Forgotten Lore

I meant to post this but my mini-crunch on 1.05b side tracked me a bit. Anyway, I did an interview with Phill for Game Set Watch/Gamasutra where I pick open the fun game price scab and also talk about future plans for SI and my new project Rogue Expedition. I’m having a lot of fun putting RE together right now. Design is always the most kick-ass part of the whole process 🙂 I hope to have some interesting posts here soon on how I am approaching this Rogue-like board game on a computer…..influences, design goals, and what I am playing right now for inspiration.

One of the fundamental design concepts of my first game Armageddon Empires was that you had to make a smart effort to gather intelligence about what was going on out in the vast irradiated wastelands that surrounded you. Reconnaissance was a real force multiplier and identifying incoming threats and as well as important targets was a key to survival and eventual victory. In Hell however it seems that there is very little privacy. The Solium Infernum design treats the legions like chess pieces for the most part. There is a lot of “perfect information” for the players to evaluate about the game state. There are some mechanics to obscure the strength and position of agents on the board but they are few and require concerted effort. With that in mind, I thought I would enumerate the known, unknown and the unknown unknown aspects of SI.

The Known

Legion Position, Attributes and Some Attachments: The legions are the main actors/agents on the game board. They have a group of attributes that define how they interact with other agents as well as the ability to have “attachments” placed on them that enhance or increase their powers and abilities. One type of attachment is an evil artifact which is seen by all opponents. The position of a legion unless affected by a ritual is known to all players.

Public Prestige: This is an important known piece of information. It represents all the prestige points gained by the public actions of a player at any given time in the game. It’s also a good indicator of who is leading in the game.

Places of Power: These special locations are always visible as is the status of their ownership and how much prestige they generate for their owner each turn.

Territorial Boundaries: This is pretty obvious but important. Claims on territory are absolute and ownership of territory can only be transferred by following strict diplomatic protocols.

Diplomatic Stances: This is a very important set of information about players and is visible to all players. If someone makes a demand of or hurls an insult at another player, it is done in front of the entire Infernal Conclave. A demand or insult that results in Vendetta can require concentrated effort by the players to resolve especially since prestige is at stake. A player involved in a Vendetta or even engaged in demands and insults by other players is more exposed to further “diplomatic entanglements.”

Items in the Bazaar: The Bazaar provides players with legions and most of their power ups (attachments). All players have perfect information about the items for sale and the minimum bids needed to purchase them.

Public Objectives: Each player chooses a public objective as part of their avatar’s build. The public objectives conform to the seven deadly sins and generally operate in a similar theme. The Sloth public objective for example requires that you end the game never having made a demand or insult….perfect for the Archfiend who wants to turtle away in his own private corner of Hell. Of course knowledge of this aspect may signal a lot to all the other players concerning the aims, objectives and strategies that will be pursued.

Conclave Tokens: The conclave tokens function as the game clock. Depending on the number of tokens you selected when you created the game, once that number has been reached (a chance to pull a token exists each time a turn is processed) the Infernal Conclave convenes and chooses a new ruler. If you have pulled 14 of the 15 tokens then all players know that the end of the game is near and they must take action accordingly.

The Unknown

Avatar Attributes and Perks: The key aspects of each players avatar are concealed from the other players. This means that you don’t know the scope of powers and actions available to any given player. Some perks can affect the outcome of the game as well and it is essential that their possession by kept secret. Anything that is secret of course can become known. A prophecy ritual as well as some events can reveal information to players about the attributes, powers and perks of other players.

Combat Card Attachments: These are bonuses that are “attached” to legions to give them an edge in a single battle after which they are discarded. They are generally hidden from other players. Like everything else that is secret, there are conditions (rituals and events) where they can become known.

The Vault: When you acquire an artifact, relic or praetor in the Infernal Bazaar they are sent to your vault. Here they are safe and unseen by your rivals (some rare exceptions included of course). Your decision is whether to deploy them to the board where they will generally be of more use but at a greater risk to be destroyed or even stolen by another player or to keep them hidden in the vault. Additionally all your resource cards are stored in your vault and their number and quality hidden from prying eyes.

