Thinking about a Redwall 'board' game

[James Gryphon]

I was thinking about a "victory point" system. Salamandastron would automatically give you everything you need to win, but you could get some by achieving other, more minor objectives (including owning Redwall). I'm not sure about a game condition that gives VP bonuses for eliminating players, though, because the trouble is they don't stay eliminated -- they respawn somewhere else on the board. It isn't impossible to imagine two players agreeing to eliminate each other for VP.

It's important to clarify how the army upgrade-thing works. Right now, armies are not inherently special -- one army is the same as any other. What makes them different is the horde leader. How the system works is that you get a leader provided for you at the beginning at the game -- then, each turn, I roll for "stability", which is based on the horde's performance over the past turn, and some other things. If the stability roll fails, the horde gets a new vermin leader (not a new human player; the same player is in control of the horde at all times). Once in a while, these leaders will have special traits that provide powers (like getting an extra command point per conquest; things like that).

Maybe players could be allowed to purchase these traits with VP, so if you accomplish something like conquering Redwall, you could automatically upgrade your leader with a new power. Of course, this would set you a little further back from achieving the VP goal, but a player might do it if it gives them the boost they need to consider an attack on Salamandastron.

[James Gryphon]

I've done some work, and I think I'm ready to reveal the combat system.

Each normal battle depends on two things -- the planning/execution style the players choose, and the number of armies fighting. There are three style -- slow or "deliberate", moderate or "balanced", and quick or "haphazard". This is a form of 'rock-paper-scissors' -- slow beats moderate, which beats quick, which beats slow. If you successfully match your style against your opponent's weak point, you get a 100% bonus to your army's damage, but they can get the same if they match up right against you. If it's a tie, both armies fight with normal damage.

The second part is where army size comes into play. First, "initiative" is determined. You buy initiative by investing command points before a battle. Higher initiative than your enemy gives you 'first strike', which means that in the first round of the battle, your army gets a free round to damage the opponent, with no damage being done to your forces. This can be a critical advantage for a smaller army taking on a larger one.

Damage is done very simply: army size = damage, with 2x damage done if you match the opponent's weak point. Then there's damage nullification -- for every two damage points your army gets, you get a nullification point, which cancels out an enemy damage point. By this means, it's possible for a large invading force to take no damage when fighting a small opponent.

Here's an example of a battle using this system. The attacking force has 3 armies, to the defenders' 7, but the attacking force gets first strike and has the style advantage against their opponent.

The attacking 3 armies start with a first strike. They have a base value of 3, times 2 for the style bonus, which is 6 damage. The defenders have 7 armies, and thus 3 points damage nullification, so they lose 3 armies. That's the end of the first round.

In the second round, the first strike is over, and both armies do damage simultaneously. The attackers still do 6 damage, with nullification of 3. The defenders have 4 armies, but no combat bonus, so they do only 4 damage, with 2 nullification points. The attackers wipe out the defenders, and lose only 1 army, since 4 damage - their 3 nullification = 1. The first strike made a big difference in this fight. Without it, the defenders would have done 7 damage in the first round, and wiped out the invading army, with only 3 casualties -- fair losses considering that they were outguessed in style.

Adding all this up by hand might take a while, but I made a Google Drive/Excel calculator that can quickly run these fights. That should make it fairly easy for me to process your battle results. This resource may be has been made available to the players, so that y'all will have the information you need to make sound decisions without having to add everything up yourselves.

All in all, while it would have been possible to go for a "dice rolling" system like in RISK, I think doing it this way makes it more fun for the players, while still not taking up too much time. Hopefully this will allow you to 'own' your battles more than just saying "fight, rolling 3 dice a time, until I'm down to 2 troops" and praying that the dice go your way. Also, as it is completely deterministic, this avoids the possibility that I might be 'cheating' or in any way making the results biased against certain players. You don't have to trust me; you can look up the results for yourself to see how something happened.

Let me know what y'all think.

[LT Sandpaw]

That's great, I am confused how we play a board game online but sweet can't wait to see it.

[Delthion]

The combat is confusing, but I will most likely understand more if I play it.

[James Gryphon]

That's great, I am confused how we play a board game online but sweet can't wait to see it.

I'll post up a topic with the map. Y'all will PM me your moves, in order of play, and I'll make update posts. That's pretty much it. When a battle's going to be run I'll get both players to make their combat style selections.

The combat is confusing, but I will most likely understand more if I play it.

I included a link to the Google Drive calc; play with how many attackers/defenders there are, who gets first strike, and which side is 'strong', and it will hopefully start to make more sense. If not, you can always run a battle in the calculator before you make an attack, so even if you don't understand the combat system you still can get a good idea how likely you are to succeed.

Here's a peek at the ways to earn VP I have right now and what that looks like.

