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Drewcifer

Want to Playtest My Stealth Strategy Board Game?

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EDIT 5/30/13: It's about time I got this update out - you guys are gonna enjoy this. Decoys now has cards that you can pick up from Objective Points! They do some interesting stuff that dramatically change the way the game is played. Makes the game a bit more fast paced, though you'll have to draw them out before playing - sorry! Download the new complete rule-set here, or just the new rules here!

 

EDIT 5/12/13: Howdy! I've got another update to Decoys! I introduced the score grids Berzee suggested - thanks mate! Download the complete updated rule-set here. If you already have the core rules, download the addition here! And let me know if you do! I Still need a lot of feedback. Cheers!

 

EDIT 5/6/13: Hello again! I've updated the rule-set with pictures and such! I also accidentally made a digital board so you won't have to draw it up or gather game pieces! Download the new rules here, the digital board here, and if you're interested head over here to read a bit about how it all happened. There's more changes coming to Decoys so be ready! I'm going to leave this original post up for my own sake. Thanks, enjoy!

 

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Hey guys, I'm developing a two player stealth strategy board game called Decoys and I'm looking for people to playtest it for me. I need to make sure people can actually understand my rules and play through a game without me there to answer questions! I posted this in the Video Gaming forum a couple weeks ago but didn't get enough feedback. I hope you folks will be more up for playing some games!

 

It's all about perception and deception, hiding in plain sight. Each player has three game pieces. At the beginning of the game, they secretly choose one of the pieces to be the Spy, the other two are Decoys. To win, players use the Spy to capture objective points on the board before moving it to the Exit, or they can use their Spy to attack the piece they think is their opponent's Spy.

 

The purpose of the Decoy pieces, since they cannot complete any game-winning objectives, is to trick their opponent into thinking they are the Spy so that the real one does not get attacked. It's like Chris Hecker's Spy Party, but both players are hunter/hunted at the same time, and instead of hiding in a crowd of NPCs, the crowd is made up of players' game pieces.

 

If anyone is interested, what follows is the core rule set of Decoys. There exists another version with a couple extra mechanics, but I want to make sure the core of it works and can be played. If anyone has the time, I would greatly appreciate some feedback! It only takes about 20 minutes to play, and you'd be helping me out quite a bit! Thanks!

 

What you need: A pen, some paper, 6 unique game pieces, and a friend.

 

The Board: Here is an example of a Decoys board -

board_layout_1.png

The red dots are Player 1's starting squares.

The blue dots are Player 2's starting squares.

The yellow dot is the Exit.

The green numbers are Objective Points (OPs). The numbers themselves are Objective Numbers (ONs). Notice there are three OPs for every ON.

 

Setting Up: Start by drawing the grid board as shown (I recommend 1"x1" squares), including all the numbers. You may want to mark the starting squares and the Exit, but it's not required.

 

Then, each player secretly chooses one of their 3 game pieces to be their Spy, as well as a set of OPs to capture by picking an ON (1, 2, or 3). Record these choices on a piece of paper, for honesty's sake. (For example; a player has a red piece, a blue piece, and a green piece. He chooses the red piece to be the Spy, and decides to go for the 1s. He writes "Red" and "1" on a scrap of paper without his opponent seeing.) The two pieces not chosen to be the Spy are called Decoys.

 

To determine who goes first, play a best 2 out of 3 game of Rock Paper Scissors, it gets you in the right mindset.

 

Objectives: Use your Spy to capture all three of your OPs (determined by your ON) and reach the Exit, or Attack your opponent's Spy. Decoys cannot capture objectives or Attack.

 

Turns: You start every turn with 3 Movement Points (MPs) to spend on moving all three of your pieces. It costs 1 MP to move any piece 1 square in any direction, but not diagonally. You do not have to spend all 3 MPs on your turn, but you always start with exactly 3.Your turn is over when you declare it is, and any number of pieces can occupy the same square. (For example; you can move one piece 3 squares, or one piece 2 squares and another piece 1 square, or move all three of your pieces 1 square each, etc.)

