Prototype photos

The prototype for v10 is ready for Spielbany.  This one took a lot of time to assemble.  And as we all know, graphic design is not my forte.  Anyway, here it is:

 

Zoom in on the game board:

 

 

Some highlights:

 

The temple.  Currently made up of 25 rooms, although that's easy to change.  "Red" cards are those that contain a testable feature; "Black" cards, those that don't.  I didn't anticipate how the red/black would give a checkerboard appearance.  Oh well.  The player's perspective is from above the room looking down.  Most of the rooms have 3 exits (the little yellow things), so there's some route planning but little likelihood that a room will be completely unreachable.  The colored circles are "spawn points" for the Operatives, and there are icons for noise (lower left), traps (lower right), items (upper right) and phobias (upper left), but those are hard to see in this photo.

The enemy operatives.  I just picked photos from the films for these guys for now, but each has a special power and a sub-location type in which he is (potentially) active.  They're in a row of 6, and at any time some or all may be "activated" (face-up).

 The interrogator.  Not aesthetically pretty, but this little puppy will reduce the production costs dramatically compared to the (beautiful) board of the previous version.   It's shown with the "True Grail" card inserted to show "Grail 6" through the window.  You'd then flip the interrogator over, and through the little window on the back, you see whether it says "yes" or "no".  No need for red masking/rubylith (although it could still include that for added security).

It's big enough that we may need to physically remove the board from the table when the temple phase starts; maybe, though clumsy, the players who enter the temple first just wait and count the turns of the other players, then they get that many "free" turns once the temple phase starts, before resuming the normal turn sequence.

 

 

Odds and Ends

There are always little design decisions that have to be made to make the game playable, but that don't seem crucial, at least at the stage where you're trying to see if an idea is going to work.  There are a few of those for the present state of the game.  For example:

What happens when a player fails a challenge?

Possible consequences include:
- Add a black chip to the cup
- Lose a white chip
- Immediately relocated to an enemy stronghold

My assumption had been that we'd go with the first option, and that provides a nice way to get the number of black chips in the cup up, but it doesn't feel as punitive as the other two options.  On the other hand, if the penalty is too punitive, then players will become risk-averse, and simply won't face encounters until they're heavily up-armored with cards.  The third option, despite its thematic appeal, may fall into this "too punitive" category.  Perhaps the second option strikes the best balance -- you lose one turn action.  Not too bad, but not insignificant, either.

How many enemy can go into a city before it "pegs", and what happens when it does?

"Pegging" a city means that the enemy cubes are removed from the city and a large cube is placed in the city, and henceforth, no additional cubes can be added to or removed from the city.

I now think that the threshold for a city to "peg" should be n+1, where n is the number of players.  Since cities have historically started with 1, 2, or 3 enemy cubes at the game's beginning, this would mean that some cities would begin the game "pegged" in the 1 or 2 player game.  Probably, that's ok, but might require a simple tweak to the rule, from "when a city pegs, do X", to "when a player is in a city that has pegged, do X".  It makes no difference in the 3 and 4 player games, since a city will only peg by definition because a player in the city has caused it to peg.  But it would avert the weirdness of having to execute a bunch of consequences before the game even starts in the smaller games!

Originally the rule was that when a city pegs, the enemy digs for the temple there, which works well thematically.  I'm inclined to change it to "an enemy operative is activated", to create a strong connection between the operatives and the board play.  We could have an intermediate threshold -- "operative activates when a city goes to n cubes, city pegs and temple is dug for when a city goes to n+1 cubes", but that feels like too much to remember.  Instead, maybe we can simply move the "enemy digs for the city" function onto an operative card.  Not as pretty thematically, but perhaps a net win overall in reduced complexity.

What is the consequence if you dig for the temple in the wrong city?

This is a challenging question; we need a system that discourages random digging but that encourages digging based on partial information.  One way to achieve this is to set a higher opportunity cost to dig -- it effectively costs you three actions instead of one to dig.  But there also may need to be a small penalty for failing a dig.  Maybe it's that the enemy progress track should go down a couple of clicks, or that you should have to add a few black chips to the cup.

What happens if you fail a challenge in the temple?

