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Gutter
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icon How about a DROD boardgame? (+2)  
I've seen card game proposal, but really, collectible card games are not that popular these days, eurocrap boardgame took their place.

So what about a boardgame? I am thinking of a game that would allow players to create simple "Rooms of Death" on a board, and then would play in it, trying to kill more roaches than the other players.

Movements ciuld be cards that you draw and then use to move your Bethro(cards would have cardinal directions or player rotation on them, allowing the player to move pretty much like in DROD). A little like a medieval Robo Rally for those who played it.

So you'd have a board, customized with simple walls or doors or whatever (switches and keys?), and with some roaches on them (ie : some pre-made or user made scenarios). Each turns, the players draw cards to refill their hands, and use them to decide of their Bethro's movements. Movements descision would be revealed all at the same time, and then the players would alternatively move their Bethros one pre-decided move at a time, until everyone is done.

Killing roaches would involve having your player facing the right direction (ie : facing the roach)in one of it's movement.

You'd need rules for player moving at the same positions, and for "not so friendly fire", but I think it would be a fun game to play with other people, especially if those rules allow to trap your opponents or otherwise inder them...

Even more interesting would be a way to allow players to move the roaches (maybe alternatively), it would create a "living dungeon" and inject a little strategy in the game. Or just randomly make one of the player the target at every couple of turns, and then just move the roaches in their usual manners (ie : closest tile to the player and so forth)

So what do you all think?
11-23-2007 at 10:47 PM
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calamarain
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Sounds to be a very cool idea in theory. Would there be a set board on which you place tiles, or would there be a board you build yourself? (like Settlers of Catan, or Carcassonne)

I think the latter would work very well. That way, each game is not only distinct in the roaches put down, but in the board you play on. Some very simple rules could lead to some very varied games.

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[Last edited by calamarain at 11-24-2007 12:05 AM]
11-24-2007 at 12:04 AM
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Gutter
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Custom board like Catan are cool, but they might not be suitable for frequently moved pieces. After a while, the floor tiles would be all over the place.

But a "modular" board might do the trick. You create a few larger tile that can be mix and matched together to create a bigger dungeon. They could be themed tiles (like the DROD "skins"), but as long as their entrance and exits are known (they could be multiple one, but always to same for every cards)

So if the game comes with 6 cards, each with a toom on both side of the cards, and you want to make a 4 section "dungeon", you could create huh... 960 (did I get it right?) different dungeons with the cards.

The ennemies would be randomly placed based on instructions on each card sections, so you'd have a different dungeon but with a consistant feeling everytime.

[Last edited by Gutter at 11-25-2007 03:01 AM]
11-25-2007 at 02:56 AM
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coppro
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
How about a two-stage game? The first would be to assemble the board (á la Carcassonne), the second would be to play.
11-25-2007 at 04:33 AM
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Sillyman
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
As for the frequently-moved tiles not working with a Catan-style board, the answer is simple. Multiple layers! A bunch of single square walls, floors, water tiles, pits, hot tiles, open doors, etc., and some flat platforms, trapdoors, and closed doors, and full 3-d monsters and delvers and orbs (And maybe NPC's. Maybe.), and they all stack up!

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11-25-2007 at 04:50 AM
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
That could work.
11-26-2007 at 03:52 PM
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calamarain
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
This is sounding like an interesting project.

If people are seriously interested in trying to make one of these (this entire thread may of course just be idle discussion), then may I make a few pragmatic suggestions...

Cheapass Games

Follow this philosophy. They just provide the basics - the board, any cards that are required etc. Everything else it's assumed that the players already have from several other boardgames, or can be improvised. For example, they do not provide pieces, counters or dice, on the basis that once you have one set of pieces and counters, they'll work for any boardgame. Same for dice - pretty much every house has at least one die lying around.

Unless Erik is willing to make this an official commercial DROD product (there's going to be a limited market, so this is unlikely), we're going to have to make the entire thing easily downloadable and printable onto standard A4 paper/card, so that the player can assemble it.

We can probably assume that the player can provide counters if needed, and dice if they're going to be used. Anything special should probably not be required - for example, it's not unreasonable to expect the average person to have a few six-sided dice lying around. It is unreasonable to expect the average person to have four, twelve or twenty sided dice lying around.

