Design Log 4
Design Log 3
Design Log 2
Design Log 1
Design Log 1
Here we go! I’ve been looking forward to this. Many of you reading this (if I get many readers, that is!) already know that designing can be lonely. It’s fun and it has its own rewards, but as I discovered in college one day while staring at the umpteenth x-ray diffraction of HfxMb100-x, I’m a people person. So it’s great to be putting this out there and, I hope, generating discussion.
On the table this week: Mass combat. Sometimes I feel like Dungeons and Dragons-type traditional role-playing games are like Henry V. Here’s what I mean: Henry IV (both parts) was a tidy little play with super characters. But then in Henry V, you feel like Shakespeare was itching to try something bigger. All of a sudden he’s bursting off the stage with galloping horses, crumbling castles, thundering armies – stuff too big for an Elizabethan theater to contain. That’s what happens to D&D games sometimes. There’s stuff too big for the D&D stage to contain. Epic armies clashing, castle sieges, warbeasts taller than oak trees bellowing and stampeding toward the halfling refugee caravan as it races for the city walls. That sort of stuff.
So that sort of stuff is in Spellbound Kingdoms. The mass combat rules grow out of the individual role-playing rules. There’s no need for an arbitrary ruling along the lines of, “Um, you recruit for a while, and um, you have 1,100 pikemen.” The rules help you grow your forces from your character’s adventures and choices, and if the time ever comes, you know exactly how many pikemen and how many screaming amazon panther-riders are charging down on your foes.
Also, note that the time doesn’t have to come. Spellbound Kingdoms plays perfectly well without ever touching the mass combat rules. I’m only starting the Design Logs with a mass combat entry because that’s what I happen to be working on this week.
The mechanics are meant to be simple, fast, and deep. As Blizzard says, “Easy to learn, difficult to master.” Each unit can execute various basic and special maneuvers, and each maneuver has an associated attack and defense rating. Everyone can charge, attack, hold the line, and a few other basic maneuvers, but only a unit of arrowheart-trained archers can shoot a Cloud of Arrows, for example. At the start of a round, everyone picks his units’ actions in secret. Then all choices are revealed and resolved simultaneously. There’s no initiative, so pyrrhic victories are possible: the parapet defenders can repulse the orc horde but finish too weak to fight effectively in the next battle.
There’s also no map. Spellbound Kingdoms supports a strong storyline (narrativist play, if you prefer), and measuring distances with rulers or counting grid squares tends to pull people out of the story. But the lack of a map does not mean there’s a lack of tactics. Combining units into well-built brigades, coordinating attacks, and outguessing your opponent’s maneuvers are all significant tactics. The most important tactics involve the story: will the heroes lead a brigade? Will they seek out enemy champions? Infiltrate the enemy’s field tent and spy? Call down a lightning storm? There are few resources in a battle more precious than a hero’s actions.
Right now we’re balancing and detailing the units, both individually and within brigades. It’s a fun process, and it should keep me busy at least up until the next design log update. See you in the forums!