Historically it has been that your turn ends.  Since the challenges are all faced at the end of the turn in the new scheme, that doesn't work.  Maybe it should be that you're sent back to the entrance of the temple, and must drop the artifact, if you're carrying it.

What happens if, during an Encounter, a player calls out a feature that isn't actionable?

E.g., he sees a phobia but it isn't the active player's phobia, or he sees an operative but it isn't an activated operative.

I think probably nothing happens, and the other players still have a chance to identify an actionable feature.

Gameplay examples for v10

Maybe it helps to illustrate some of the ideas from the previous post with a sample turn.  Because the structure is quite different inside and outside the temple, we'll walk through a sample turn for both cases.  Players are Henry, Marion, Abner, and Rene.

OUTSIDE:

Henry begins his turn in London, a circle city.  He receives his customary 4 white chips and 3 black chips, and he also receives 3 adventure cards (because he's in a circle city).  He notices that the theme card "Grail Diary" is in nearby Bucharest, and that the Diary gives bonus check marks if a player carries a Map; and, there is a Map card available in Eastern Europe, but he must travel to a triangle city and pass an Encounter at a "Ruins" sub-location.

Henry's first action is to move to Ankarra.  He must pay 2 AP to make such a long trip, and he discards one white chip.  He also places an enemy cube in Ankarra, the fourth cube in that city.

His second action is to face an Encounter; he discards a second white chip.  The top Encounter card is a Tomb; he pays 1 AP to view the next card, another Tomb; he pays one more AP, and the third card is a Ruin.  He chooses to face this one.  He flips the card over.  He faces an Escape 4 challenge.

As he flips the card over, the other players look at the card; Marion observes snakes in the illustration, and calls out "snakes!", which is Henry's Phobia.  Henry must add 2 to the difficulty of the challenge, making it Escape 6.  Luckily, he has a Whip card, and an ally with a +2 Whip rating, which, along with one additional AP card, enables him to pass the challenge. 

Upon passing the challenge, he receives the "Map" Item card.  He checks the Enemy Operatives card row to see if the "purple" operative is active.  He is, so Henry must add one black chip to the cup.

His third action is to travel to Bucharest (he discards a third white chip).  Bucharest and Ankarra are adjacent so he need not pay AP to complete the move, but of course he does add a black cube to Bucharest.  This is the fifth black cube in Bucharest, so Henry must flip over the next Enemy Operative in the card row; it reveals the Blue operative.  He replaces the five cubes with a large cube -- the city is now "pegged".

His fourth action is to face an Encounter in Bucharest, a pentagon city (he discards a fourth white chip).  The Diary indicates that it can be found in a Castle, and the top card in the pentagon Encounter deck is a Castle, so he flips the card over and faces the challenge, which turns out to be Wits 3. 

As he flips the card over, the other players look at the card; Henry quickly observes that the illustration depicts an open map on a table, and he announces this, authorizing him to place a white chip on his recently-acquired Map card. 

He pays 3 AP to pass the challenge, and receives the reward for the card, which is to remove one enemy cube from the city(*).  The "gray" enemy operative card that corresponds to this sub-location is inactive, so he does not need to take an action pertaining to the operative.

He may now, by virtue of passing the encounter, "visit" the Diary card as a free action, and receives its 3 check marks in the "temple features" category.  He additionally discards the white chip from his Map card (in place of discarding the Map itself), and receives the bonus 2 check marks in the Location category.  This puts him at a total of 6 check marks in that category, authorizing him to read the level 2 clue, which he does -- it tells him "The Grail was carried from Alexandretta to Cairo".  He is unable to add an enemy cube to the city because it is "pegged", so instead he adds a black chip to the cup.

Henry has no further white chips, so he executes the final phase of the turn.  He is in Bucharest, which contains 5 enemy, so he must pull five chips from the cup.  He adds all of the black chips accumulated during the turn to the cup, as well as the "purple" and "blue" chips, since those two Enemy Operatives are active.

His first three pulls are black chips, so he reduces the enemy progress track by 3.  His fourth pull is the "blue" chip, which activates the blue enemy operative.  His power is to add 2 enemy cubes to the city.  Since the city is already pegged, Henry simply adds 2 black chips to the cup.  His fifth and final pull is another black chip, so he reduces the enemy progress track one more space, and his turn ends.  He empties the cup in preparation of the next player's turn.