Your Orders: It goes without saying that each turn your specific orders are unkown until they are executed. This includes important things like your marching orders for legions and your initiation of rituals.

Your Ritual Chamber: Each player has access to a ritual chamber that has a maximum capacity of 5 ritual slots. Slots are gained by increasing your Prophecy power level. A ritual slot can be used to perform a ritual which is special action like damaging an enemy legion, stealing a relic from a place of power, hiding your own legions from view….. etc. A handful of unholy relics must be placed in a ritual slot to unlock a special ritual power that they can perform. In general your opponents can not see what is going on in your ritual chamber.

Deceit and Prophecy Rituals: The player performing one of these rituals is generally unkown to the target unless the player fails the “detection challenge.” Here the computer rolls two dice for each player and adds the appropriate bonuses (based on the players’ respective power levels, perks and relics owned). If the player performing the ritual exceeds the adjusted roll of the targeted player then the player is not revealed as the performer of the ritual. Players who have achieved level 5 in the Deceit discipline can attempt to frame other players for performing any ritual.

The Unknown Unknown

This is my favorite part of the evaluation of any given system. For a game designer it’s a perishable commodity akin to letting the genie out of the bottle. In my Cults of the Wastelands mini expansion pack it corresponds to the strategy theme of each of the Cults that you encounter. The joy is in the energy of first contact and the palpable sense that you get that all is not as it appears…. that your appraisal or judgments lack something for complete understanding of the situation. In Solium Infernum I’ve tried to use the event system to provide this. There are a range of events that break rules, alter mechanics or simply provide Solomonic decision making. After playing the game several times and having been exposed to their existence and implications you will have broken the seal on the booster pack so to speak but you’ll be left with calculations based on anticipation of how the event deck unfolds. Each player draws a card or cards as the role of Regent is passed around the board. At this point I haven’t decided on whether to even include a detailed listing of the events in the appendix of the manual. Discovering the deck would seem like part of the fun and challenge. If I do include it for reasons of fairness (the knowledge of the events will be fragmentary for players and dependent on playing time) then I would strongly recommend that you don’t read the appendix at first and enjoy some single player games of discovery.

In most strategy games the resource system forms the base of the design pyramid. All systems process something according to some given rule set. In most interesting systems there is some type of transformation. In a nuclear reactor the kinetic energy of fission products is turned into heat, which eventually usually turns water into steam which imparts kinetic energy to turbine blades which moves a magnetic field relative to a conductor which generates electricity which powers any number of things. In a WW II grand strategy game civilians, iron, oil and rubber are commonly transformed into panzer divisions and aircraft carriers. You get the idea.

In Solium Infernum I wanted to meet the following resource design goals.

1. Control the resource pumps so that there was a clear trade off between guns and butter, action and potential (growth)

2. Control the resource pumps so there was always a scarcity that influenced the player’s decision process

3. Create symmetries in the way the resource sinks worked that influenced the player’s decision process

4. Use randomness to create a sense of expectation… i.e. what’s behind door number 1.

5. Use randomness to force the players the adapt their strategies to unforeseen events.

6. Despite random elements in the resource generation provide the players with a sense of limited control.

7. Decouple the resource generation from the game board so that it was more equitable and not as dependent on the vagaries of geographic distribution

8. Provide interesting ways to transform the resources as well as change the efficiency of the transformation.

As I have explained in a previous entry, the resources in Solium Infernum fall into four flavors: souls, ichor, hellfire and darkness. You request “tribute” from your minions both demonic and human as an order action and the next turn you are presented with a choice of resource cards. The quantity and quality depends mostly on your Diabolism power level. You can however also get additional bonuses to the rolls that determine the tribute quality by acquiring unholy relics, choosing special perks before the game starts, capturing certain places of power or playing some event cards. Once you have selected your resource cards they appear in your tribute section of your “Ministerium” user interface which consolidates all your game information into tabbed areas. Here is a screenshot.

