The Gaming Den

OK, a while back, there was a discussion about making a card game called Broken! about being characters in a Fantasy Role Playing Game and trying to break the campaign. And I've been thinking about how to proceed on that, and I think I have a handle on it.

The game's contents are:

• 50 "World" Cards
• 50 "Villain" Cards
• 50 "Skill" Cards
• 50 "Treasure" Cards
• 20 Tokens
• 16 six-sided dice

The goal is to break the game. That is: to be compelled to draw a card when there are no more in that deck, to place a token when there are no more tokens, or to roll more dice than there are dice. So going through the deck brings you closer to victory, but it also brings everyone else closer to victory too. The game thus should not stalemate at any point, but instead reach a genuine conclusion.

At the beginning of the game, each player gets 2 skill cards. Then put 4 World and 4 Villain cards in the middle of the table.

Each turn, all of a player's cards refresh. They may attempt to adventure against one World card or one Challenge card. World and Villain cards will have tests to do on them which may be Diplomancy, Stealth, or Stabination. At the beginning of the game, players have 3 dice in each category, and a single die generates a hit on a 5+. Cards the player has may provide constant benefits and may have abilities that are activated by exhausting them. And yes, there are cards that exhaust to allow you to adventure again on your turn.

Any time you succeed in an adventure against a World or Villain card, you may get a reward (or a chance at a reward). Also, a new World or Villain card is drawn to replace it. Super comboes are totally expected and allowed in Broken! since the worst thing that will happen is that you'll use an infinite loop to win the damn game.

Sample Cards:

• SKILLS:
• Pickpocket (Thief): Exhaust to draw a Treasure card.
• Enchanting (Wizard): Exhaust to Refresh all your Treasure cards.
• Healing Hands (Cleric): Exhaust to take an extra Adventure.
• Weapon Specialization (Fighter): +2 dice to all Stabination rolls, and +1 more for each other Fighter Skill and Weapon Treasure you have.
• Setting Books (Metagame): Exhaust to discard an available World card and replace it with a new one.

• Treasure:
• Luck Stone (Miscellaneous): Add +1 to the results of all dice you roll, so a natural 4 is treated as a 5.
• The Sorrowblade (Weapon): If you roll a 6+ on any Stabination roll, you may immediately roll an extra die. Exhaust after succeeding on an Adventure against a Villain to draw one Skill.
• The Ruby Eye of Ssk'sslek (Money): Exhaust to draw an extra Villain. There are now more Villains on the table for the rest of the game. Exhaust on another player's turn to force the current player to take an extra adventure against a Villain of your choice.
• The Nightcloak (Armor): Exhaust for +3 Dice on a Diplomancy or Stealth check.
• Ring of Regeneration (Ring): Exhaust to take an extra Adventure.

-Username17

Kind of interesting,
what do you expect to use tokens for?
so if at any time you require 17 dice, you win?
what do you intend to do with the class listed in the skill?

I'm assuming it's a shared deck, so I think that games which go down to drawing the final card could be nasty, requiring some planning based on other players.

And please, please avoid it being like spellfire (which the adventuring dynamic kinda recalls)

Hmm.....

you could use model bits as tokens.

I've been thinking of how to make a game where the players collect miniature things, like swords, or shields, capes, or armour; and use my WH and 40k minis to do that.

Blasted wrote:what do you expect to use tokens for?

A number of things can improve over time, providing tokens that make them more bad ass. But honestly, I am thinking it might be better to nix that concept and just use dice for anything like that. Meaning that if the Vampire defeats a player, the number of dice needed to win the game on a single roll goes down.

so if at any time you require 17 dice, you win?

Yep. Although I'm liking the idea of that total being a dynamic quantity by having some cards potentially reduce the number of dice available for rolling.

what do you intend to do with the class listed in the skill?

Same thing I intend to do with the types of treasure - use it as a tag for some skills and treasures. There will be at least one skill that gives you a bonus for every skill from a class that you have, for example.

One thing I was thinking of is having optional Class cards that guaranty you one skill from a specific class, and probably move your Fight, Stealth, Diplomacy numbers around. But since those would be zero sum, it would be entirely acceptable to simply not have one if you didn't want one.

I'm assuming it's a shared deck, so I think that games which go down to drawing the final card could be nasty, requiring some planning based on other players.