(*) He can't remove a black cube from the city, so he simply receives one from the supply, for the purposes of final scoring.



INSIDE

Henry begins a turn at the Entrance to the temple, which contains a Treasure chest, so he receives 1 adventure card.  He also receives the customary four white chips and three black chips.

He begins by entering the room to his right, flipping the card over as he enters and discarding one white chip.  It shows a "noise" icon, so he adds a yellow chip to the cup.  It also contains a "Map" icon, and since he holds a map card, he adds a white chip to the Map card.

Next, he moves to the room above him, discarding a second white chip.  It has a "trap" icon, so he adds a blue chip to the cup.  It also contains a purple circle.  Since the purple enemy agent is activated (ie the card is face-up), and not currently in the temple, he adds the purple pawn to this space.  He also adds a black chip to the cup, because he is in a room with an enemy operative.

Third, he moves to the room to his right, discarding a third white chip.  He knows that this room contains a Feature (because the back-printing is dark red), and hopes it will contain the Throne feature, which he knows opens the Grail Room.  Unfortunately, the room contains the "Rope" feature, and he chooses not to activate it.

He adds his remaining white chip to the cup.  He is required to pull only one chip, since only one operative is currently present in the temple.  The chip is a Yellow chip, which pulls all operatives one space closer to him, so the purple operative is moved into the room he occupies.  Nothing happens, but the next time the operatives are activated, instead of moving, this operative will activate the Rope and determine its effect.  Should it test for the grail room (although we know that it won't), the enemy progress track would be advanced by 5.  

Gearing up for v10 playtest at Spielbany

I think this new framework has solidified enough in my mind that it's worth giving it a try at Spielbany. Here's my attempt at a succinct summary of how it works: On your turn, you do three things.

1. Resupply
2. Actions
3. Draw chips from the cup and resolve

That's it! 

Slightly more detail: 

1. Resupply: Outside the temple, receive 3/2/1 adventure cards if in a circle/pentagon/triangle city. Inside the temple, receive 1 card if on a treasure chest. Also receive 4 white chips, and 3 black chips (add the latter to the cup)

2.  Actions: Take actions, each time spending a white chip. Actions include

(a) Move (inside/outside), and add a cube to the city (outside)
(b) Face an encounter (outside)
(c) Dig for temple/test a feature (outside/inside)
(d) Attempt to steal (inside)

(a) Move -- Outside is the same as v7. Inside the temple, if you enter a room with a colored icon, add a chip of the same color to the cup. If you enter a room with an Enemy Operative pawn, add a black chip to the cup. If you enter a room with an Item icon matching an Item card you hold, add a white chip to that card.

(b) Face an encounter means you identify the "encouter deck" for the city shape you're in, and draw the top card, or pay AP go deeper into the deck (each card shows, on its back-printing, one of three "sub-locations", eg a castle, a museum, etc). The card shows a challenge category and difficulty. If you fail the challenge, add a black chip to the cup. If you pass, you get the reward shown on the card (e.g. a check mark, an Item card, capture an enemy, etc). Then, if there is a Theme Card that matches the location you're in, you may visit it (if it's already on the board) or bring it onto the board and visit it (if it's in the queue of face-up cards). If you add a theme card to the board, add an enemy cube to the city.

"Visit" a card means receive check marks in the category and amount shown on the theme card. If you have an Item card that is requested by the theme card, you may discard it to receive extra check marks, as indicated on the theme card.

If you exceed 3,6, or 9 check marks in a category, you may read the level 1, 2, or 3 clue for that category. Add an enemy cube to the city. If at any time the # of enemy in the city exceeds 5, activate the first deactivated (face-down) Enemy Operative card in the Operative card row. (c) "Dig" and "Test a feature", and (d) Attempt to Steal, are basically the same as previous versions 3. Draw chips: Toss any remaining white chips into the cup, as well as the colored chips for any active Enemy Operatives (if outside). Draw chips equal to number of enemy cubes in the city (outside)/number of enemy operatives in the temple(inside), and resolve each chip: 
Black: reduce the Enemy progress track by 1 White: nothing happens ("safe") Red (inside): Noise! Move all operatives one space closer to you Blue (inside): Trap! Draw a temple challenge and face it Enemy Operative's color (outside): Execute the Operative's special power, as stated on his card End of Game: The game ends when the scenario's objective is achieved or the enemy progress reaches zero. Players receive points for:
- Achieving the objective(s) - Finding the lost temple - Most captured enemy - Most white chips on Item cards There's an additional element to (b): Each encounter card shows, in its artwork, one or more types of special feature. The first player to notice such a feature announces it to the group, and executes a special action:

