals from the survivors who had been stranded on the island, they learnt of the power that could be unleashed and they wanted it for themselves.

So the Armonia launched the Legion of Primus, using their trained citizens to protect the island and the Cubitos, the legion was led by the fittest and brightest, the one they call Centurio.

Super Interlude

Here is a short interlude to my writing about Ratero.

SuperHero Dice is my other creation that I am working on at this time, the rules are just about complete and SuperHeroes are being created. I have an artist working on the designs for the heroes.

The first hero is Centurio, all round good guy, who packs a powerful energy punch, other powers include a Thunderclap that knocks all enemies within a certain distance down, he can regenerate damage done to him and he can create an energy shield with which he charges an opponent.

Trux is a Psychic Cyborg or Psyborg for short, who not only loves to get mean and dirty brawling with his opponents, but can unleash a psychic energy blast, his energy exo skeleton can use surronding energy to heal wounds and can also vibrate the molecules in the air bending light and rendering him invisible.

These are just two of the heroes that can slug it out in a battle royale.

The gameplay is simple and quick to learn, its a push your luck dice rolling game, the results on the dice power up your abilities, the more power the stronger ability you can unleash, but if you roll too many fatigue results, the attack fails due to over exerting yourself.

More detail coming soon and artwork as well.


Finally had a few friends over for some gaming the other night, we played Smash Up and fun card shuffling game, with players attempting to control bases using minions and powers. It saw my Dinosaur Pirates battling Zombie Robots, Wizard Aliens and Ninja Tricksters. It was a very close game but the Zombie Robots kept coming back from the grave to conquer all.

We then broke out the new X Wing minis game, with pre painted X Wings, Y Wings and Tie Fighters, this is a clever system that has templates for all the moves your ship can make, with players secertly selecting the move before the turn starts.

The game pitched my X Wing with Wedge and R2 D2 alongside a Y wing fight two Tie Fighters and an Advanced Tie Piloted by Darth Vader, the first game saw victory for the Imperial Side, but the second game the tide turned and after the Ion Cannon of the Y Wing weakened the Tie Fighters, Wedge proved his worth and finished off the two ties, Dart Vader destroyed the Y Wing and then it was a straight dog fight, that thanks to some great flying and shooting by wedge saw the Rebels victorious.

Its a great game.

Ratero Rulebook

So I have finally worked out the initial draft of the rulebook for Ratero, having typed it up, re written it, edited it, chopped bits around and so on.

Typing up the rulebook is actually a handy way of refining the rules, because as you put the gameplay down in words, you think hmm does this sound right, how about doing it this way instead.

So the Turn order goes like this:

Upkeep Phase
Any face up pickpockets in jail are returned to their gang leader.
Any face down pickpockets are turned face up in jail.
Each gang leader takes an action card.

Placement Phase
In this phase the gang leaders place their pickpockets in to some or all of the seven districts of the City-State of Tempest. I discussed this in my last blog post.

Action Phase
For each district that is chosen the action phase occurs, this is split into sub phases that happen in order for each district.

Sub Phases
Scuffle and Flee
A gang decides to muscle in on another gang, that gang can either stand and scuffle or attempt to flee.

Recruitment
Either talk nicely to new recruits or threaten them to join the gang.

Bribe
Grease the plams of the City Watch to lower the alertness and raise your influence in a district.

Pickpocket
Try and pick the pocket of the citizens of Tempest, with your friends acting as distractions.
Success brings riches, fail brings trouble.

Event Phase
Draw an event card, these cards affect many things.

So thats the basic turn structure. When a certain number of turns are played the game ends and players start toting up their victory points.

Victory points are earned by being the most influential gang leader in a district and each wealth card is worth victory points as well.

As mentioned this is the first draft and playtesting will commence shortly.

Ratero Gameplay Ideas

Having worked out the main theme and idea behind the game, I had to start working out the mechanics of the game play itself, this had led to ideas, more ideas, back tracking and a lot of pondering, when designing game mechanics there is usually more than one way to skin a cat.

For example Dice does the game need dice to function properly, when pickpocketing the pickpocket uses his Guile skill, any other pickpockets who are there to cause distractions add their Influence to the pickpocket's Guile to form his total skill for this attempt, then the player chooses his target from the citizens present in the area, he compares his total skill to their alertness rating adding any modifiers from the district itself, if the pickpocket's skill is equal to or greater then the alertness level he succeeds in his attempt........However this meant that there is no way a pickpocket attempt can fail, which is not very realistic, so if we add a dice roll to the action this gives us an element of luck.
So after finding his total skill level for the attempt and finding the total alertness of the target, the player rolls a D6 and adds it to his skill, now if he gets equal to or higher then the alertness level he is successful. This way the action has an element of luck, but with clever usage of distractions and picking the right target the player can maximise the chance of success.

Another initial idea was to that each gang leader would have a special ability, for instance one gang leader could have an ability to "after placement of all pickpockets, you may move one pickpocket to a neighbouring district". But is that enough, would it be better for each gang leader to have a deck of action cards, from which he has two in his hand at anyone time and may play only one a turn, these decks act as special abilities of the gang leaders and their pickpockets, at this time I am favouring an action deck, play testing will decide if this is two powerful and if it changes the game play to much.

