[GB] Godball

[Mike]

Eliahad and I came up with this one over dinner at GenCon last year, and we fleshed it out on the drive there this year.

The gods of Olympus are bored, so they are playing a new game called Godball. Based loosely on the rules of the original Animalball (the Greek gods were HUGE fans of the Animalcast), the idea is that a ball is dropped on top of Mt Olympus. The gods then race to grab it, and if you can get the ball back to your own temple, you get a point. There are no teams; it is every god for him- or herself. And they can use every trick in their divine arsenal to achieve their goal. Gods don't even bother with the Tap-Rule.

In form, the map will represent a huge nation-sized swath of land. The terrain is varied, and the gods will construct the "field" anew with each game. Then each player has a deck of cards to represent their god, and they take turns playing from their respective hands to choose their actions. Available cards will be for movement, attacks, deceptions, defense, altering terrain, summoning minions, and whatever other cool ideas we come up with.

The idea is for a base set that includes the various terrains and six or eight starting "Deity Decks" (Zeus, Athena, Hermes, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hades, Ares, etc). If we like it and that portion goes well, then there's all sorts of great ideas for adding new Deity Decks and stuff.

[Eliahad]

Game Phases

Setup Phase: Flavor Draft

Through great debate, shouting, fury, and finally, Ares putting Zeus in a headlock: the Gods decided the most equitable way to create the Godball field was to flatten the hills and mountains, raise the land below the seas, and destroy all the forests until a flat surface appeared. It was on this surface that, suggested by Athena, they each took a turn to create lands of their choosing. Mountains sprung up where a river had been, rivers crisscrossed the plains. A vast sea sprung up, ringing Mount Olympus like a moat. A forest took root over a land that once had been the ocean. But that was not enough! Gods need believers, said Hermes, and so the Gods grumbled their consent, as each took a village of their believers, placing them about their newly created world, with little heed for the terror of their worshippers. Finally, Hades decided to craft his shrine as close to the Godsmount as he could. It was Poseidon who stopped the trickster, and flung Hades' shrine to the far corner of the 'playing field.' The others laughed like thunder rolling across the world until, in a rage, Hades flung Poseidon's own shrine as far from the Mount as he could, and soon all the Gods scuffled, placing the others' shrines in as disadvantageous position as possible. Until at last there was a crash from Mount Olympus. His labor now complete, Hercules dusted his hands from the dirt, a glowing orb of solid granite, as large as a house sat behind him. "Oi!" he said, "I finally got this thing up here, now start the damn game already." And lo, the first game of Godball didst begin.

Setup Phase: Rules

The Setup of a Godball field begins as follows:

1) Determine the eldest player and therefore the eldest God or Goddess. Only for the fact that it contains less letters, the remainder of this text will use the term "God." The eldest player does not have to be the oldest one at the table, but it helps.

2) The Eldest God takes the single hex "Mount Olympus" tile and places another three hex tile adjacent to it. Sides must be fully flush, but holes in the playing field are allowed. They are simply out of bounds and the God's Ball or the Gods may not enter the hex.

3) The God to the Eldest God's left places another three-hex tile adjacent to any hexes already placed on the board. This continues in a clock-wise manner until all of the three hex terrain tiles have been placed.

4) The Eldest God then places a village token on any hex that they wish that is not adjacent to Mount Olympus. Setup then continues as before, with each God placing a village token in whichever hex that they wish, but with the added stricture that it may not be adjacent to another village, or to mount olympus.

5) When all Gods have setup a single village, the Eldest God then places one additional village token on the board, there are always one more villages than there are Gods participating in the Match.

6) The God to the left of the Eldest God then places the shrine of the Eldest God anywhere on the board that is not already occupied by a village or Mount Olympus. Anywhere. Shrines may be placed next to each other. Remember, a God is trying to get the Godball back to his shrine. It is well within your divine right to be devious in your shrine placement.

7) Setup continues clockwise, until each God has placed the shrine of the God to their right. When the Eldest God has placed the final shrine, play may begin.

8) The Eldest God then places the Godball on Mount Olympus, takes the Godchip, and play may begin.

(I'll do more of this tomorrow.)

[Eliahad]

Basic Play

Goal
The goal is to get the Godball from Mount Olympus back to your shrine. Doing so gives you a point. (Depending on how difficult this is, that might be enough to win the game. Or maybe it's the first God to get to three points, or five. This will be figured out later. Maybe it will be throwing the Godball to your shrine gets you one point, whilst carrying it in gets you three.)

Basic Play

The game is broken into rounds.

A round has three phases:

1) Recharge Phase
2) Turn Phase
3) Clean-up Phase

1) The Recharge Phase

During the recharge Phase the gods restore their action points, taking action tokens and placing them in a pool. Action points will be spent to activate the powers on their god cards.