Victory points:
Conquer Salamandastron: 11/11
Conquer Redwall: 5/11
Conquer Castle Floret: 4/11
Own a level 5 fort: 3/11
Own a level 4 fort: 2/11
Own a level 3 fort: 1/11
Own a treasure: 1/11

[James Gryphon]

My plan right now is to make a "quick release" alpha/beta version of this to allow for playtesting and things, without having to have a good map of the Redwall world. The map is based on the forums itself; the map and the names will be different (Staff instead of Salamandastron, DDBs or other "forum creatures" instead of natives like the Guosim, etc.), but the gameplay should be the same.



A mockup of what the map looks like. The numeric values indicate how much each territory is worth as far as troop income goes. The blue tiles are "seas" connecting the forums, which are "land"; the blue lines show the connections between seas.

[Izeroth]

 Savage guest tribes? 

[Delthion]

They could be the Flitcheye!

[Skyblade]

This is truly cool!

[James Gryphon]

Thanks.

Is there anything anyone wants to see before I start working on the map for the testing version? Features, etc. This is what the in-development ruleset looks like right now (minus the woodlander group combat biases).

Spoiler

Planning: Command points available each turn (constant) (allows special options)
Foraging: Collected income from each territory = max of X; total troop count
Stability: How likely a leader is to stick to the next turn (This + rating, out of 5), hidden
Rating: Determined by these factors:
(yadda yadda)

Rules for generating leaders:
1. Check rating. This + stability, out of 5. This is the odds that a ruler will not change.
2. If ruler changes, then pick a race at random.
3. 1/4 chance leader has a trait; if yes, then pick one from the chart at random.
4. Leader goes for a turn.
5. After turn ends, step 1 again.

5/3: Vulpes - Purp
4/4: Rattus - Green
3/5: Weasels - Gold

Armies from territories:
CPs from conquests:

Fortifications:
Add to first strike chance
Negates damage up to value -- any extra damage damages fort by 1 point
Cost one command point + current size for each level of fort

Traits:
Can recruit one extra troop after each conquest
One free fortification can be built per turn
One extra command point per conquest
Double VP gain from objectives

Uses of command points:
Attacking Salamandastron (duh)
Used to determine initiative for first strikes
Building fortifications
Doing sea travel
Blitz

Victory points:
Conquer Salamandastron: 11/11
Conquer Redwall: 5/11
Conquer Castle Floret: 4/11
Own a level 5 fort: 3/11
Own a level 4 fort: 2/11
Own a level 3 fort: 1/11
Own a treasure: 1/11

Win condition:
Conquer Salalamandastron

Combat
Armies fight by a type of rock-paper-scissors. There are three basic tactical choices: slow and deliberate, medium and balanced, or quick and haphazard. Slow beats medium, medium beats quick, quick beats slow.

Tactical cards:
Slow/Deliberate
Medium/Balanced
Quick/Haphazard

Rules for generating dynasties:
1. 1/2 dynasty begins, 1/2 indie badger lord
2. Badger ruler goes for 2 turns.
3. On turn 3, 1/2 chance dynasty ends, 1/2 it continues.
If it ends, then go to step 1. If it continues, go to step 2.

Terror: (CP needed to attack Salamandastron)
Strength: (how strong the Salamandastron defense is)
Size: (how strong a Long Patrol unit is)

Brock dynasty: min 4 strength
Urth dynasty: min 4 terror
Russ dynasty: min 4 size

[close]

[James Gryphon]

Revive.

This project stalled for a while, but I got to work on it some more yesterday.

The game has been simplified quite a bit. The leaders and badger dynasties have been eliminated, at least for now. Army income depends on owning forts and possessing loot (which is gained from beating woodlanders in battles). It will be easier to understand, I think, and hopefully to play.

Making a map for this so that a test round can be run is probably first priority.

[Hickory]

Excellent. I'm still working out the finer points, though....

[James Gryphon]

A prototype of the forum map design:


This doesn't have all the details (army sizes, etc.) but you can see what territories are connected to each other and what groups are native to what forums.

[Banya]

This sounds like a lot of fun, but I too am still trying to wrap my head around it....
As Del said, when I see it played or play it myself I will understand it much better.  That's how most games work.

As for the thick black line on the board, connecting Cavern Hole to Other Redwall Websites, is that a bridge?

[James Gryphon]

It is; it's like the connection between Alaska and Kamchatka in Risk. I would have preferred to make all territories that were connected adjacent to each other, but this is the only way I could quickly work it out to make all the connections that I wanted to have between the territories.

Besides the absent army/loot/fortress counts, this is also missing the equivalents to Redwall and Castle Floret, and treasures owned by the natives (in the Redwall world, that would be artifacts like the Pearls of Lutra; owning them gives you VP). Hopefully those can all find their way in somewhere.