Wesnoth as a strategic board game

[bery]

who is interrested about making board conversion of this great game?

[bery]

The problem is how to create board game that can be played as easy as wesnoth without changing the atmosphere.

My idea for beginning:

-played on premade paper map on hex grid
-every unit has its own paper figure and card
(paper figures are not the problem i will upload some docs about how do i mean it, cards will also have two bars, for HP and XP)
-some dices
-you need something like coins for money

the point of the game should be the same, we just need to discuss how to change the rules about atacking and XP because it is quite boring to calculate all during the play.

Does anybody like the idea?

[Viliam]

It was discussed here; so maybe you find some of those ideas interesting.


I think you need some HP / XP / gold tokens. Probably reduce the numbers for HP and XP, to reduce the number of tokens needed, and make calculations easier. Movement point tokens are not necessary - the unit should just spend all its movement points in one move.

Reduce a number of units -- unless you want to make from paper 100 unit types, at least 5 pieces of each one. One possible hack is that you allow to recruit only 1 unit of a kind. And the unit on the higher level will be played with the same paper figure / card, it will just have a level token, and different stats.

Simplify some rules... e.g. lawful units should not get "+25%" bonus in day, but rather "+1" bonus; that's much easier to calculate.

You not have to implement everything. E.g. just ignore traits and multiple advancement paths. And instead of saying "units with ability A can do X" just write on the cards of those units "this unit can do X".

And the most important thing is...


Make a playable version 0.1 as soon as possible. So that people can actually play it, enjoy it, and propose improvements. Because there are many preople who propose a cool idea, but only a few of them ever make a prototype (the board game idea was also proposed here 1 1/2 year ago, just noone made it).

[bery]

Inside the zip files there are PDF documents.

There is one page with 3 elvish archer figures and 1 card for them.

There is not going to be used XP system. The system of the game is going to be a little easier, quicker and less complicated

In another zip file there is excel file with tables for the game but it is only in slovak language right now(its easier to develop in mother language ).
I will upload changed versions in the future.

If you have any idea please post it here

[bery]

Board Wesnot

I have allready made a site for this project so if somebody is interrested you can join here.

(site was uploaded just yesterday so its in progress right now, it needs few days/weeks)

Some parts allready work you can register, use forum, PM, upload and addNEWS. So platform is ready

[zookeeper]

A lot of details must be removed or simplified a lot to make a table version really playable - resistance and ToD bonus calculations are an example. I think it's important to think for a while which parts of Wesnoth are the most important parts of the gameplay, so a system of including them in a meaningful way into the table version can be designed.

I think the basic defense-determined-by-terrain, ZoC, ToD cycle and villages (income and healing) are one of the core features.

For a table game for multiple players, I'd perhaps like to have simultaneous turns (each player writes orders simultaneously, which are then revealed and resolved simultaneously), to eliminate some unnecessary waiting.

[Viliam]

Thanks, zookeeper!
I was also thinking along the way "which parts of Wesnoth are essential, and which could be sacrificed to make board game easier". My list is basicly the same as yours:

Essential:
- time of day
- defense by terrain
- zone of control
- income by villages
- melee and ranged attacks

Non-essential:
- levelling and xp
- leaders

Not sure:
- damage types
- hitpoints

Levelling and XP -- I think most of units in multiplayer are first-level units. If the game would consist only of first-level units, it saves a lot of work... no XP, simple upkeep, less unit types.

Leaders -- the purposes of leader are (a) recruiting and (b) losing the game when your leader is killed. It would not very different if we changed the rule that "you lose the game when enemy units steps on your keep"; if you imagine that the unit guarding the keep is your leader, it's almost the same.

Hitpoints -- these add a lot of work, but without them, there is no healing. I was thinking about the system where each unit has 2 hitpoints... when it is hit, it receives a damage counter, when it is hit again, it dies. Villages and healers remove the damage counter.

Damage types -- I am not sure how much of the game atmosphere would be lost by removing these.