 

Capturing Objective Points: To capture an OP, simply move your Spy into a square marked with your chosen ON and leave it there for the duration of your opponent's turn. There is no special action required, as it is meant to be as subtle as possible. The number stays on the board, as players may choose the same ON and will have to capture the same OPs to win.

Only the Spy can capture an OP, and only if it matches the player's ON. A Decoy can be left on an OP during the opponent's turn but will not capture it.

 

Reaching the Exit: If you have captured all three of your designated OPs with your Spy, you can win the game by moving your Spy into the Exit square. As soon as the Spy enters the Exit square with three captured OPs, the game is over and you win.

Decoys cannot enter the Exit square.

 

Attacking: If you think you know which of your opponent's pieces is the Spy, you can move your Spy into a square adjacent to the piece in question and declare an Attack against it. To do this, reveal to your opponent which piece is your Spy and point out which piece you are attacking. Your opponent then reveals whether or not the piece you attacked is the Spy. If it is, then the game ends and you win. If it isn't, the piece is removed from the board, your turn ends, and the game continues on.

Decoys cannot attack.

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I bet Shammack and I could play it tomorrow evening.  Would you mind if your playtesters were a leeeeetle bit drunk while playing?

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I bet Shammack and I could play it tomorrow evening. Would you mind if your playtesters were a leeeeetle bit drunk while playing?

You need to watch more archer.

The game looks pretty cool. I have nobody to test with though, so I might just get drunk and sneak around the house.

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subbes, do it! Most of my own testing was done in similar conditions...

 

And dibs, that sounds like a good alternative, but its reasons like that that make me want to digitize the game.

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Quickly had a go at your design solitaire with some spare pawns and some graph paper.

 

The bad news is I ran into a game breaking issue in the 1st game.

 

If you rule set above is complete I think your system may be non functional because of your objective mechanic, Just think about the following sequence of events:

 

- A Pawn moves onto a OP

- The Pawn stays there for a turn  

- IF the Pawn is the Spy, Pawn captures the OP

 

Then the game starts to break because: 

- As far as I can see you game has no rule that actually records that the OP has been taken.

Which means players are basically taking the other players word on faith as to whether he has actually captured a OP, and I just don't think the vague nature of human memories (let alone the temptation for players to cheat) make this viable.

 

Coming up with a solution isn't simple either because what ever you pick runs into problem No2

- as soon as any record is made of a OP being captured the spy is immediately revealed (because only spies can capture), and probably taken down in short order by the other player.

 

Part of what made spy party interesting is that it was possible to achieve your objectives without being noticed, this works in SP because the game is silently keeping score, but in your game there does not currently seem to be a covert score keeping system, and without it I just feel the game is broken :(

 

Now there are solutions to this, but it's not really my place to suggest them since I really don't know the full intent of what your trying to capture here.

 

 

You might want to take a look at Confusion to see a completely different take on the whole "spy" genre within boardgames, perhaps it can give you some ideas on how some people have dealt with similar problems that comes with games on hidden information.

 

Sorry if I seem a bit harsh but I hope you will take these comments in the constructive way they are intended, and perhaps come back with a interesting take on the problem.

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Codicier, I'm well aware of this problem, and I forgot to put the solution in my rule set, sorry!

 

In most situations, I have a third party read the recorded information from both players, and they are in charge of keeping track of captured OPs.

 

When there is no third party, players make a mark on their paper every time one of their pieces lands on an OP. When it matches their ON they make a special mark. This still isn't perfect, but it fixes both problems you identified.

 

It's true that the honor system and human memory aren't the best things to rely on, and I will take a look at that link.

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Are you still interested in people testing this, and are the rules in this thread still up-to-date? I will try to convince Mrs. Berzee to play it with me...she doesn't usually like 2-player games, but that is mainly because you can know you're losing half an hour before the game is over with nothing to do about it...since the victory conditions in this game are secret, it shouldn't be as much of a problem. =P

 

My suggestion for a fair way of keeping track of the OP's that have stepped on:

 

Label each player's pieces A, B, and C. Label the OP's 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a... Have a scoring track on the board for each player that looks like this:

 

imgld.gif

 

(I don't know why 3c is labeled 3cr, ignore that :P).

