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Long Game 43: Under the Banner of Adonalsium


Seonid

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41 minutes ago, TheYoungPyromancer said:

Thanks Drake.  I think this game would be MUCH more balanced on a rerun with the Autonomy win con change.

I actually do think having an aspect on every world is theoretically a balanced win condition, but just not a very balanced end-game condition unless this happens while every world is still intact. The main thing that is doubtful is the interaction between Ruin's power and Autonomy's sudden death win condition.

In general though, most of the mechanics seemed to jive pretty well with each other. I gave quite a lot of scrutiny to the interactions of shardic abilities and investment roles (see the Adolnasium's Chosen doc :P), and I can say with reasonable confidence that there are no easy gamebreaks (although I did identify some highly powerful synergies for multiple shards).

Game like this is hard to balance, but I'd say the shard games are getting more and more streamlined as time goes on (or at least I think they are; I wasn't around for the last one but I've read the rules and heard stories from it).

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3 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

I actually do think having an aspect on every world is theoretically a balanced win condition, but just not a very balanced end-game condition unless this happens while every world is still intact. The main thing that is doubtful is the interaction between Ruin's power and Autonomy's sudden death win condition.

What if you gave players or shards the ability to put charges towards creating a world? That way, worlds could be restored, helping Autonomy, and hurting Ruin. Or just make that Endowment's Shardic ability.

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3 minutes ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

What if you gave players or shards the ability to put charges towards creating a world? That way, worlds could be restored, helping Autonomy, and hurting Ruin. Or just make that Endowment's Shardic ability.

Huh. I logged on to glance over the shard at the very moment you posted this.

If we were to make it work like it is implied in the mistborn trilogy, it could be an action that requires two shards working together to make a new planet.

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On 01/04/2018 at 11:16 PM, MonsterMetroid said:

Congrats HH and Pyro it was fun to play and observe everything unfold, see how much chaos and distraction ruin unfolded and HHH take advantage of the rule change so thoroughly.

 

Edit. Just curious @Megasif why? :)

Just for fun :P Hope you liked it. 

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“My breath to you, my breath become yours,” The man whispered urgently. Breath left him, and entered Steel. The room popped into even more color than it had before. He had probably just achieved 6th heightening. 

“Now go.” The man was shaking, terrified. 

Steel turned to leave, and then stopped. “If you go to Urithiru, you could find safety.”

The man pulled out a gun. “I’ll be safe as soon as you leave.” So Steel left.

- - -

Hallendren truly was beautiful. Steel gazed on the city from above, having visited all three addresses. All three families had been terrified. This man was cruel, and only he had the ability to stop him. He had made his decision. He would not awaken the lightning. He was going to take Eobard down. 

He would be on Roshar, of course. The realms were closest together there. Phyl came up to him. 

“Perhaps we should run.”

Steel shook his head. “I was given this speed for a reason. I was returned for a reason. I need to stop him. But I can’t let him hurt anyone. So I need to find him.” He scrunched his face, thoughtful. “Perhaps the spren will know more.”

Phyl vined her way onto Steel, because it was harder for her to keep up now. And then with a CRACK, Steel left. A blur of color was all one could see. 

- - -

Well since I didn’t manage to finish my RP half decently, it will return! Someday I’ll get around to writing a conclusion 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alright - a month late, but I've finally found time to put together a short retrospective. My thoughts immediately post game can be found towards the end of the Nalthis doc, where I ended up participating in quite a long discussion. But this is the official bit.

How did this game work? Well, compared to previous Shard Games, I think that by and large, this game has been the most balanced of the lot, in terms of balancing the different factions against each other from game start. The player count made deciding on a team size for Hoid/Khriss rather difficult - 2 conversions apiece meant precariously small teams, but 3 conversions apiece meant a game that was practically unwinnable for the village, especially when the likelihood of Shardic conversion was added into the mix.

In retrospect, I think that Shards should have required more effort to release from containment. The ease of releasing Shards significantly changed the dynamics I was hoping for.

How about the Shardic Win Conditions? Autonomy was probably too easy. That got an easy fix for future games - "have aspects + autonomy outnumber living players." As a replacement win con, it's elegant, simple, and reasonably balanced. Ruin might have been too easy as well - but that one is a rough balance between making it possible and making it inevitable. I think that letting Autonomy's aspects or Khriss's invested Shards makes the win con reasonable.

The others were fun but not extremely impactful. Endowment was potentially unbalanced, but part of that was just how few kills ended up getting used. Ruin (without even getting converted) decided to blow up worlds instead of using kills, and started by getting rid of the world that let you use stolen investiture for a kill. The lynch failed a couple of days in a row, and none of the players who were given roles that could potentially kill wanted to use them - I think this community has an aversion to using vig kills for some reason. On paper, the amount of potential kills and the amount of potential protects seemed alright. But the way it turned out in practice, it didn't end up that way. A possibility to prevent such a thing would be to limit Endowment to a single Returned at a time - if they Return a second player, the first floats away forever. That could incentivize Returned to use their suicide ability, too - to get some utility out of their death instead of going gentle into the good night whenever Endowment wants to bring another one back.

So, @Sart, a bunch of your analysis was correct. With most of the players with kills available not using them, and Endowment able to Return someone every night, the game could have dragged on forever. Instead it ended in a sudden death win con that nobody knew about, but frankly, that wasn't too much better. A lot of that wasn't inherent in game design, though - it was emergent behavior that came out of this specific constellation of players. I'd love to run this game again, with a few fixes. Maybe I'll try it again if the next Shard game ends up in a resolution that makes sense for the story.

Anyways, it was fun (if stressful) for me, and I hope it was fun for the rest of you all as well! See you around these parts.

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This game is ready to close. Thanks to Seonid and Rae for running another great sequel to the Shard games. Thanks to everyone who played as well. We could never have such great games without all of you. Congratulations to both HH and Pyro for your wins, especially Headshot. 

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, just get a hold of SeonidAlvron, Orlok or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list (and the GM PM group), but we and the committee (Aonar, Aman, El, Joe, and Stink) would be more than willing to help out in any way we can. 

You can also post game ideas, ask questions, and get feedback from everyone over in the Art of Game Creation thread too. With all the games we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs who can help you refine any game you're working on.

Thanks again to everyone who played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

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