Yes. Shared deck. One thing is that players may gain additional card draws during their turn. If you get two treasures and they come up the Ring of Regeneration and the Boots of Speed, you can do two more adventures. Those in turn could get you some skills that could include Healing Hands and Haste... you get the idea.

So ideally, the game won't bog down as it comes to end, but instead spiral out of control with someone actually winning the damn game. What is going to need fiddling is the balance of card abilities so that one deck or another doesn't always get drained before the other three.

And please, please avoid it being like spellfire (which the adventuring dynamic kinda recalls)

No one is making little pyramids of anything. It's like everyone is playing a Verduran Enchantress Timetwister deck in Magic. Using the same deck.

-Username17

In cases where one player forces another player to take an impossible action, who wins? For example, given a card that causes the player to your right to draw a card, and an empty deck, who wins?

As a side question, are the victory conditions only running out of dice or cards, or does any impossible action win the game? For example, given a curse that makes you unable to draw cards for the rest of your turn and a card that forces you to draw a card, do you instantly win?

If the game breaks, whoever's turn it is wins the game.

As for other impossible actions, with only 100 cards on the player's side, I doubt it'll be that much of a problem to arrange card or dice as the only game enders. After all, if someone makes an actual infinite loop, the game simply ends pretty fast.

Example: Let's say that one of the Misc Items is the Instant Fortress (exhaust to refresh skills). Combined with the Recharging Skill (exhaust to refresh Treasure), you can get unlimited uses out of your other skills or treasures. Which is totally broken. But in reality you just exhaust and refresh your Nightcloak five times and the game ends with you as the victor.

The thing is: 50 cards really isn't a lot. You have 10 cards of each subtype. Let's do the (Fighter) ones:

• Dragon Slayer (Fighter): If you get at least one hit on an Adventure, you get one more hit. Roll 3 extra dice against any Dragon Villain or World Adventure.
• Endurance (Fighter): Exhaust to take an extra Adventure.
• Leadership (Fighter): +2 dice to Diplomancy rolls. You may treat any number on an NPC card as if it were one higher.
• Tracking (Fighter): +1 Dice on Stealth checks. Exhaust to place the Villain on top of the Discard pile on the top of the Villain pile.
• Smithing (Fighter): Exhaust to draw one Treasure.
• Heroism (Fighter): +1 dice on all rolls. Exhaust instead of discarding one card.
• Revegeance (Fighter):+1 dice on Stabination rolls. When you would draw a villain, draw 2 Villains and discard 1.
• Archery (Fighter): Exhaust to reroll a Stabination roll.
• Personal Style (Fighter): You may make a Stabination, Diplomancy, or Stealth check in place of a Stabination, Diplomancy, or Stealth check.
• Weapon Specialization (Fighter): +2 dice to all Stabination rolls, and +1 more for each other Fighter Skill and Weapon Treasure you have.

And seriously, that's it. That's every Fighter card. So if you take the Knight (+1 Stabination, -1 Stealth, begins with one Fighter card), you know you are in for one of those 10 (at least).

-Username17

I think that you should possibly leave tokens in. I'm now of the opinion that having more than two win conditions is a good thing (tm).
2 card combo win is probably too fast (and, yes I'm aware that it's a contrived example)
How many cards to the combo are you currently considering?

I'm just burbling without thinking:
The more players, the less chance of building a combo.
2 players should then go fairly quickly.
4 players will take 4 times longer than 2 I suspect.
Though, with a limit to the dice/tokens in use, with many players you could get a quick win possibly.
Do you keep your dice on your turn, or pass them back to the pool? what about tokens?
What about card discarding/recycling as a defence mechanism?

FrankTrollman wrote:OK, a while back, there was a discussion about making a card game called Broken! about being characters in a Fantasy Role Playing Game and trying to break the campaign.

Sounds like you're probably thinking of my idea for a game called Power Loop. The mechanics you suggested in that thread (which seem to be the ones you're building on now) weren't quite the direction I had hoped to go, but I certainly think there's a viable game in them, and I'd probably give it a try if you posted a prototype.

The more players, the less chance of building a combo.
2 players should then go fairly quickly.
4 players will take 4 times longer than 2 I suspect.