Then, when a particular piece steps on a particular OP, you can just fill in the relevant square or put some kind of a marker (a coin, pebble, gem, etc) on it. Then everyone can always tell at a glance who's stepped where, but it doesn't reveal which of those are "true captures" and doesn't require special symbols for the spy (if you reach the exit you'd just reveal the secret identity and secret Objective Number and show that the appropriate column is filled in on the score board).

 

To eliminate the last vestiges of a need for the honor system (in case you're playing against someone with no honor ^_^) -- I will try dealing each player three "role" cards from which they will choose one spy, and then set the other two aside in a Decoy Pile. (Can just grab a deck of cards and give each player a Jack, Queen and King for this purpose...and then label the pieces J, Q, and K instead of A, B, C). Then, if someone decides to be risky and do an attack, they can easily reveal their Spy card to prove that it's a valid move, and you can pull the relevant card from the Decoy Pile and say "Haha!" without revealing which of the two remaining pieces is your spy. And, come to think of it, as long as we have the deck of cards nearby, we could each get an Ace, 2, and 3 card from which to pick our secret objective number).

 

I'm interested to see how often people will risk being the first one to Attack, since you've basically got a 1 in 3 chance of discovering the spy but you're revealing who your spy is in the process...seems dangersome! But maybe it's meant to be. =) I'm imagining a variant that might get more people using the Attack option (maybe too much, though...) would be that, instead of your spy being the one who gets to attack, you actually assign the role of Hitman to one of your decoys before the game. The Hitman is the only one who can attack, though if he attacks the enemy Hitman perhaps they should both die. =P Anyway, sorry for armchair designing, I can't help myself! I'll let you know if I get a chance to play it. :)

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Oh, two pertitent questions:

 

1) Does "ATTACK" take an additional MP separate from any MP spent on moving into the adjacent square. (i.e. if I move my spy next to one of your pieces and then attack it, does that take 2 MPs?)

 

2) I know you can't move diagonally -- but can you attack diagonally? (I'm assuming not)

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Berzee, to answer your two questions first: An attack does NOT cost any MP as I want to give player's as much movement as possible before making an attack - I actually experimented with that idea but it was too hard for player's to position themselves the turn before the attack. And no, you can't attack diagonally, though this is really just an arbitrary decision to match it up with no diagonal movement.

 

I really like your suggestion about the scoring grids! Eliminating the need for the honor system is ideal. It may be a bit difficult to keep 6 separate grids from cluttering the board, but it is a clever solution that I'll have to try implementing.

 

Having cards that randomly assign ONs and a Spy is actually a suggestion I got from a lot of the developers that played the game during GDC, and I plan on making them a part of the game since choosing them at the start is more or less a meaningless choice and doling them out would help get players to the interesting ones sooner.

 

As for attacking, it is meant to be extremely high consequence - win or lose - and most people will go through the game without attacking at all, opting to sneak their Spy to the Exit. But as soon as one player gets a piece too close to the Exit (4-5 squares), their opponent tends to freak out and attack for fear of losing on the next turn. And really, that's kind of how I wanted the mechanic to be valued - a last resort kind of thing.

 

As for the rule set, failing the addition of the randomly assigned objective/Spy cards, this is the most up to date version. I'm hoping to have the new version finished by the end of the week - it introduces some new features that spice up the normal progression of things.

 

Thanks for the feedback, man. I hope you and the Mrs. have a good time!

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I have returned, having finally found time to make the board and play four rounds. It was fun! And also excruciatingly tense O_O

It didn't make my wife angry even when she lost the first two rounds, purportedly because "It is a completely fair game, and one that you're never quite sure you're losing". ^_^ She then came back to call my double bluff in the third game and kill my spy, and then bluff me into killing her decoy in the fourth game, and kill my spy. *weep*

 

I got one of the rules wrong when we played, though -- I forgot that you had to stop on an Objective Point to capture it. So we had spies and decoys just sprinting past, high-fiving the Objective Point and skimming along on their way. =P This probably makes the game sillier and more prone to desperate sprints, but it also made it faster! I'll try with the proper capture rules someday and see how much difference it makes.