You can organize your cards in the tray by dragging and dropping them. In this particular mode you are being prompted to pay for your bid on an Evil Artifact called the Great Scythe. You drag the resource cards from your tray and drop them on to the eight card slots in the top half of the dialogue box. Once you are finished you click on the commit tribute button to place the bid. This same type of pattern is followed for any order that requires resources to power it….. i.e. performing a ritual, increasing your avatar’s attributes/powers, responding to demands, creating combat cards etc.

Soren Johnson of Civ and Spore fame made a recent post on his Dev Blog “Designer Notes” about the Seven Deadly Sins of Strategy Games. His first sin on the list was too much scripting arguing that used unwisely (as a core feature) scripting undermines the rules set/mechanics architecture by dirtying up the decision space aesthetics with lots of exceptions… like triggers and other “story hooks.” I tend to agree with him on this point. Over at QT3 there’s a good thread discussing the whole list and the first sin in particular.

I’m very interested myself in “Emergent Narrative” in strategy games as it’s often called. The ultimate idea would be to have a text/image based story produced at the conclusion of the game that chronicled all the important decisions made by the player and the outcomes of those decisions as well. I think that the old canceled space opera game “Stars Supernova Genesis” promised an HTML type newspaper to be generated during the game and at its conclusion. This would be the Holy Grail of emergent narrative for me. Just how much effort it would be to accomplish something like this is something I’m not exactly sure of. With my limited resources and time I’m not about to take this on…. as the famous saying goes “Don’t look at me. I’ve got my own problems.”

A good question that arose in the QT3 thread is “What are some examples of scripting done well in strategy games?” I’d like to think my Cults of the Wastelands free mini expansion pack could stand muster. Basically the idea was to augment the free form random sand box of the vanilla AE game with some scripted narrative elements…various cults pursuing some type of special agendas. The payoff was the ability to force players to make some interesting decisions like the confrontation with the messengers of the Great Kabaagh. The downside was that once the script has fired the surprise is over and the repeat enjoyment value is diminished.

What triggered off this whole blog entry was a combination of Soren Johnson’s post, the discussion on QT3 and my own work over the last couple of days on Solium Infernum. I’ve returned the the Events system and have been fleshing out some of the more involved and intricate events and there’s a huge scripted element with some of them. For a little background on all this you can read this post here where I discuss my original intentions to have some type of event system for Armageddon Empires. The short of it is that I cut it to finish the game but when I took up the design gauntlet for SI, I was intent on working the events idea into the games mechanics.

So in Solium Infernum events are actions that are played by the players as one of their possible turn orders. You can’t just play any old event though. You draw an event “card” each time you are named Regent, an honor which passes from player to player as the game goes on in a clockwise direction. You can easily see who is the current Regent by looking at your Diplomacy tab or reading the turn log entry that is generated each turn making the formal announcement. Depending on the level of your Prophecy power you can keep one or two event cards in your “hand” at any time. If you have a full hand and draw a new card you’ll have to choose one to discard.

The events fall into a range of categories and costs. Generally the more targeted the event’s effects, the more it costs to play. Many events don’t cost any resources at all to play because they affect all players or a random player (sometimes including the player who played the event). The effects are also usually doubled edged swords with a “screw you” twist. For example, many of the events are posed as “Decrees of the Infernal Conclave” which as a Lord of one of the Great Houses of Hell you are compelled to comply with. The “Infernal Legion Tax” decree forces every player to pay a tribute card for each legion that it controls on the board or lose Prestige points accordingly. Not a bad event to play if you have a warlord neighbor who has put together a large collection of legions and you only have a few to whip the Lemures into shape.

Some of the events are more involved and this is where the scripting comes in. For example you can play the “Angelic Host of Divine Retribution” event and a host of angels will descend on the board and start causing trouble for the players with the most prestige points. The challenges here were very similar to those I encountered with the Great Kabaagh. Pick your targets, do the pathfinding, dish out some retribution, check your status and when your mission is accomplished fly back to Heaven. Special scripted events like this often get their own piece of artwork. Here is the art for the Angelic Host event