All Gods begin a round with 6 action points. They also gain an action point for each village they control. Finally, the God who is control of the Godball gains an extra 3 action points for the Godly might that courses through them from the artifact.

2) Turn Phase

Starting with the player with the Godchip, each God on their turn may do the following:

1) Play a card from their hand, paying the requisite action point cost for that card. If they do not have enough action points, they may not play that card. If a God plays a card in this manner, they may draw another card from the top of their draw deck.

a) Resolve all effects from cards played. If a God has tried to interrupt the first Gods' power, cards are resolved in the reverse order than they were played. (The last card played takes effect first.)

b) If a player holding the Godball has no action points remaining, and is hit with a power that reduces their AP further, they fumble the Gods ball, and it bounces to a hex of the attacking God's choosing.

2) Discard a card to draw a card.

3) Pass

If a God is out of Action Points before the end of the round, their turn is skipped and play continues until all Gods are either out of action points, or all the Gods have passed.

C) Clean Up Phase

During the Clean-Up Phase:

1) All players draw until they have a hand of 5 cards.
2) If a player has more than 5 cards, they must discard down to 5 cards.
3) Any effects that end at the end of a turn are removed from the field of play.
4) Any God that ends their turn in a hex containing a village converts the people to his own, placing a marker to indicate he has claimed the village. If this usurps the control of another God, their marker is removed.
5) Finally, the Godchip passes one player to the left, and the next round begins.

[Eliahad]

Card Types

Cards are what let players break the rules. Ideally, the game should be as fast as possible, with actions being resolved quickly and Gods and terrain being moved about wily-nilly. At the same time, there should also be cards that slow Gods down, without slowing down the pace of play.

Here are the types of cards that Mike and I came up with on the drive to the Con

Movement - Cards that allow you movement on the board. Mike had the idea of each movement card demonstrating how many AP it would take to get through a certain kind of terrain. Easy, Rough and Extreme. These would be different for different Gods. (Poseidon would be great through a river...not so great through a mountain.)

Special Movement - Flying, teleportation and the like. These would be tailored to individual Gods.

Belief - Cards of this type allow you to convert villages from a distance, or perform minor miracles that give you a temporary boost to AP on a future turn.

Terrain Alteration - Cards of this type allow you to change the terrain itself to suit the needs of the God in question.

Attack - Cards that attack other Gods directly, generally reducing their Action Points or making them discard cards.

Defense - Cards that prevent the attacks from other Gods succeeding.

Hindrance - Cards designed to make movement difficult for other Gods. (Walls, Increasing Movement AP cost, Trips, Binds)

Dispell - Cards that remove effects from Play.

Traps - Cards that create temporary or permanent obstacles on the field of play.



I'm sure there are more, but this seems like a good start.

[Cazmonster]

Suggested: a card that summons a hero. Heroes cannot move the Godball, but they can act as a bridge, moving the ball from one side of their hex to another. Multiple heroes could potentially move the ball several hexes.


More, a hero can destroy another hero or impede the motion of a God for one turn.

[Bluedevyl]

I'm not sure that the terrain idea translates that well to gods... What about instead of terrain, there were movement impediments? Poseidon can summon waves, Hades can summon clouds of burning ash, Zeus thunderstorms, etc... A god having trouble climbing a mountain seems a little bit off, flavor-wise, in my opinion.

This could also scale well in expansions, and could also have some factors with believers. If a village is constantly beset by tidal waves, they may seek the blessings of Poseidon to help them, and could be used to convert villages. This could give some fun strategic play, deciding whether or not to try to use your "summon" to impede an opponent or try to use to to convert some of their followers.

Just my 3 cents. Let me know what you think!

[Mike]

That's a good thought.

My trouble with it is that having to summon all the impediments takes up a lot of actions, and I feel like it won't happen often enough.

But then I ask myself: what is the purpose of Terrain? My intent is that I want some hexes on the board to be advantageous to some gods and disadvantageous to others. So can that aim be achieved with something like what Bluedevyl is suggesting?

Because our original thought was to play on an actual map of Greece divided up into hexes, with the varying natural terrain provided bonuses and penalties. But we realized that a static map that got reused every game would start leading to specific map-centric strategies to work for or against certain gods, so that eventually you get things like, "Well, if you're playing against Poseidon, then you first move HAS to be to try to claim X, because otherwise..." So the answer was to not have a permanent map.

But maybe we have a plain map (of Greece), and at the start of each round, each god gets to convert 2 hexes to whatever state. So you can either place a chosen impediment on a hex, or remove an impediment previously placed by another god. Such conversions are permanent unless changed with godly power. These would be free actions prior to our action points. This allows the field to potentially become quite cluttered with storms and floods and hydras and darkness and whatever by the time we get to the fifth or sixth round. Unless altered by godly might, hexes are free movement for anyone.

