[GB] Reinventing Gods powers.

[Eliahad]

(Also, Mike and I talked, we're renaming "Boons and Curses" "Blessings and Curses.")

[Mike]

Notes to self for blessings and curses:
Knockdown
Steal
Kip up
Double up actions (especially Sprint)
Block actions

[Eliahad]

Direct attacks. I've been having trouble coming up with enough of these. Or maybe I'm not thinking about them in the right way...hmmm.

Possibilities:

Discard HP
Knockdown Hero
Force Fumble
Move Hero? (This should be a movement power)
Discard God Power? (Does this count as direct?)
Discard choice of blessing from Hero Board.

Are these direct attack categories worth exploring? How do we make them different enough from other things that happen? Like Knockdown from a card vs. Creating terrain? Which can also Knockdown.

[Bluedevyl]

Conceptually, I have trouble knowing exactly HOW active a part the Gods are going to play in the game. Are they looking down from Olympus on the Heroes battling and just joking with each other about it, or are they squabbling with each other and rooting hard for their Hero?

Would Zeus drop a lightning bolt on Atalanta if she was about to score? Would Hades summon Cerberus in the middle of the battlefield to keep the opposition away from Achilles?

The Heroes don't have Hit Points... they can't "die", exactly, right? Is this something that we should consider? Does that make the game too complicated?

This is what I think about when considering the part the Gods play in Godball. What do you all think?

[Mike]

Ancient Greek heroes are playing rugby, and the gods are intervening. All the big guns are out, and yet no one actually dies.

It's a roadrunner cartoon, and we're all coyotes.

We're going for serious game play dressed up in a comic skin, and I hope our ultimate artwork highlights this.

IMO.

[Eliahad]

[Bluedevyl]

[Wowie]

That concise explanation of the game's mindset is spot on.

[Eliahad]

[FlameBlade]

Tradeoff might be that when hero finally returns to the play, most certainly will be at full hp against field of depleted heroes. However, it's probably not fun to be out of play for 2 rounds.

[Eliahad]

But you're not totally out of play, because you can rain fiery death down upon your tormentors. ....and then be in position to kick their ass in the physical world when you get back...

It does solve some of the 'meant shield' aspect.

(My gut still doesn't like it, but that's not a reason to not explore it.)

There are so many things to balance out!

[Mike]

I don't have a problem with unique, powerful cards that send Heroes back to start or to whatever far-flung corner of the board. But I don't cotton to the idea of Heroes being "killed" by other heroes, or of them having any sort of stat (including HP) that counts down to "death". Doing it by card is cool. Anything else is a bridge too far for me right now.

And if you're going to zap someone by card and you want to call it a death effect of some sort, I can maybe work with that too, but I'm really loath to refer to killing or death. In Greek myth, it was possible to come back, but it was rare, and it required a hero's quest all its own to make that happen. I know this is a goofy game of ball and we're taking a shit-ton of liberties everywhere, but I'd feel inconsistent talking about killing heroes.

But the effect of taking someone out of the action so they have to start over somewhere else... that's just fine.

[Eliahad]

Oh gosh, yes, no killing!

[Bluedevyl]

Oh yeah, I didnt think that the powers would ever kill a hero.

My instinct would be that the cards could be really powerful, but there only being 1 in the deck means that it wouldnt come up in every game. There's no mechanism to draw through your deck at lightning speed, so it would be variance whether or not we'd see them.

I just thought it might be fun to mess around with, to see if the Gods taking a more active role in the game was too disruptive.

Cheers!

[Mike]

Then yeah... we're on the same page.

[Eliahad]

Building Decks

I'm a little scared of this part, to be honest. I know that it's going to be fun and creative once we get going, but knowing that this aspect of the game needs to bring as much fun (if not more) than the Heroes on the board is making me shy away a little bit.

Things I'm considering: The ration of different cards. We seem to enjoy the blessings a lot. How many of those cards should be in a deck? 12? 15?

I still feel like there should be 5 over the top cards that define each particular God. The rest of the God Deck should also /feel/ right, but when you get one of these 5 things, it should be clear to everyone else exactly who you are.

How many of these cards should be 'take that' cards? The fun moments in the game last night, for example, came when we created fun combinations with the blessings. (The drop kick, for example.) Though I also had fun watching the Heroes dive out of the way as an ocean came hurtling across the landscape toward them. Maybe different Gods have different numbers of Take that Cards. Maybe most cards can be played either as a Take That card or have some other function to them (like moving the ocean, or creating terrain. You have the choice to be a snot or not, but the card doesn't force you into that mode.)

Deciding which God gets which blessings? Hermes will have more in the Sprint/Move category, that seems clear to me, but how many of the other types should he get? Emphasis on Kick and Throw for him, and less on the more direct hero actions? Poseidon will have less Blessings overall, I think, (because he will manipulate terrain more) but the ones that he does get...do they focus on Grab, Shove and Force Fumble?

Do the Gods even have to have even decks at this point, and really we should just throw in things that seem cool? Or should we already be thinking about flavor and theme and how their deck will represent that?

Aaaaaah!

Oh good, I had to get some of that out.

[Bluedevyl]

So, one of the points I think we can start from is knowing how many cards make up a God's deck versus a Heroes deck. Are they supposed to be discrete objects, or are they the same thing?

Does each God deck contain 10 cards that have the same art on the back of them as the blessings and curses, and then you simply choose your God deck, shuffle it into your Hero deck that contains blessings and curses, and play, or does each player's deck have 40 cards that contains Blessings, Curses, and God powers and you simply take a God deck and begin there?

I think, flavor-wise, it would be more concise to build a 10-card deck for each God. The Heroes, as they are currently designed, are all essentially the same. We've found during playtesting that the flavor of the heroes is built by the players, and tends toward emergent gameplay. I've really enjoyed that aspect of the beginning of each game.

Sorry I couldnt make the playtest Wednesday. Beer bottling took WAY longer than expected, as it always seems to.

[Mike]

Right now, a God Deck is 30 cards. That is based on anticipated production cost. 30 gives us enough variety to express the flavor/power of one god.

With six gods planned for the base set, bumping up god decks to 36 (for example) requires adding 36 cards to each unit.

There are no hero decks. It was an idea we toyed with, but finally decided against. We do have Hero Cards, but those are just one 5x10 giant card per hero. [We should maybe call them hero boards are something to avoid confusion.)

If we find we need more variety in the god decks, we're exploring the idea of dual-purpose cards. A Blessing that can be played normally or discarded as a Remove Curse. The Spear of Zues which can either be equipped as a Shove blessing or else played immediately to remove 2HP from a nearby hero. The Shield of the Ram which can be equipped as a Defend blessing or else as a Shove blessing that allows you to move into the space vacated by your opponent.

With stuff like that, we can fit 40+ effects onto 30 cards and give players broader options without spending more.

[Bluedevyl]

Yeah, I think I knew that stuff... I didnt sleep well and the neurons arent firing as well as they should be.

Sorry for the editorializing.

[Mike]

Naw. You're cool. I appreciate all your help.