Well... no. The game actually ends as soon as you finish off any of the decks. So the game will often not be ended because of a combo, but simply because someone has turbo charged through the entire deck of one kind or another.

With 4 players instead of 2, the game will be over in less rounds of turns - because there are more people drawing cards. However, because each round of turns is twice as many player turns, it will probably take more total turns. However, those turns will be somewhat shorter, since the later rounds of turns will involve players having a lot of treasures, skills, allies, and trophies and they will be doing weird shit. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the total time to play the game was about the same or even a little less with more players at the table.

Do you keep your dice on your turn, or pass them back to the pool?

You put the dice you are rolling back into the pool when the current challenge is over. So if you currently have a 9 die Stabbing pool and you go on two adventures on your turn, you don't win the game.

what about tokens?

Honestly, I can't figure out how to make Tokens go fast enough to make it a serious threat to winning the game - at which point they may as well not exist. For that matter, 50 cards in th World and Monster decks is probably too much - because Treasures and skills are going to go faster. So probably looking at more like 40 World and 40 Villain cards.

When something gets an increment, it should probably just put a die out of play. You could for example have Necromancy (Cleric), that exhausts to increase its bonus to Stabbing by +1. Getting an extra die is nice, and it moves you towards a dice victory, but it also moves everyone else towards a dice victory as well, because there is a die out of play to keep track of your skeletons.

What about card discarding/recycling as a defence mechanism?

I don't follow.

-Username17

The major issue of this game will be how to prevent the players from simply "deadlocking" (i.e. Refusing to draw cards, tokens, etc) to prevent their opponents from getting closer to victory. Rather than actively trying to break the game, you might see players trying hard NOT to "break" the game until they have something to finish off an entire deck in one blow.

What mechanics will you implement to discourage such deadlocking?

Also... honestly this is looking to become a more complex version of Munchkin. Will the theme generally be as snarky?

I would also note that "finishing entire decks" is the end-game condition of several games (i.e. Dominion). However, victory is not merely determined by who "breaks" the game, but rather by point scoring.

FrankTrollman wrote: Well... no. The game actually ends as soon as you finish off any of the decks. So the game will often not be ended because of a combo, but simply because someone has turbo charged through the entire deck of one kind or another.

I assumed that the only method of 'turbo charging' through a deck was by using a combination of cards. I also assumed that 'turbo charging' is the primary method of winning the game.
If there are two cards (for instance, a treasure exhaust to draw a world and a skill that refreshes treasures when a world is drawn), and there is only of each in the deck, a two player game gives 50% chance of putting together this combo at one stage. A four player game will give a 25% chance.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the total time to play the game was about the same or even a little less with more players at the table.

If I'm correct about turbo charging, it will be much more difficult with four players, so that's where I think that the time difference will be.

When something gets an increment, it should probably just put a die out of play. You could for example have Necromancy (Cleric), that exhausts to increase its bonus to Stabbing by +1. Getting an extra die is nice, and it moves you towards a dice victory, but it also moves everyone else towards a dice victory as well, because there is a die out of play to keep track of your skeletons.

There's something in this that doesn't smell right. I can't put my finger on it, but it's probably the limited number of dice.

What about card discarding/recycling as a defence mechanism?

Cards that return discards to the draw pile, in order to prevent your opponent's victory. For instance
Skill Summon Monster (Wizard): Exhaust to move a world from the discard pile to the bottom of the world draw pile.
or
Treasure Thieves Guild: Discard in order to discard an opponent's treasure which removes a dice from the dice pool.

I figure the absolute minimum that any player is going to do on their turn is draw a Skill. So much so that there should be "Training Sequence Downtime" where if you can't or won't do anything on your turn you simply draw one skill.

So no matter what you do, a four player game is going to be over by turn 11. In reality, it'll be over much sooner than that, because the act of plowing through the decks will leave you with cards that increase the rate at which you plow through decks.

The only way the breaks are going to be put on is if two players note that they both have enough card drawing that if one makes a run on a single deck that the other can probably win by making a run on the same deck. In that case, both players will probably veer off to work on some other deck to avoid having the other player break the game - but even that is limited in its ability to slow things down. Both because working on th second deck depletes it, and also because doing so increases your own abilities and thus makes powering through the first deck more plausible.