• "Operative": If you notice an Enemy Operative who is currently activated, you may face him in a fight challenge (difficulty=total number of activated operatives), and if you win, he is deactivated. 
• "Phobia": Each player has a phobia; if the active player's phobia is noticed by another player, the difficulty of the challenge is +2.
• "Item": If you notice an item (eg a book, a map) for which you hold the Item card, add a white chip to the Item.

And one final detail about enemy Operatives: each Operative has a symbol that matches one of the six "reward" symbols on the encounters. If you face an encounter with a reward that matches one of the activated Operatives, and you pass, you add a black chip to the cup. If you fail, you execute the special power indicated on the Operative's card.

Things that I like:

• Same turn structure inside and outside temple
• Temple rooms have some detail and variety, but common framework (add chips to cup) will keep the action brisk
• Multi-step nature of missions (eg "get the grail and bring it to a font") permits some route planning in temple, which is more important with icons in rooms
• All players involved in each player's turn through encounters
• More tangible and thematic role for enemy
• Preserves the essence of v7 (which worked really well), but removes some clutter, rules, and components

Things I'm not sure about

• The idea of theme cards being associated with "sub-locations"; but this is easy to change if it doesn't work. (The "sub-locations" themselves simply allow a given city to pay out different rewards for facing an encounter there, and for you to know what the benefit will be before the encounter).
• "Steal", while important, may be too prone to cherry picking. May need to replace with a way, via chips, that you can be forced to "drop" the artifact, giving others a chance to grab it.

Achieving symmetry across the two phases

With respect to the concern I expressed in the last post that the turn mechanic will be different inside and outside the temple, of course one option could be to change the turn mechanic outside the temple so that it's more congruent with the mechanic inside the temple -- basically, to have you draw chips from a cup at turn's end. This wouldn't actually change the turn mechanic very much outside the temple: take actions, draw chips, done, which is not that different from take actions, done. However, I do think it will force a decision as to the role of the enemy operatives vis a vis the enemy cubes. Under the scheme as articulated in the last few posts, the enemy cubes represent the growing menace of the enemy outside the temple, and the operatives are a shadowy presence that lurks behind that menace for most of the game, until the temple phase, when the menace is unmasked and the operatives become its face. And I think that's compatible with the spirit of the movies. But under a different scheme, the cubes would disappear from the design, and the operatives would become the sum total of the enemy's presence in the game, chasing the players around the board and then around the temple, and acting as a constant threat that the players must deal with. And I think that's also compatible with the spirit of the movies! The trade-off is this; on the one hand, the latter approach could have more symmetry between the two phases of the game. For example, "noise" in the temple generates red chips and red chips, when drawn, move enemy operatives inside the temple. If some analogue of noise chips move operative pawns around on the board outside the temple, the whole thing may be easier to learn for the player. But on the other hand, the former approach will be easier to design and balance. An in-between approach, where there are enemy cubes AND operatives moving around, would probably feel cluttered. Which way to jump? In a game that's supposed to be richly themed, I think it's most important to get the feel right, and we've always found that the board filling up with enemy cubes over time has always given the feeling of a growing threat. And I like the way the enemy operative cards could amplify this: you know you're going to face these guys in the temple, but the enemy on the board are the more immediate problem to be dealt with.

So, that may be the best starting point: enemy cubes on the board outside the temple, enemy operative pawns on the "board" only after the action moves into the lost temple.

A framework for the temple phase

I think I have a framework that pulls the ideas of the last post together coherently, without bogging the temple phase down in complexity or rules compliance.

