Previous posts: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
I realized that I never put up a post at the end of November recapping what I had done on Gods & Champions during the month, so here you have it.
If NaGaDeMon is viewed as a game, I lost. I didn’t get to a finished version of Gods & Champions during the month, but I’m okay with that.
I went through three revisions of the game during the month, which got progressively more fun. The third version was played with my friend Nate, who is a professional game designer and a fantastic playtester. He had some suggestions, some of which I plan to take and some of which I may not. He was not in favor of the economic system I had set up in the game (two cards can be freely traded for one Power, and two Power can be freely traded for one Follower); I’m not convinced it should be scrapped, but I’m up for trying. He also helped me get to the point where I had an alternative to the Champion-switching between rounds.
See, the initial idea for Gods & Champions came out of my desire to explore the tension of wanting to build up your own Champion with better abilities, but knowing that at the end of the Age, another God might take that Champion away. I was worried that this might not be fun, and ultimately it seems that it’s not.
However, what I think WILL be fun and still provide a catch-up mechanic is to have multiple Champions. Each God gets one new Champion each Age, starting with one and ending with three. The God in last place going into the Age gets first pick of Champions. This means that the Champions will have to be a bit simpler to keep the complexity in line.
I also feel like exploring the Quest angle is going to be rewarding. I haven’t playtested the Quests that I came up with at the start, just because I wanted to get the Champions and Blessings right first. I might end up making Quests the way you get stuff (cards, Power, Followers) rather than having those things tied directly to the Champions’ abilities.
So, that’s where things stand now. I have ideas about where I would like the game to go next, but I haven’t put them into action yet. It doesn’t help that I had another interesting game idea crop up halfway through the month, and then another one just last night. I don’t feel the passion for Gods & Champions that I felt for Chaos & Alchemy, especially now that I’ve abandoned the core mechanic that I wanted to explore from the start. I’ll probably do a little more work on it, then set it aside to start toying with other games.
I kind of like the idea of having several different games in the works, any of which I might pick up and work on again in the future as the mood strikes me. Maybe some of them will even see print one day, but I’m not in a hurry.
-Michael the OnlineDM
Some quests could reward you with really good blessings…
Sounds like it is really coming along. Keep it up!
Jacob – Yep, that’s the sort of thing I have in mind. We shall see!
Thanks for the encouragement!
Michael the OnlineDM