Fall? Wow, the time is just going. I must be getting old because Spring and Summer are just gone. I’m still kicking around doing what I do but things have gone more hectic as the kids get older. I think I need to transition to shorter posts so that I don’t backlog some long event and then never get to posting it.
For the first time in a while, my entire weekend was free. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really go anywhere so I decided to break out a project that has been on the backburner for the past couple of weeks: a custom d20 dice tower.
With the Prologue ready for testing, I jumped in and did the first run through to see where the theoretical failed and the real game began.
With the name Valor: Bloodlines set, I feel like the game is gaining legitimacy in my mind. The concepts are coming together and I’m going beyond core mechanics to the actual shaping of the game and its overall narrative. I have the sketches of both the beginning of this adventure and its end in mind so I’ll begin with the game’s prologue: The Witch Hunt
So there we have it, the working title of my monster hunting game. I’ve been gravitating towards “Valor” for some time but felt like the name needed a little so a subtitle was added. I actually got the idea because of what I wanted to touch on today: death.
With a lot of the basics out of the way, I put my Monster Hunting game to the table to give it a spin. I have the outline of the scenario for the Werewolf mission and enough small tests to understand the combat mechanics but it is different seeing it all come together.
Taking a little break from the monster hunting posts, I wanted to catch up on my painting progress since it is one of my goals for the year. In addition to the 15mm Joan of Arc minis getting painted for the monster hunting game, I’ve also been working through more of my Infinity models. This time, I’m catching up on a bunch of Imperial Service minis that have been hanging around for a while now.
We’ve seen how the hero will operate in my game so now it is time to take a look at how the enemies behave. In solo games that I’ve played, I usually see two extremes where either the enemies have a very simple “seek and destroy” routine or highly complex set of routines that are “if-then” dependent or randomized in cards or the App’s operating system. I think both can work well but it depends on the game’s other factors to see it come together and make for a great game experience.
My first goal in any design endeavor is to get rules to the table as soon as possible. Normally this means slapping random physical assets together to just get the bare minimum across and see if the game concepts even work. There is no point in creating beautiful layouts and printing cards or assets that may undergo radical changes during the development process. That being said… I did paint up the minis needed for my first test.
With the design bug deeply embedded and noshing on my brain juices, I started working on the main concepts for my monster hunting game. Back in the early years of attending Gen Con, I frequently attended the convention’s various design seminars and starting all this pulls up memories from more than a decade ago. It was a fun time of doing my own designs that never seemed to go anywhere but were completed all the same. I envision a similar fate to this venture but this is one of the few exceptions where I enjoy the journey more than the destination.
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