Preliminaries, which aren't crucial to the idea:  

• Say the temple is composed of cards, each representing a room 
• Say they're laid out in a 5x5 grid, and 8 of the rooms have testable features.  
• The room cards are all face-down, except the entrance, but the back-printing on the rooms containing testable features is different, so you at least know which rooms contain features.

Now on to the actual idea:

At the start of your turn, you are given a cup, containing 5 white chips and 2 (?) black chips.  You declare how many actions you are going to take this turn, and remove as many white chips as the number of actions you plan to take.

Then you take your actions, which can include (i) move to a different room (card), (ii) test a feature, (iii) fight an enemy operative, (iv) steal something from another player.

When you move into a room, one or more icons may appear in the room, and you must add a chip to the cup for each icon in the room, as follows:

• "Noise" ==> red
•  "Trap" ==> blue
•  "Operative" ==> black (special)
•  "Powerup" ==> white (special)
•  "Phobia" ==> special

The three specials:

A room containing an operative icon means that if that particular operative card is active, you add the matching enemy operative pawn to that room.  If you move through a space containing an operative pawn, add a black chip to the cup.

If you have a powerup card with an icon that matches the icon in a room (eg a map or an amulet, etc), you get to add a white chip to the cup.

If the phobia in the room matches your character's phobia (eg snakes), you take a "-2" tile, and are -2 against any encounter you may face at turn's end.

After you have taken all of your actions, you end your turn by pulling chips from the cup and resolving each chip that you draw.  (I think) the number of chips pulled is given by the number of enemy operatives in rooms that contain either a feature or a player. 

• White = no effect.
• Blue = Trap!, draw a temple encounter card and resolve
• Black = Enemy!, decrease enemy progress track by 1
• Red = Noise!, move any enemy pawns in adjacent rooms into the room you occupy, BUT enemy operatives don't move if they are in a room with a feature.

If 2 or more enemy operatives are in a room with a feature, they test the feature.  If it tests favorably (eg it's the well of souls, or the grail room, etc), the enemy track is decreased by 10 (?).

 Some advantages of this system:

• It lets all of the symbols be handled in the same way mechanically during temple exploration:  simply add a chip to the cup
• It keeps the action in the turn quick; just move and test features, and then settle up the "consequences" later
• (subtle) Because players will tend to move to rooms with features, having "noise" resolve after player movement will tend to draw enemy operatives towards rooms with features as well.
• Enemy operatives have a simple AI and a spatial impact on the game, but their primary role is still related to the progress track.

Disadvantages:

• It's thematically a bit weird that you don't face trap(s) until turn's end, instead of immediately as you pass them.  Maybe thematically it's that the trip wire and the actual trap aren't in the same place.
• It has limited continuity with the outside-the-temple turn mechanic.  It does have good conceptual continuity, but there will definitely be the sense that a different set of rules govern the turns inside the temple compared to outside of it.
• As I've currently laid it out, it only works if the "enemy operative" system is perfectly balanced.  If it's too easy to enter the temple with few operative cards in the row, or to explore most of the temple before you start tripping over operatives, then you won't be drawing many chips from the cup, and so you'll always feel safe maxing out your actions every turn.  (Maybe to balance this there are also "temple guardians", which spawn and move without needing a matching operative card in the card row)

Concerns aside, I think this completes the conceptual work of introducing some of these new concepts (enemy operatives, new encounter system, powerup cards, etc) and integrating them with the old concepts (check marks, challenges, enemy cubes, enemy progress, etc) in a coherent and compact way.  I hope to have a go at solo testing some of these ideas and will report back!

Into the temple

I've been putting off thinking about the temple phase until the thoughts for the external phase solidified, and while that's still in progress, it seems like an appropriate time to see where the temple stands and where it could go.  


The goal of the temple phase is a satisfying third act that mirrors the third act in the IJ movies, in which Indy, armed with some knowledge, enters the lost temple to try to recover the lost artifact.  There are four qualities that characterize the temple exploration:

• Urgency  The player feels time pressure to complete the temple before the other players, or the enemy, complete it first.
• Danger  The temple is a dangerous place, and is full of challenges the player will have to overcome en route to the artifact.
• Discovery  The temple's layout and characteristics aren't fully known in advance, and exploration in the temple reveals surprises.
• Intentionality  The information the player has collected steers his decisions in the temple and help him to make decisions about, e.g., route-planning.