 

Two observations: the scoreboard thing worked alright, but you're right, it would have to be pretty large to fit all 27 possibilities. (We just had 3x3 score grids and were penciling in the people who stepped on them...to make an actual board you could put markers on would probably take a second piece of paper...maybe there's a more elegant solution =P).

 

Finally, one observation. I killed my wife's clever decoy on the far side of the board, and after that, all she had to do was park her spy near the exit and, given the rules of movement in the game, it was impossible for me to ever bypass her, so I was doomed. That's fine, that's the price you pay for killing a dude. :) But to stamp out any false hope in people who haven't quite realized that situation yet, I think it would be good to include a specific rule in the game: If your spy attacks a decoy and thus blows his cover, the enemy can win by killing your spy OR by returning his spy to the EXIT, even if they haven't collected all their objective points yet.

 

I don't really have anything negative with which to balance the wave of positiveness, other than what I generally end up feeling about abstract bluffing and guessing games, which is that I feel like I can't really hone a strategy from game to game because the instant it becomes a great strategy, it also becomes a bad and obvious strategy. =P But I think that's a feature of the whole genre and/or a personal failure of me. A game like this requires much restraint, while I'm always tempted to do something big and crazy.

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Finally, one observation. I killed my wife's clever decoy on the far side of the board, and after that, all she had to do was park her spy near the exit and, given the rules of movement in the game, it was impossible for me to ever bypass her, so I was doomed. That's fine, that's the price you pay for killing a dude. :) But to stamp out any false hope in people who haven't quite realized that situation yet, I think it would be good to include a specific rule in the game: If your spy attacks a decoy and thus blows his cover, the enemy can win by killing your spy OR by returning his spy to the EXIT, even if they haven't collected all their objective points yet.

Yes! I have been looking for a solution to that awkward duel once someone screws up an attack - this sounds like it could work.

 

I'm glad you two enjoyed it! Those two victories you described tells me you both got it, despite the capturing mistake. Really, making your piece wait on an objective is just a way to make the capture stand out more, since there can be no other way to signify they move without revealing your Spy.

 

And the strategies you develop from game to game becoming moot is just a factor of the players' relationship. After playing a few games against the same opponent, her play style will become more apparent and you will adjust your strategies accordingly, and vice versa. That's when your previously winning strategy becomes obvious - the dynamic between two continuous opponents changes from game to game because of that very effect. But when you are playing against a new opponent, all of those strategies you've accrued are valid again - or not! The first match against a new opponent is more "excruciatingly tense" than following games because of the unpredictability of your opponent's skill.

 

I'm still working on the new rule set, I hope you guys will try it out. It involves cards that you can pick up from objective points that give you special abilities - they open up some interesting strategies! Should have the update soon.

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I edited my original post again, check it out! Also, I wrote a blog post in which I name-drop the shit out of Berzee here.

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Hoo boy, my name just got srsly dropped! =P

 

I like what you've done with the shapes and piece colors, and especially with making the grid layout match the way that the points are positioned on the map -- probably makes it easier to tell at a glance where you've been.

 

The digital board is great ^_^ For some reason I love computer programs that represent physical board games without having built-in rules enforcement.

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Thanks, people were getting really confused by all the numbers so I figured simple shapes would make a fine replacement.

 

And there is something endearing about digital boards, I can't quite put my finger on it though.

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Oh, I think I remember you telling me about this at gdc, but I didn't see this thread until now, or remember your name (because I am the worst). I will see if I can get any friends to play this.

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Hey guys, I hope you're ready because the brand new Decoys is here! It's faster and less tense (at least for the first half...) so it shouldn't be as draining as before, but I won't know for sure unless y'all play it! Help a brotha out!!

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