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Old News Belida

[Release] Stat Decay - Tabletop Co-op

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Update 6/14: The game is now print and playable!

 

Holy cow there's some good looking stuff so far! Hi everyone!

 

In 2015 I entered a tabletop game - The Lord of the Donk - into that Wizard Jam, and wanted to take a shot at entering another tabletop game into this one! It doesn't specifically say video games only, and I realize tabletop games are a bit harder for people to test and play, but I hope some will venture into the print and play documents when it's all done and I'll also do my best to get a working version into Tabletop Simulator!

 

Here's where it's at so far:

 

stat_decay.thumb.jpg.67c6b6532045b27ee56ee25e4ee75fa9.jpg

 

It's a 2-player co-operative athletic training subterfuge game. You and a partner act as the trainers of THE HERO who are working to get them up to snuff for an upcoming race / fight / battle with THE BAD DUDE. THE HERO and THE BAD DUDE will move around the city to locations decided at random and interact with those locations to draw a token which will either increase or decrease their physicality, mental sharpness, or spirituality.

 

Locations start with only positive tokens, and the players can interact by adding negative tokens into those stacks. Stacks can be shuffled, swapped, etc. through use of cards, and there'll be an event deck to throw a wrench in it all by doing things like swapping if the BAD DUDE or HERO moves first, swapping their destination, discarding a token off the top of a stack, etc.

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I absolutely love that you're designing a tabletop game and the premise is solid.  Would love to print it out and test it when you're done.

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It's nice to see a tabletop game in the jam. A Tabletop Simulator version would be especially great for the Showcase Weekend.

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6 hours ago, JTerry said:

I absolutely love that you're designing a tabletop game and the premise is solid.  Would love to print it out and test it when you're done.

 

2 hours ago, One8Two8 said:

It's nice to see a tabletop game in the jam. A Tabletop Simulator version would be especially great for the Showcase Weekend.

 

Thanks, y'all!

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+1000 thumbs up for doing it the proper way, as opposed to the rest of us...

 

...also, where did you find those blank tokens?

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You have some nice equipment to prototype your game (blank cardsin sleeves, blank token, board with a bunch of erasable pens)

Did you source everything yourself or is it a prototype kit?

 

Neat idea BTW. I really live that players add negative token over time.

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5 hours ago, Foodstuff said:

+1000 thumbs up for doing it the proper way, as opposed to the rest of us...

 

...also, where did you find those blank tokens?

 

I dunno about proper, but I'll take any thumbs up thrown my way! The tokens are just white plastic poker chips from a cheap set. Values scribbled on with a marker.

 

2 hours ago, Lama Himself said:

You have some nice equipment to prototype your game (blank cardsin sleeves, blank token, board with a bunch of erasable pens)

Did you source everything yourself or is it a prototype kit?

 

Neat idea BTW. I really live that players add negative token over time.

 

It's just a collection of extra components myself and the guy I'm designing with have gathered over time!

 

Old cards from various games as backings in sleeves with a piece of scrap paper, wet erase map with squares on one side and hexes on the other from a sale I saw the other week, and some dry erase cards for the locations and stat cards up top!

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I always forget how much I enjoy taking part in a game jam and the process of designing a game.

 

The game started off as a sort of "reverse deck builder" with the players buying negative cards into THE BAD DUDE's deck.

 

The guy I'm designing with and I spent a day apart just thinking on our own then came back and both had jotted down that it felt too abstract and needed a map of some sort. That in turn led to splitting that reverse deck building into the different locations.

 

All I'm sayin' is synergy feels good. Have another design session tonight!

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The locations right now are tied to the 3 stats so that each stat has 2 locations that will affect it.

 

Physical

- Gym

- Health Food Shoppe

 

Mental

- Library

- Chess Club

 

Spiritual

- Nature Park

- Coffee Shop

 

I'd love some suggestions on possible replacements for the ones we're testing with now- Idle Thumbs-related or not.

 

Given time I think I would like to have both a generic version and a Thumbs version. THE HERO would probably just become DANIELLE.

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This is great! Thank you for staying spicy and doing something out of the ordinary!

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18 hours ago, Zirrrus said:

This is great! Thank you for staying spicy and doing something out of the ordinary!

 

! Will have to have a spicy themed card as flavor text on one that adds a negative token to the health food shoppe stack.

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Had a superb design / playtest session. 

 

Stats listed are in Physical, Mental, Spiritual format. The characters are on a scale of 1-10 for each stat. We decided that if either character hits 0 or 10 on any stat it's game over. Makes for a nice balancing act and gives you a reason to sometimes play negative tokens on a location THE HERO is going to.

 

We tweaked things over three games that took it from an easy victory to a much tighter game.

 

Rules 1 - Hero 8, 6, 4  Bad-dude 3, 3, 1

 

Rules 2 - Hero 5, 7, 9  Bad-dude 5, 5, 6

 

Rules 3 - Hero 8, 10, 6. Bad-dude 6, 0, 6 (lost in the last round from Baddude zeroing out)

 

We ended up giving the Bad-dude one extra movement and making the Bad-dude draw two tokens at each location to THE HERO's one. Seems to have worked out so far in making it it more of a challenge.

 

At this point we have a fully workable game, so I'm going to type up all the rules and the list of needed components!

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Rules draft!

 

There are two or three things missing right now on how to resolve some edge cases, but I'd love any feedback on the rules! If anything is confusing etc.

 

I'll be tossing up the full list of components and card list for the decks later today, then hope to get it loaded into Tabletop Simulator Monday or Tuesday!

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5 hours ago, Old News Belida said:

Rules draft!

 

There are two or three things missing right now on how to resolve some edge cases, but I'd love any feedback on the rules! If anything is confusing etc.