Okay... that was just me spitballing. Or maybe each god gets to place 6 or 8 impediments before play starts, then cards to add new ones are relatively cheap and easy, but cards to remove them are more costly.

Or maybe something else entirely.

[Mike]

I think what I'd like to do is come up with a basic set of limited generic cards and just see how it plays.

Movement
Direct Attack
Barrier (and barriers here would be barriers that do not affect the god placing them, but slow down or stop all other gods)

Maybe a couple other trickier cards... but just start with these and see how fast it goes and how it feels.

[Cazmonster]

Mike's point about the basic mechanics is solid.

If you want to introduce one 'bend' per God, that is a great place to start.

[Stan]

A possible thematic tweak: call the game The Last Apple. There is only one golden apple left. Zeus has eaten or given to lovers all the rest. He loves to cause mayhem so he drops onto the top of Mt. Olympus and lets it roll down wherever it may. The rest of the gods chase after it.

[Mike]

[Mike]

More on Stan's point: thematically, I think something like that is a good idea. I want the game to feel fast and dramatic and action-packed. I'm picturing something that looks like a serious war of the gods--even if it is over something trivial. There is also the possibility of going comic, which can still be fast and dramatic and action-packed, but will have a different feel. I don't know how The Last Apple sits with me as a title, but you're right that it needs to be on theme, and it's better than Godball. Godball is definitely comedy.

[Cazmonster]

Ambrosia: Hunger of the Gods is the darkly humorous version of Godsball.

And now back to setup. I think we can start the game with decks of fifteen cards given that we're trying just Move, Attack and Barrier

Move 2
Move 2
Move 3
Move 3
Move 1 through Barrier

Attack 1 Melee
Attack 1 Melee
Attack 1 Ranged (Four Hexes)
Attack 2 Melee
Attack 2 Ranged (Four Hexes)

Barrier 1 Hex
Barrier 1 Hex
Barrier 1 Hex & Move 1
Barrier 3 Hex
Barrier 3 Hex

[Cazmonster]

I have a model in Tinkercad for the hexes. I will work on printing them this weekend.

[Eliahad]

(I haven't forgotten this, still thinking about it.)

Thematically: What if we went with Demi Gods instead of full on Gods. Or better yet! The Gods have appointed a champion for their task. That sort of thing happens all the time. So each hero has their generic 'I do stuff cards' and then they have God cards that the gods have imbued their avatar with. So there's "Me" and then there's "Me+I can smite people because Zeus said it was okay."

So the Gods decide their bored, and say, hey what if we have this game and have the mortals play for our pleasure. AND THEN THEY START TO CHEAT! Because that's what they do. This way we can keep the terrain meaningful, while still having the god powers throw wrinkles into the game.

So there's an extra God phase:

1) Power-up Phase
2) God Phase
3) Mortal Champion Phase
4) Clean Up Phase

So a good next step would be to leave out the God Powers and see if we can create movement mechanics that are fast and fun. As Caz was suggesting.

God Power Rules:
1) Thou shalt not kill.
2) Thou shalt not affect the God Ball directly
3) Thou shalt not make it impossible for a champion to achieve victory. (Insanely difficult is acceptable and encouraged.

Champion Rules:
1) Thou shalt not kill. (As in, we can't kill champions in this game.)
2) Thou shalt not make it impossible for a champion to achieve victory.


Maybe? Does it make some of the things more plausible?
(And I think having a slightly comical bent to it is okay. The Gods were practical jokers, after all.)

[Eliahad]

Also, I think I can do a mock-up in Roll20...I will have to poke around in it more than the 20 minutes I just did. But I /THINK/ you can create your own deck of cards.

[Mike]

Test run.

No terrain.
Set a number of AP.
Move cards.
Obstacle cards.
Some trick or attack card.

Then we goof around on a blank map for 30 minutes head to head.

Adjust based on that. No goals or fancy stuff... just moving around for a while.

Name a time and we'll make it work.

[Mike]

Although for the record, I think playing demigods/champions/avatars will solve almost all of the thematic issues I've been having.

One possibility for that is that we have decks for the heroes/champions AND decks for the gods. When you play, you pick your champion and patron and shuffle those two together. Then play as we've always planned. You spend activation points and still get ONE card per action whether it's a hero card or a god card, it's still just one. Keep it moving.

Just brainstorming out loud.

[Eliahad]

Let me see how hard it is to create cards and I'll let you know.

[Mike]

What if hero moves are just standard move/grab/tackle or whatever and cards are godly? When your turn comes around you always get a basic hero move, but you only get god-actions when you have AP for cards. This would mean you always have something to do and avoids having to track two sets of cards.