-Username17

A forced card draw every turn would certainly break deadlocks. However, I'm still worried that it may still encourage a sort of "all or nothing" approach among players.

Basically, players would either aim to draw only a minimal number of cards (to slow down deck depletion), or immediately go for a killer combo that is guaranteed to tap out a deck.

Of course, gaining cards should increase the chance of being able to make an infinite combo to tap out a deck, so there's certainly good tension between drawing more cards for abilities and drawing less to make it harder for everyone else to win. So that leads to my next question: Will the cards players own be hidden, or revealed? I think the amount of open information available will greatly influence player behavior with regards to card drawing.

Also, a new concern: the possibility of "underserved victory". Let's say it's a 4 player game. Player 1 to 3 play very well. Player 4... does not. However, during Player 3's turn he miscounts his final combo and leaves 1 card in a deck. Player 4 then swoops in and takes the final card and wins without much "effort".

Is this part of the design, or will there be mitigating mechanics (i.e. pretty much all the combos are infinite ones) to prevent this?

Thanks

Zinegata

Also, a new concern: the possibility of "underserved victory". Let's say it's a 4 player game. Player 1 to 3 play very well. Player 4... does not. However, during Player 3's turn he miscounts his final combo and leaves 1 card in a deck. Player 4 then swoops in and takes the final card and wins without much "effort".

Is this part of the design, or will there be mitigating mechanics (i.e. pretty much all the combos are infinite ones) to prevent this?

Nah. If you eek out a victory when you've been doing badly because someone else drew a lot of cards but fell flat before winning, that's totally cool. Breaking the game is breaking the game.

One of the big deals is that if you can push your dice pool up high enough, you simply win outright, whether the decks are empty or not. So it's pretty much always to your advantage to try to draw more cards.

-Username17

Also, a new concern: the possibility of "underserved victory". Let's say it's a 4 player game. Player 1 to 3 play very well. Player 4... does not. However, during Player 3's turn he miscounts his final combo and leaves 1 card in a deck. Player 4 then swoops in and takes the final card and wins without much "effort".

Is this part of the design, or will there be mitigating mechanics (i.e. pretty much all the combos are infinite ones) to prevent this?

To my mind, that's actually desirable to keep people interested in the game even when they're "losing". I'm reminded of Munchkin, where if someone gets screwed in the early game, they might never build up any momentum to be a real player in the game and they might as well go off and do something else. At least with Broken emptying the deck is theoretically something anyone can achieve.

So anyway, world and monster cards.

There are 40 of each them. Half of them have 2 skills you can use against them, half of them do not and have only 1. Therefore, you could easily divide it up such that Fighting, Stealth, and Diplomancy happen in equal amounts. That is, there are 20 opportunities to use each skill in each deck. Of those, the breakdown is roughly:

• 6 Difficulty 1
• 5 Difficulty 2
• 4 Difficulty 3
• 3 Difficulty 4
• 2 Difficulty 5

Now let's talk about rewards. If the treasure you get from emptying the monster deck is too big, then no one is ever going to empty the monster deck - the very act of trying to do so will empty the treasure deck first. So pure draws it has to be more like 25 Treasures and 10 Skills in the Monster deck with 10 Treasures and 25 Skills in World deck. Which still leaves a number of cards that do other things when you win. It's fine to have a straight booby prize in each deck - something where the only thing you get for conquering a challenge is removing the card and replacing it with a new one. But the other fur need to do something cool.

For example, here could be four World cards that don't give you a Skill or a Treasure for besting them.

• The Forgotten Gem Mine. Trophy comes to you exhausted. Exhaust it to draw a treasure.
• Caitlin the Minstrel Gnome. While you have this trophy, roll an extra die any time you roll a 1 or less.
• The Purple Chaos Wastes. Exhaust to discard a Skill or Treasure and draw a new card of the same type.
• Doomport. Exhaust to discard an available monster and draw a new monster to replace it.

-Username17

You could take a page from Thunderstone and make it so that the cards disappear even if you fight them and lose, but it still uses up your adventure opportunity and you get no reward. Then it would be possible to empty the monster deck even if the sum of the rewards is greater than the number of cards in the treasure deck. It would also be possible to fight a challenge you know you can't win just to deny the reward to someone else.