 

I'll be tossing up the full list of components and card list for the decks later today, then hope to get it loaded into Tabletop Simulator Monday or Tuesday!

 

The document now has the full deck and token lists at the bottom of the rules! I've also attached a straight up .pdf if that's easier for anyone.

 

It'd probably take about 30 minutes of scribbling / arts & crafts, but if you're feeling ambitious the rules document has all the information you need to know in order to play! In addition to getting the Tabletop Simulator and Print & Play versions together, I'm hoping to record a video play through in the next day or two.

 

wizardjam_statdecayrules_170611.pdf

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Started on card layout tonight! Because each of the three stats has two different locations that can affect it- all of the add a token cards are flippable for either location. Some sort of appropriate art or imagery will go in the in-between blank spots. I haven't determined yet if flipping cards is going to be annoying. If it is I'll just stack them.

 

Green = mental stat, red = physical stat, blue = spiritual stat, purple = power card.

 

mentaltoken.thumb.jpg.e2efd9cf2cc4a8ac6e19534961d10505.jpg physicaltoken.thumb.jpg.e7a5f43ca293270c2a9cbe88fe7a43a4.jpg

spiritualtoken.thumb.jpg.9a6d54157f63a3276fada0e2a4657632.jpg donutspowercard.thumb.jpg.c735932b97b9a474a9927f3affc4ddd5.jpg

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Hey, great work on going for a tabletop game. If there's a print'n'play option I'll try and get the girlf to sit down with me and play a couple rounds. Being cooperative is a big plus!

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23 hours ago, phill said:

Hey, great work on going for a tabletop game. If there's a print'n'play option I'll try and get the girlf to sit down with me and play a couple rounds. Being cooperative is a big plus!

 

There will be! The last thing I need to do is the event cards. Should have it all together for printing tomorrow some time!

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Print and play documents are here! This has magnitudes more components and complexity than my first Wizard Jam game The Lord of the Donk, so if you see anything that is confusing or seems to be missing please let me know. I've done my best to triple check things but something has likely still slipped through the cracks.

 

Will start work on importing it all into Tabletop Simulator in hopes of having it all set by Friday!

 

Make sure you DON'T scale to fit when printing the cards and art. Make sure it's set to 100% size.

 

wizardjam_statdecayrules_170614.pdf | wizardjam_statdecay_printandplay_170614.pdf

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Hey, my partner and I just got finished playing a round of Stat Decay (see attached pic) and I had some feedback! First off, I love games where the mechanic is racing against an enemy that has advantages over you, and I think it's got legs as a board game concept in this case too. Some things that we found as we played through:

 

- It's not clear in the instructions if you can move diagonally. Eventually we decided that you couldn't because if you could then there'd be very little difference in movement times between hero and bad guy.

- Similarly we weren't sure if you must take actions in the third phase or if it's optional. We ended up deciding not to make it compulsory, but I almost think it should be. We had I think 3 or 4 turns where it was best for us to do nothing except move the hero once and replace that discarded card. Having the use of cards be mandatory would make it a lot more tense and involve a bit more planning. Also you get to turn over new cards, which everyone always loves doing! :D

- EDIT: Final unsure thing was whether or not the tokens were supposed to be face up or down. We played with them face up because unfortunately when we printed them on paper we could see through to the numbers anyway. :s

- The main thing we noticed is that it felt like we were very much in control of the game from start to finish. I'm not sure if we were just lucky with our card draw, but having 10 cards available to us to muck around with stats as well as event cards which didn't really screw us over too much (we got both 'enemy moves first' cards but they didn't affect the outcome of either turn) meant that there were no real panic moments.

- The card that ups one stat by 2 and downs another by 2 is super powerful, probably overly so. We used it at the end of the game to 'win more' (we ended up having all 3 stats over the bad guys) but it's a serious ace in the hole that it seems like you'd bea ble to keep for the last turn in most games.

- While I think of it, the other thing that may have made our game a bit easier was the fact that we never shared the same target place as the bad guy. Not once! Statistically speaking I guess it's a 1/36 chance when both die are rolled and you roll dice a little less than 10 times per game. Maybe something there?

 

Anyway, that was our initial impressions. Co-op games are super difficult to balance (see Pandemic/XCOM/any board game where an impossible game state occurs) so I can understand if you went under powered for the enemy. One suggestion may be to guarantee the movement of the bad guy, as in he always makes it to his destination whereas the player can take either 1, 2, or 3 turns to get there. That may seem harsh but thinking back on our game I think it would have made it a lot closer and we'd have to make some real decisions about how we would go about using our cards.

 

Once again congrats on making a board game for WJ5! I really love it when people try new inventive things like this and since I'm a massive board game nerd this was especially great to try out. Thanks for making it! :)

 

IMG_20170621_194923.jpg

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15 hours ago, phill said:

Once again congrats on making a board game for WJ5! I really love it when people try new inventive things like this and since I'm a massive board game nerd this was especially great to try out. Thanks for making it! :)

 

I can't tell you how happy I am that someone printed out everything and got a play in! Thank you so much for all the feedback.

 

- Yes! I will specify in the rule book that movement is orthogonal; no diagonals.

 

- I suppose you don't have to take actions, but there's not really a reason not to draw cards if you don't want to do anything else. We found that starting with 5 and without drawing up being in this game that you run low quickly. We need to test some ideas we have for other uses for cards!

 

- Tokens should be face down! Probably doesn't change too much knowing the top token though.

 

- We considered a location deck instead of the die so each character would basically have to cycle through each location before shuffling them all again. That's given me a great idea for an event card though! Change the bad dudes destination to match the Heros destination or vice versa.

 

We plan to keep on playtesting and narrowing down the design and balance!

 

Thanks again!

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