Furthermore, the pieces would have to look good both in colour and black-and-white, since not everyone will have easy access to a colour printer.

Does all that sound reasonable? Are people seriously interested in trying this, or just idly discussing? :)

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11-26-2007 at 04:08 PM
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Ezlo
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
I know I'm seriously interested.
11-26-2007 at 05:57 PM
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
I am too.

calamarain wrote:
It is unreasonable to expect the average person to have four, twelve or twenty sided dice lying around.
What? You mean not everyone plays D&D?
11-26-2007 at 07:01 PM
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calamarain
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Someone Else wrote:
calamarain wrote:
It is unreasonable to expect the average person to have four, twelve or twenty sided dice lying around.
What? You mean not everyone plays D&D?
I did say the average person :P Not everyone is enlightened.

And just for the record, I don't have any d4s, d8s or d12s lying around, and only a single d20. I tend to play board and card games rather than D&D like games. e.g. Settlers of Catan, Munchkin etc.

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11-26-2007 at 07:42 PM
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coppro
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
It's worth noting that this forum has the sort of people who would, given the opportunity, use a few cards to substitute for an n-sided die.
11-26-2007 at 11:17 PM
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NoahT
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
This thread may be of interest. I don't know how many of the ideas there could be implemented into a board game, but surely some of them would work.

-Noah

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[Last edited by NoahT at 11-27-2007 02:35 AM]
11-27-2007 at 02:31 AM
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Gutter
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (+1)  
Using a fully customizable board is too much for the scope of this game. Working on a board setup for 45 minutes when I want to play BattleLore is ok, but not if I want to play a quick game of DROD... Game like BattleLore and Catan are based on complicated base material (War and resources development/gathering), but a DROD board game would be based on DROD, which has pretty simple rules, so making them complicated wouldn't fit.

calamarain: Yeah I like that cheap ass game thing.

Following those ideas would probably mean not using "movement cards" as printing a bunch of cards might be a burden for the players, but I can't figure out other ways for movement that would make the game more than just a game of chance (like with dices). If anyone knows a mechanism that allow to play with dice, but with some strategy to it, please share :)

Of course, we could use a regular playing deck with simple rules. Remove all the cards between 6-10, keep the 1-5 cards for movements, and the Jack or better as rotation cards. But this will not allow for "cooler" DROD themed cards, like a card that allow you to deploy a mimic, spawn a creature in your opponent's room and whatsnot.

If we are going to use A4 or letter paper, each "dungeon section" will be 8x10 floor tiles (thats assuming a 1"x1" floor tile size) and that might not be enough to create a big enough dungeon for 4 players... 1"x1" is great because we could use standards D&D/Game workshop figurines on it, which would look better than a paper game piece, and if we find a figure with a big enough sword, it might even be used to show Beethro's orientation :)

We'll probably have to define the game equipment before defining any rules, but we might have to define the rules to know what equipment we need :)

Anyway, in my head, and assuming that we use a combination of movement cards and a room based modular board, a simple turn sequence would be :

-Define Initiative (through some undetermined way) This is for two reasons : To vary the gameplay sequences, and to determine which players the critters will go after in a situation when 2 or more players are in the same room.

-Each players put their "movement" cards in play in secret, behind a screen or just by playing them face down (between 1-5 cards, depending on the hand size)

-Based on initiative, each player show and play their 1st movement card. So the "quickest" player plays first. The next quickest player show a card and plays it, and so on until everyone played all of their cards.

You can't move on a tile occupied by a player already. If it happen, you lose your movement. Some rule could be determined based on initiative too.

Alternatively, if you walk into the a space in front of a player's sword, you die and respawn in your starting room.

Assuming that every movement are done at the same time, this would mean that if you walk in a sword path AND any other players are in YOUR sword's path (including the player who is about to kill you), that player dies too. So dying can actually be used as a "grand stand" where you can try to take other players with you.

-Any critters in the player sword's path dies and that player takes it as a victory counter.

-Being placed randomly, it might be impossible to make it that the critters are "strategically" placed to be killable, like in DROD. So a critter that touches you will not kill you. Instead the critter is removed from play and you lose 1 victory token.