Our previous version of the temple had all of these qualities to some degree.  There are 9 temple tiles, all of which start face-down, and each of which had 4-6 rooms, 3 spaces for challenge tiles, and 1 testable "feature".  The multi-room tiles let you do some intermediate route-planning, while still presenting some uncertainty with respect to what is on the next tile.  


The problem, as I see it, is that it doesn't really fully deliver on the last two characteristics.  There isn't really much drama to the route-planning at present;  if you don't know what feature you're looking for, you just wander around trying stuff, and if you do, you just wander around looking for it.  The path you take in both cases is a random walk.  And there isn't much discovery -- if you know what feature you're looking for, you activate it; if you don't, maybe you'll activate some features randomly, but again, there isn't a strong sense of wonder unlocking the temple's secrets.


The reason that these aspects fall flat, I believe has to do with the mostly generic nature of the tiles.  Yes, each card has a different feature, and yes, the random challenges will make each tile different, and yes, the rooms all look different thanks to Steve's great visual design work.  But there isn't a feeling of place-specificity to each room, a sense that the room I'm currently in, or the path that I want to follow to get to the Throne Room, is fundamentally different from others.


What makes this more challenging is that the temple phase should feel closely connected to the external phase.  This means of course that ideally, mechanics should be similar, but also that game elements that are important outside the temple should play some role in the temple.  Additionally, we want to keep players on-task, which means single-mindedly searching for the artifact; we don't want to send them off on extraneous side-missions to recover lost gold or something.  


With the addition of new concepts to the external phase (e.g. phobias, enemy operatives, allies, powerup cards), perhaps there is an opportunity to utilize these concepts to amplify the discovery and exploration -- i.e., they provide more stuff to see without necessarily encumbering players with more stuff that they want to do.


Here are sketches of some ideas of things that could possibly be included, and then a future post will pull everything together once I've figured out how to do that.

Phobias are easy:  these can be incorporated overtly into the artwork, and if you face a temple challenge in a given room, and you have a phobia that is illustrated in that room, your response to the challenge is reduced by 2, same as outside the temple.  (The difference is that it's out in the open, it doesn't need a player to "discover" it in the artwork).

Powerups are also easy:  illustrations in the temple rooms can show icons matching those of the powerup cards, and when you go to a room with an icon matching a card that you hold, you get to execute a special ability as indicated on the card.  

Enemy operatives have to be handled carefully.  On the one hand, the idea of enemy agents chasing you through the temple works thematically; on the other, forcing players to police the operatives via some AI is a distraction.  But not having operatives in the temple at all may feel like a missed opportunity.  I may have an acceptable compromise:  some of the temple rooms have a color-coded spot that matches the color of one of the operatives.  If that operative is activated (ie, his card is face-up in the row of enemy operatives), you place an enemy pawn on that space.  Then what happens?

The easiest thing is that the pawn stays put and does something bad when you enter that room:  moves the enemy progress track, or increases the difficulty of a challenge, etc.  Something like that could work.

But I have an idea for a different system, that integrates with this.  The idea is basically this:  the player can set his "aggressiveness" level at the start of each turn, basically representing how fast he's going:  more aggressive means he will traverse more rooms in this turn.  But, there are three aspects that counterbalance going full-speed.  The first is that he's more likely to trip on the trigger for a trap.  The second is that he's less likely to "see" features that he can test.  The third is that he's more likely to generate noise.  Noise acts like a magnet for operatives in nearby rooms, pulling them closer to him. 

I think the way this would be handled is with a set of icons on the traps and in certain rooms. When you pass through a room with an icon, you check your aggressiveness and see if you are required (or enabled) to activate that icon.  What's neat is that some of the features can organically have associated effects; opening a heavy sarcophagus inherently creates noise; approaching the forbidden altar inherently triggers a challenge.  


As more rooms are discovered, the attributes of each room will create a network of effects that players will have to navigate, and this will add route-planning, particularly if the solution to the temple involves multiple steps (eg find the grail and then bring it to a font to test it).


The details need to be worked out further, but I'm optimistic these new ideas might provide useful raw material.