The last thought for this post is on deployment of pickpockets, two choices have come to mind, the initial idea was for secret placement, where each player would collect all their pickpockets together, they also have a token for each district, then they would form a stack, placing pickpockets face down in front of them with the district token face down on top, then all players reveal and place their pickpockets, but it got me to thinking does this miss out on a level of strategy as you cant react to another players actions. The other option is for the First Player to place all the pickpockets he wants into one of the districts, then going round the table the other players do the same, then the First Player places his next lot of pickpockets into another district and so on until all pickpockets have been placed, players can only place pickpockets into a specific district once each turn, the first player would be different each turn. This way players can react to what the other players are doing, so if you have a district that you have a lot of influence in, another player places pickpockets there to try and  increase their influence and decrease yours, then you could place your pickpockets there to try and face off your opponents and get them to leave the district.

I am favouring the second option now, again if this doesn't work in play testing then I could revert to secret placement.

Cheers for now
Brian

Ratero, Initial Ideas

Ratero is a game of pickpockets operating in the City-State of Tempest, Tempest is similar to a Mediterranean 14th Century Port located at the cross roads to several great empires.

Having recently read the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch in which the central character starts as a very young lowly pickpocket and thief and also thanks to my local Costa Coffee which sells second hand books for charity, I got a copy of The Way of the Shadows by Brent Weeks, which again features gangs of pickpockets, scroungers and thief's, from which the central character wishes to escape, reading these got me thinking about a board game featuring these gangs and the areas they control, one of the books depicts scuffles between rival gangs, encroaching on the others territory.

In both of these books the gangs are led by a master or gang leader, in Locke Lamora the gang leaders have a double life, leading a semi respectable life in the eyes of the other citizens, while also being the leader of the gangs.

I started to think about how these ideas could translate into game play, what would be the main aims of the game, it was about this time that I got access to AEG's games designer toolbox for the City-State of Tempest, the era was spot on and the map of the City was just what was needed, as it is split into different districts, each with a different feel and look. The artwork on the site is excellent and has the right feel about it for Ratero.

Using the map and the districts I came up with the idea that each district would have its own rewards and dangers when it came to pickpocketing, operating in the slum areas, pickpocketing would of course be a lot easier, but the rewards would be a lot lower. But a pickpocket operating near the Canals and the Merchants would have a greater chance of some interesting rewards and wealth, however the City Watch operate in this area and the risks of carrying out a successful pickpocket attempt would be much higher.

Each player would play a gang leader like Vito Rossillio whom I posted a picture of in a recent post, Vitto has found himself living the life of a criminal, an expert lookout and very agile, he has a dislike for his fellow criminals and wants to distance himself from their activities, after a chance encounter with a couple of pickpockets he has decided to start his own gang, and profit from others without doing any of the hard graft himself.

Each gang leader will have a special ability that can be used during the game, there will be a choice of gang leader to play.

Each turn the gang leader will send out his pickpockets into various districts to help raise the wealth and influence of the gang.

Next time on the blog, further game play ideas and mechanics.

Games Night Interlude

Friday night so me playing Descent 2nd Edition for a group of 4 other players (Joel, Ross, Richard S and Richard G) at the Totnes Board Game Group, it was a seperate night to the usual to allow us to concentrate on running a campaign.

As the game was mine I was the Overlord and after 30 minutes of rules explaining, choosing of charcters and ordering of pizzas by some of the group, we were off.

First Blood the introduction encounter was first, and the players quickly scooped up the search tokens, devasted the goblins and set to work on the Ettins.

After a brave stand by the Ettins, the Mauler finally fell.

Well actually it was a desperate stand by the Mauler and the players kicked my......

They chose the Masquerade Ball as the next encounter and after a bit of shooping, a travelling round that saw me add 3 Overlord cards to my hand we were off....

Again my fault I didnt take notice of a skill card that was purchased which gave a charcter a blast attack with his rune weapon, which also had pierce +2 surge ability, which ignores 2 shield results on defense dice.

So 3 Spiders went on the first turn of the first character, the other 2 were soon dispatched.

This caused me a lack of troops for the first encounter, although I then charged my ettins forward , revealing some melders as they went, the players got one guest off and I got another off, but by then I was left with very few figures and it was a choice to either stay and fight or run off with another guest with some of my figures, good placing of the characters saw them block the progress of the Ettins, although two of the heroes were knocked out in quick succession thanks to the use of overlord cards, they players quickly finished me off and were lucky with the dice role, they manage to rescue the guest.... But for part two of the encounter they are heavily wounded so we shall see in a fortnight, the battle was over but not the war.....

Then as Ross had to leave, we had a quick game of Dominion using the prosperity set, it took about 30 minutes and Richard S was very victorious, the set of cards which were used allowed him to burn through lower coinage and gain higher level coins quickly and so he purchased colonies more quickly then we all realised, it was only my second game and I am intrigues to play with different set ups of cards.

Ratero

I have recently heard back from AEG regarding my submission of a game idea, using their game design resource of The City-State of Tempest.

They liked my idea and want me to continue to work out a rulebook and a prototype and playtest the game, before submitting it for a review to see if they want to publish the game, so thats great news.

So trumpets please.....

Ratero by Brian P Lewis
The City-State of Tempest has a hidden secret; gangs of pickpockets vie against each other in the districts of Tempest. Each day the leader of each gang sends his recruits out into The City-State, each tasked with either pickpocketing the citizens in the hustle and bustle of the streets, causing distractions to aid their fellow pickpockets, trawling the districts recruiting new pickpockets or having a scuffle with a rival gang.

You are such a gang leader and you will not stop until your gang is the most influential and richest gang in the whole of The City-State of Tempest. But beware the citizens, city watch and other more secret organisations dont take to kindly to pickpockets and they will be on your heels all the time.

Next time on Bay Board Games, the idea and base mechanic thoughts.

Vito Rossillio, Gang Leader