Of course, that also runs the risk of reproducing what I consider to be one of Thunderstone's main flaws, that your success depends more on what challenges happen to be randomly drawn right before your turn instead of what challenges you would theoretically be capable of winning. Also potentially stalls 2-player games if none of the currently-revealed cards given decent rewards, as neither player wants to fight one and give his opponent the first shot at a good reward...but only until someone gets the ability to adventure more than once per turn, so I guess you're ahead of Thunderstone there.

You might want to think about some sort of mechanic that will prevent all the high-level challenges from showing up at the beginning of the game and stalling the game out until someone amasses huge power with just 1 skill draw/turn before presenting a bunch of challenges where you can't possibly lose at the end of the game.

I think having all the adventures vanish if you fail is a little on the insane side. Although that could certainly be a mechanic used now and again.

Could also introduce other kinds of cycling on some. Perhaps a Monster where if you fail, you discard one of your skills and draw a new skill. Or a Monster where if you fail you discard one of the World cards and replace it (Crypt Thing for the old schoolers).

-Username17

Monsters

Type	Fight	Stealth	Diplomancy	Reward	Fail
Demon	1	-	-	Take another Adventure when you take this Trophy. 1 Treasure Chance.	Your Turn Ends.
Beast	1	-	-	Draw 1 Treasure	Your Turn Ends.
Dragon	1	-	-	2 Treasure Chances	Discard 1 Treasure if you have one.
Demon	1	2	-	Draw 1 Skill	Discard this Monster and replace it.
Beast	1	-	2	Draw 1 Treasure	Your Turn Ends.
Demon	1	3	-	Take another Adventure when you take this Trophy. 1 Treasure Chance	Draw another Monster. There is now one more available adventure.
Dragon	2	1	-	3 Treasure Chances	-
NPC	2	-	1	Draw 1 Skill	Your Turn Ends.
Beast	2	-	-	2 Treasure Chances	Discard 1 Treasure if you have one.
Dragon	2	-	-	4 Treasure Chances	-
Beast	2	-	4	3 Treasure Chances	-
NPC	3	-	1	Draw 1 Treasure	Discard 1 Skill
Demon	3	3	-	Roll an extra die any time you roll a 6+	Discard this Monster and all of the World cards. Replace all adventures discarded.
Dragon	3	-	3	Draw 1 Skill	The player on your left chooses one available Adventure. Discard it and replace it with a new adventure of the same type.
Dragon	3	-	-	3 Treasure Chances	Discard 1 Skill and draw a replacement Skill.
NPC	4	-	-	Draw 1 Skill	Your Turn Ends.
Beast	4	2	-	Discard to add a hit to any test.	-
Dragon	4	5	-	6 Treasure Chances	-
Demon	5	5	-	Exhaust to draw 1 Treasure	Discard 1 Treasure if you have one.
Dragon	5	-	4	Discard to take an extra turn	The player on your right draws 1 Skill.
Beast	-	1	-	Draw 1 Skill	-
NPC	-	1	-	Draw 1 Treasure	Your Turn Ends.
Demon	-	1	-	Take another Adventure when you take this Trophy. 1 Treasure Chance	-
Beast	-	1	1	2 Treasure Chances	-
NPC	-	1	3	Draw 1 Skill	Your Turn Ends.
Dragon	-	2	-	3 Treasure Chances	-
Beast	-	2	3	4 Treasure Chances	Discard this Monster and replace it.
Demon	-	2	1	Draw 1 Treasure	-
NPC	-	3	-	Exhaust to Discard a Treasure and Draw a Skill (you must have a Treasure to do this)	Discard 1 Skill
Dragon	-	3	3	Draw 1 Skill	Discard this Monster and replace it.
Beast	-	4	-	Draw 1 Treasure	Discard one Treasure if you have one.
Dragon	-	4	2	Draw 1 Skill	Discard this Monster and replace it.
Beast	-	4	5	4 Treasure Chances	The player on your left chooses and adventure in play. Discard it and replace it with a new adventure.
NPC	-	-	5	Exhaust to Discard an available World card and replace it with a new adventure.	Discard a Skill and draw a new Skill.
Demon	-	-	1	Take another Adventure when you take this Trophy. 1 Treasure Chance	-
NPC	-	-	1	Draw 1 Skill	Your Turn Ends.
Demon	-	-	2	2 Treasure Chances	-
NPC	-	-	2	4 Treasure Chances	Discard this Monster and replace it.
Demon	-	-	2	Draw 1 Skill	Your Turn Ends.
NPC	-	-	4	5 Treasure Chances	The player on your left draws 1 Treasure.

