Paperbased RTS

RTS Boardgame

~ Tues 06 Nov session ~

So after having discussed the MDA paper (found here) we began to talk about how we can start with a base structure of a game and add certain aesthetics to it by implementing mechanics and dynamics to it. The game we were given to implement these changed to was a very basic RTS game where each player selected whether they would move, move & turn, turn or fire by using a card mechanic where as we would all show our selected cards at the same time and then depending on what cards you had selected there would be a set order in which they get to go :-

Move -> Move & Turn -> Turn -> Fire

There was no limitation to the range of your fire but you could only fire in the direction you were facing.

There were no obstacles on the board and the board itself was made up of hexagons so there was 6 different paths in which you could move. We decided to play a 6 player game with each player starting at a different point on the board.

 

After some play testing we found that it was near to impossible to kill another player as firing was the last play to be made so your enemies could simple move out of your line of sight and as there were no move & fire or turn & fire cards it came apparent that there was no strategic thought behind playing the game other that "don't stand in their line of sight". 

The only possible way of someone dying with the game in this state was by them not paying attention at all to the other players positioning and mistakenly moving into someone light of sight as they were firing which quiet honestly was nearly impossible to do unless you weren't actually playing the game.

The Changes

Now we have a understanding of how the game plays in its current state and figured out what is the core mechanics behind the structure of the game we can start to implement changes to the rules and dynamics of it to induce an aesthetic of our choice.

In all RTS games you have a element of tactical thinking (strategical play if you will), either that be against a real players or against the game itself. Your choices in the game are reactions to their choices and theirs to yours. This was the critical dynamic and aesthetic missing from the game in its current state and we begun to discuss how we could implement it into the game while still keeping it in its relatively basic form so we could clearly see the impact on the game state.

We began by adding obstacles into set positions on the board and play tested how it works. We found its became even more impossible to kill someone, not exactly what we thought we would achieve but at least we figured out which way we shouldn’t go. We then started to discuss different guns in the game and how we would put them in. How would we balance the guns and would they counter each other in certain situations.

 How we decided to implement the guns was by placing them in set positions on the board so the players have a type of goal or objective if they so choice to do so but adding the fact all 6 players might be going for these guns there was a element of risk involved but for reward.

The guns we implemented were Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Machine Gun and Pistol. The Pistol was your starting weapon and clearly the weakest of all the weapons which we did to give the users a sense of getting stronger by getting better guns (Power Up). We first thought about placing certain guns in position that would re spawn every so often but we found this may implement a element of camping where the most powerful weapons spawn. 

As a result of this we decided on making a random element to it where you would draw a gun card from the pile that would be face down so there was no way of knowing what gun you would get. The different gun types are :-

We play tested this structure and found a few things that were working well and actually added a lot more to the game than we first intended on. By adding the guns to the game we gave the players a goal and a power up, by placing the different gun positions we implemented strategical play by forcing you to pay attention to where you enemies were and what kind of guns they had and finally by giving the guns a random chance we implemented a sense of discovery as you would only know what you got when you got it.

Unfortunately we only had a very small amount of time to play test this build but what I had seen from it was very interesting and showed how adding only one or two dynamics to the game can implement multiple aesthetics to it. Our original goal was to get more tactic play involved but we ended up with a lot more. There was drama in who got what weapon, discovery in the unknown chance of the weapons, power ups with different types of guns and challenge by implementing more tactical play with different gun ability’s.

We really wanted to add a fellowship aesthetic to the game by playing in teams of two but we didn’t have time to play test this version but I believe it would of enhanced the strategical play of the game and resulted in a lot of different and interesting possibles for the game.

My Thoughts

Really good exercise yet again but had some issues when it came down to play testing the game. It wasn't down to how much time we had overall to actually make the changes or play the game but more about how working in such a large group and having all these designers thinking of idea's while we play tested meant we would stop for 5minutes during play just to discuss more possible changes or even implementing them while play testing which to me was highly frustrating. 

We wasn’t really able to see the effects of the original changes we had decided on once we had either stopped for debates or put more stuff in while we was playing and to me it took away from being able to really understand how that dynamic or mechanic we added were inducing a certain aesthetic.

I'm thinking of it like making a smoothy with a blender. You want a banana smoothly so you add banana's, but then your friend comes along and wants a little apple in it so you add an apple. After a short debate and a little taster you decided on adding two more apples because one more just isn’t enough. You go to drink it and it doesn’t taste anything like what you originally planned and you can barely taste the banana in it.

I’m not saying these idea's were bad, in fact most of the idea's were great but I’m more focused on how these idea's are great and what do they bring to the overall game play in terms of MDA. Getting down to the core of each idea and understanding how they work with other idea's. I don’t believe these lessons are about how many idea's you can splurge out in a given time frame, I believe these lessons are to understand the difference between what works or what might work within your game structure and why it does or doesn’t after play testing.