[GB] Godless Godball Playtest?

[Eliahad]

Hey everybody! If anyone is free tonight and would like to help me run a Godless Godball test, I'm going to hop onto Roll20 around 6:30 MST and hang out for a good long while and push some pieces around. If you want to come and poke at things with me, or just want to chat, both are fine and wonderful.

[Eliahad]

HEROES

While the Gods are all powerful and fickle, the Heroes are the ones who get things done.

Defining Heroes

Heroes are defined by a pool of tokens called Hero Points, or HP. This pool represents their stamina and ability to perform physical tasks. HP are spent on things like moving over obstacles, performing Hero Actions or activating Traits.

A Hero is also defined by two traits. These traits are unique to that Hero and allow them to have an advantage in certain situations. Hercules can throw things greater distances, due to his increased Strength. Icarus can fly, because his Dad made those nice wings. Just don’t get too close to the sun!

A Trait can be:

Passive – a constant bonus on specific actions
Active – Activated on your Hero’s turn.
Reactive – Activated on an opponent’s turn, when certain conditions are met.

On Your Turn

Heroes perform actions, and on your turn, your Hero can do the following things.

A. Take a Move Action
B. Perform a series of Hero Actions

You may choose to take the Move Action before, or after, the Hero Actions.

Move Action

Your Hero may move 1 hex on their turn as a Move Action.

If the Hex that you are moving into contains terrain or barriers, you must pay a cost in HP equal to the number of tokens in that hex. Terrain that is favored to your Hero does not count toward this cost.

Wait Action - You may choose not to take a move action on your turn. By choosing to wait instead, you may restore 1 HP to your HP pool.

Hero Actions

You can take any number of Hero Actions on your turn. These actions cost HP, and you must be able to pay the cost to perform the action. Some actions are uncontested, and some are contested. Contested actions can be defended by the opponent.

Uncontested Actions (Cost 2 HP; except for Rest.)

The following four actions are uncontested actions:

Sprint – You may move 1 additional hex on your turn. In addition to the 2 HP to Sprint, you must pay whatever the movement cost is for the hex that you enter because of sprinting. If you cannot pay the movement cost, you may not enter that hex.

Kick the Godball – If the Godball is uncontrolled in an adjacent hex, you may kick the ball 1 hex away to one of the three hexes that are away from you.

Throw the Godball – If you control the Godball, you may throw the Godball up to 2 hexes away from you. Interception While this is an uncontested action, if the direction of the throw crosses a hex, or side of a hex, containing an opponent. They may pay 2 HP to snag the ball out of the air. So be careful where you throw it!

Rest – If you take a Rest Action, you may not perform any other actions on your turn. However, by taking a Rest action, you may restore 1 HP to your HP pool.

[Eliahad]

Contested Actions (Cost – Variable)

Things behave a little differently when Contested Actions are a part of your turn. Instead of a set HP cost, you pay however many points you want to spend to ensure your actions happen. Your opponent can then try and defend against the action by spending HP of their own. Your opponent only has to consider Contested actions when they defend.

The following are contested actions you may take:

Shove – your opponent is pushed 1 hex into one of the 3 hexes away from you. If they controlled the Godball, they continue to maintain possession of the Godball.

Knock Down – your opponent is knocked to the ground. If they controlled the Godball, they may choose where it lands.

Force Fumble – If your opponent controlled the Godball, it is placed in a hex of your choosing that is adjacent to both you and your opponent.

Grab – You grab onto your opponent. If undefended, they must pay 1 HP on their next Move action or you are pulled into their vacated hex. If someone else grabs hold before then, you are no longer grabbing your opponent. Also, see below:

Grab

Grab is a special action, it has an affect of its own, but it also changes the nature of the other Hero Actions. If your grab is successful, you have expanded options on your other Hero Actions:

Shove ------- > Throw – You may move your opponent to any hex that is adjacent to either you, or your opponent.

Knock Down ----- > Slam – You may switch places with your opponent. Your opponent is still knocked down. If they controlled the Godball, you now control the Godball.

Force Fumble ---- > Steal – You wrest the Godball from their hands. You may, if you choose, pay 2 hp to Throw the Godball, as per the Throw the Godball uncontested action.

[Eliahad]

Combining Actions

You must spend at least 1 HP on each action you are performing. So if you want to shove someone and knock them down, you must spend at least 2 HP. If you want to run up to someone from 2 hexes away and push them, you have to spend at least 3 HP, 1 for the shove contested action, and 2 for the Sprint actions.