Priest Skills

Skill	Text
Divination	Exhaust to place a d6 on this card with any number facing up that you want. Exhaust, even on another player's turn, after dice have been rolled, to switch a die on this card with a die that has been rolled. Neither number changes.
Necromancy	Exhaust to increment this card. Add the number on this card as bonus to Fight checks.
Healing Hands	Exhaust to take an extra Adventure.
Raise Dead	+2 Dice on Diplomancy tests. Exhaust to pass an adventure on top of either the World or Monster discard if it is an NPC.
High Priest	+1 Die on Diplomancy tests. +1 Die on Fight checks for each Priest Skill and Armor Treasure you possess.
Divine Intervention	Exhaust to reroll an Adventure roll you just made. The second roll stands.
Prayer	Exhaust to increment this card. Exhaust instead of rolling dice to gain a number of hits on an adventure equal to the number on this card.
Plane Shift	+1 Die on Stealth checks. Exhaust to discard a World card and replace it with a new World card.
Wrath of the Gods	Discard to discard all the available Monster cards. Replace them with new monster cards.
Create Food and Water	Roll 3 extra dice when attempting a World adventure.

-Username17

o_0

I have absolutely no idea how to play this game.

Can someone explain it in a couple paragraphs? I don't understand the dice mechanic or the cards or anything at all really...

For Valor wrote:o_0

I have absolutely no idea how to play this game.

Can someone explain it in a couple paragraphs? I don't understand the dice mechanic or the cards or anything at all really...

OK, each turn you are confronted with some possible challenges in the middle of the table. These have numbers on them which indicate whether they can be attempted by Lurking, Stabination, or Diplomancy. You can take one action to attempt one of these challenges, and announce "I am going to attempt this challenge with Stabination!" Then you roll your Stabination dice, and if you get a number of hits equal to the stabination number on the challenge card, you succeed. Then you take the card, you get whatever reward the card says you get, and you replace that challenge with another card off the deck it came from. Alternately, you can take an action to "train" and draw another card off the skill deck.

The die rolling method is just like Arkham Horror. You have a number of dice (starts at 3 in each skill), and you roll them when you engage a challenge. Every 5+ is a hit. The game ends when you have enough bonus and sequestered dice that you are supposed to roll more dice than there actually are, or one of the decks empties.

-Username17

What does Exhaust mean?

Grek wrote:What does Exhaust mean?

Basically the same thing as Tapping.

-Username17

So, if it were the beginning of the game, and I saw a Beast card (the 2nd article on the monster list) and said "I'm gonna stab it!", I'd roll my 3 dice. If any of them came up as 5+, I'd beat the thing and take a treasure.

Yes?

Double Post.

I made a list of 10 possibilities for Thief cards.
-Pickpocket
oExhaust to draw a Treasure Card
-Climb Walls
o+2 dice on Stealth checks, and +1 more for each other Thief skill you have.
-Assassinate
oYou can use Stealth for a Stabination/Fight check, and get +1 die on that check.
-Appraisal
oWhen you obtain a Treasure as a Reward, draw 2 Treasure Cards. Pick 1 to keep, and shuffle the other one back into the Treasure Deck.
-Poison Use
oExhaust to add +3 dice to a Stabination/Fight check against a monster.
-Distraction
oExhaust to re-roll a Stealth roll.
-Hired Hands/Thieves Guild (what to call it?)
oExhaust to increment this card. Exhaust instead of rolling dice to gain a number of hits on an adventure equal to the number of increments on this card.
-I Steal His Pants
oExhaust to take the Reward of a face-up World of Monster/Villain card without adventuring. This does not prevent you from adventuring this turn.
-Smoke Bomb
oDiscard to end an adventure on any player’s turn before or after dice have been rolled.


I have no idea what to do with the Wizard, since the setup is Stealth (More or less) for the Thief, Diplomacy (mostly) for the Priest/Cleric, and then Stabination (totally) for the Fighter.

What's the Wizard to do?