Yes, I Am A Nerd

I have gone a couple weeks without working on The Lords of Sargoff. But this will be changing soon. I posted the first chapter on an online fiction critique message board and got some good comments on passive voice versus active voice, which I will be able to apply throughout the story.

In the meantime, I have been doing some thinking about my card game, Reclamation, partially because I am looking forward to some playtesting while in Columbus in May. There have been several changes to gameplay since I last playtested with the Columbus Coopers, and more changes may be in order. Here are some thoughts I have been considering. Those who care not about this game may skip to the bottom for the LotD, which is a double, since I missed yesterday. :)

1. Multiplayer. One of the advantages of having each deck have both Heaven and Hell cards is that having any number of players (even or odd) shouldn't be a problem. At the same time, I see the advantages of designing the game so each player either has a Heaven or a Hell deck. This, however, creates some problems when it comes to odd-numbered multiplayer games.

2. Wounds. I currently have wounds represented by cards placed under the character. I also have the characters arranged in a grid. The problem starts out when the grid is empty, and being able to determine exactly what spot in the grid a character is played to. I have considered having cards under a character to act as placeholders and help define the grid, by it would be messy for the placeholder and wound cards to coexist.

3. I have considering restructuring how the grid works. I designed the grid to emulate a battle formation. However, in the game, non-warriors and animals are in the grid. In theory, I could change it from a grid to a battle line, and have one line of warriors who actually do the fighting, and behind them (in the 'trench', where order or placement doesn't matter). In theory, I could then both do placeholder cards and wound cards for the warriors (wounds underneath, placeholders behind them on the playing surface).

If I do this, then each conflict will be between two characters, instead of a whole row. I see advantages and disadvantages to doing it this way. An advantage is that it makes it harder for an army to be mercilessly better than an opponent's, forcing that opponent to rebuild for a long time (less warriors). A disadvantages is that battle conflicts become limited to one character per side, taking away the fun of full column vs. column. That being said, there may still be other ways to initiate conflicts between larger groups. So, maybe it's not so bad.

It would simplify things, so characters are now simply 'adjacent' to each other, as opposed to also being 'surrounding,' not to mention diagonally, vertically, and horizontally adjacent. If I did this, I would also quite possibly raise the numbers when it comes to might (when most characters are might 2 or 3, a +2 might bonus is massive; if they are usually between 6 and 10, a +2 bonus is not as overpowerful).

That being said, the battle line and numbers change do cause similarities to Lord of the Rings, which I am trying to prevent.

LotD: Programatical Proposal. This guy tweaked a game to propose to his girlfriend.

LotD2: Geekiest Pants Ever. Yeah, that's a keyboard on his pants.