However, you may spend MORE than the necessary HP. Each HP you spend in addition to the base cost ensures that the Contested Actions are successful.

Defending Against Hero Actions

To defend an attack from an opponent, you must spend 1 more HP than they did. So if an opponent spends 3 HP to shove you, you must spend 4 HP to block their attempt.

If you can spend at least half this amount (rounding down), then you defend against half (again, rounding down) of the Contested Actions taken against you. You choose which actions are defended, and which are successful.

[Mike]

[Eliahad]

Are you suggesting getting rid of the 'pulled into vacated hex' altogether? (Which I'm okay with, mind you.)

On the other hand, if they defend against everything /but/ the grab...nevermind, now I want to keep it in.

[Mike]

Don't get rid of it. I'm saying if they don't choose to defend it when it happens, they shouldn't get a second chance later to decide that NOW they'd like to defend, and for only 1 HP.

[Eliahad]

I understand now!

[Eliahad]

Flame and I played a 2v2 match with just Hero Actions and Goal Posts. There were no Powers or Hero Traits. Lightning Bolt and Purple Nurple Circle versus Forkish and Heart Heart. Flame scored a point when Forkish kicked the ball between the goalposts in the 7th Round. This took about 45 minutes with a lot of chatting and rule discussion in between, so probably about 35 minutes on Roll20. (27 turns were taken.)

Takeaways:

Negatives first: Clearly these Hero Action rules are still too complex. Once again I forgot one of my own rules, and if that's what happens, that's a bad sign. My goal was to keep the total number of choices (and therefore text that appears on the player aid) to a minimum. I was able to do that, but in a way that was (once again) intuitive. Well, at the time I had the idea it was intuitive but not in actual practice. If we separate out all the actions, there are currently 10 Hero Actions (3 Uncontested, 7 Contested) you can take on a turn, and in my opinion that's too many. I thought I was getting around this with the Grab rule, but I was not.

Contested Actions: it's the defending part that I can't figure out how to simplify at the moment. In other sports ball games this would be handled by comparing stats and rolling dice. But we don't want dice. And I think there's a way to do it and once we find it, it's going to solve some things.

And...well, I'm sure there were other negatives but they are not coming to mind. Flame might have some.

Positives: There was movement and motion. Players were able to get space, and get around opponents.

Combining actions on your turn is huge, thank you BlueDevyl (and others) for the idea!

Throwing the ball makes a big difference. Letting you get the ball into space to run to.

Kicking the ball away from opponents makes a difference, too, because you can get it away before they have a chance to pick it up. Throwing and Kicking are going to make the game feel even more like a sandlot game where the players are all scrapping to kick the can against the fence or whatever. Then throwing in Powers will facilitate this even more. (Take your actions to kick the ball away...then drop some barriers so it is harder to get to. Things like that.)

Being able to switch places with opponents through Hero Actions will solve a bit of the "Wall of Meat" problem.

The Goals. Having goal posts felt really good, at least for the team version of the game. It might not work as well in a free for all game, where, as Mike said, it'll be easy to score instantly because you can throw with unerring accuracy, but in a team game it had the feel of a game of handball.

We're headed in the right direction. The Uncontested Actions feel right, though might need a better name. Then, once we can solve contested actions, we can run just the Sportsball version through a whole lot of playtests to make sure that's solid, and then re-evaluate the Powers, terrain and barriers from there!

[Wowie]

Would it be bad if they were all called "actions" instead of splitting them into categories?

Should I stop talking?

[Mike]

Ultimately yes. That's a good idea. Right now it is helpful for me to differentiate between actions that can and cannot be defended, but if it isn't useful in actual play, then we should simplify.

[Eliahad]

[FlameBlade]

And to make it complicated, there has been a lot of side conversations that is not posted here, mostly trying to work things out. So always good to have any inputs.

[Wowie]

https://imgur.com/a/mycmx <-Tabletop Simulator godball

I think I may have found you guys a new fan. I'm surprised to learn that one of my friends is into Greek mythology. xD

We played a couple godless Godball games based on the musings in this thread.

[Eliahad]

Oh awesome! (Love the table flip.)

I scanned through the comments. I'll take a closer look when I get a bit more free time. Thank you for both playing and sharing! Seriously, I'm glad you're enjoying even this unpolished version, and I hope your friend had fun, too.

[Eliahad]