If you don't have enough victory points, you die and respawn.

-The players refill their hands with X cards, to replace their movement cards.

-Critters with one or more player in their room moves. If there is more than one player, the slowest one becomes the target. If the "quickest" player find himself in the path of a critter, it's just too bad for him :) (unless he has some "quick escape" card in hand or whatever)

Critters would move in a simplified mimic of DROD. For example, roaches would always move to the closest tile toward the player, prefering a left/right move before a up/down one (in case of an impassable tile) and bats would do the same but ignore impassable tiles.

Those movements would be decided by all the player together, so the rules have to be simple enough not to confuse everyone.

-Define initiative and restart the turn :)

Thats pretty much where I am so far... Winning would be with the victory points, but other mode of play could be cool too (2vs2 capture the flag, which you lose of you die and so on)

Wow, I didn't realize how long that was... Hopefully my grammar is not too awfull...
11-27-2007 at 02:40 PM
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Gutter
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
As a followup : I checked the cheapass game website, and I had missed it before, but this is a commercial site... I like the idea of "expansion pack"

Maybe not for commercial purpose given that we are riding on Erik's good will :), but expansion packs could easily be done to diversify the dungeon. It could be composed of a single dungeon section card, with some "accessories". For example, you could have drop down floors on one cards (the red floors in DROD) and the expansion would come with "fallen" floors counters, that the player would place on the board after they leave a red floor tile.

Those expansion could even come with special movement cards, to sweeten the deal.

The same could be done with switches and doors or a lot of other DROD mechanism...

[Last edited by Gutter at 11-27-2007 03:19 PM]
11-27-2007 at 03:18 PM
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calamarain
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Bear in mind the danger of overcomplication. If players are fiddling with a lot of board pieces and a lot of monster/player/token pieces then it will be quite easy for them to be moved, swept away, lost etc. Yes, by the very nature of a DROD boardgame, it will be reasonably complicated, but we don't want to go over the top.

If we're seriously going to do this, we need to start with a nice simple layout and idea. Then, things can be added on as desired.

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11-27-2007 at 03:26 PM
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Gutter
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
I'm all for it... I'm a programmer first, but I do have a couple of game design under my belt (hopefully commercial one, working on a few prototype right now to show at game conventions). Working on a DROD boardgame with the community (as opposed to a commercial game in secret or with a few friends) will only help me learn new stuff.

Moving a lot of pieces would be cumbersome, but unless we "stack" pieces it shouldn't be so bad. And the game design shouldn't allow for stacking (ie, No two players/critters can be on the same tile at the same time)

What would be cool to (and in the spirit of Drod:EA) is if a "board designer" would be made available, so that players could make more complicated boards and print them as opposed to stacking a million room pieces together.

[Last edited by Gutter at 11-27-2007 03:58 PM]
11-27-2007 at 03:56 PM
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calamarain
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Alright then, let's talk seriously.

We are assuming the board will be printed out. This generally means A4 size for most people. The board should not be larger than that which can be printed on 4 A4 pieces of paper. Since there will be margins, these may well need to be cut out first.

Regarding the pieces... generic things like roaches and that can probably be represented by counters the player can provide. Coins or suchlike. The spaces on the board should be large enough to hold them.

The Beethro piece will be the harder one to consider, since he'll be larger, moved around the most, and need to have a sword of some kind.


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11-27-2007 at 04:21 PM
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Gutter
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Bethroo could be made as a counter. A single one (or a set of 4, each for one player) shouldn't be to bad.

Something like the attached file would be cool, it would allow the piece to be rotated in 8 directions in a given square tile.

(anyway, I have to go to a meeting...)
11-27-2007 at 04:31 PM
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Gutter
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I'm not sure about counter for enemies, but it would work. An option to download "graphical" counter would be a good idea, just to add to the game's atmosphere.

is the thread dying already?
12-03-2007 at 09:55 PM
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Syntax
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icon Re: How about a DROD boardgame? (0)  
Gutter wrote:
is the thread dying already?
Probably not. The development board tends to be somewhat quieter though...
12-03-2007 at 11:16 PM
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