My idea of the board game is like this:

Each player starts with some money. At the beginning of the first turn they recruit the first unit on the keep. Other recruiting is done only at the end of turn; there must be one unit in keep, and the recruited units are places to hexes adjacent to keep (no castles).

The units are pieces of paper. They can be "tapped" (meaning that they already moved this turn) and can receive one damage counter. Each unit type has a chart displaying movement points by terrain, defense by terrain, alignment, resistance by damage type, attacks, cost.

The movement points must be spent at once, so it is not necessary to remember remaining movement points, only whether a unit has already moved or not. When a unit gets to a village, a side token is put on that village.

When attacking, the attacker and defender have only 1 strike each. The attacker adds his "attack strength", "time bonus" (+1 for lawful in day, etc), and D10 roll -- if it is more than opponents "defense" based on terrain plus "resistance", the opponent is hit; he receives a damage counter or dies. Then opponent hits back using the same attack type (melee / ranged).

The turn has the following phases:
1. calculating income, healing
2. moving and attacking
3. recruiting

Instead of upkeep, I would rather suggest that player cannot recruit more units than they own villages. (At the beginning of the game, each player receives 3 villages, so they can recruit 3 starting units.) For undead, walking corpses are not included in this count. If during the game player has more units than villages, this is not a problem -- only they cannot recruit more.

Healing -- units on villages, and units with regeneration can remove their damage counter. Healers can remove 1 damage counter from adjacent unit.

Note: I tried to make rules for units as simple as possible, to allow players have a lot of units (like 10 or more), because I think that 15 units with 2 HP and 1 strike reflect a Wesnoth feeling better that e.g. 4 units with 20 HP and 4 strikes... and with 15 units with 20 HP and 4 strikes, each turn would be very long.

[Elvish_Pillager]

That's like giving each unit a 20-1 melee attack. IMO, this isn't good. IMO, hitpoints are a necessity.

Essential:
- time of day
- defense by terrain
- zone of control (and thus, the same whole movement system)
- melee and ranged attacks
- hitpoints

Non-essential:
- levelling and xp
- damage types
- most abilities
- traits

Not sure:
- gold, income by villages, leaders, etc
- differing movement types

...


What I want is a plastic card for each unit, with a nice little dial built into it that lets me track how much HP it has left.

Also, I want real figurines on the board, corresponding to the cards in some obvious way. We should go wholesale.

[bery]

about HP:

there have been some discussions with Viliam about HPs and one of the ideas was to set some "damage counters" instead of HPs.

It means that your unit can stand just some damage, the damage counts and after its higher than its "default counter" it dies. This damage counter can be
healed by healers or in villages.

about figures and cards:
if every fugure has its own card it is killing too much time and its too dificult.
idea is to have just one info card about your class of units, and figures from hardened paper. Figures will also have their paper "bases", they will help them to stand on the board and they will have also numbers on their UPside(bases with different colours so there can be more players with the same faction ).

these numbers 1-10 (from one to maximum number of units) will represent every unit on some "counter board" => board with numbered columns with numbers. numbers inside columns will represent every players unit in the game and their "counter" status. You will have some pointers on the counter board to show exact counter status. Maybe we should use some tokens with unit graphics just for better ilustration of which unit is which number

[Elvish_Pillager]

if every fugure has its own card it is killing too much time and its too dificult.

You can't record damage on an individual figurine.

[bery]

if every fugure has its own card it is killing too much time and its too dificult.

You can't record damage on an individual figurine.

in my opinion it is possible with that "counter board".
I will write more infos about it later, i will add some graphical vision, to make it easier to imagine.

[Jester]

Think pokemon damage counter, like those enat blue-glass stones

[bioman]

Think pokemon damage counter, like those enat blue-glass stones

You'd need a lot of glass stones and where would they go? (the stones that is). Also, XP would aslo need its own set of stones (as the counting method for both should be the same..)

I like EP's idea of a dial, but again - you'd neef more than a few dials..

Either way, the amount of hp/xp would need to be scaled down a bit(lot). This would proably mean that 1 xp per attack wouldn't work though..

[Jester]

Think pokemon damage counter, like those enat blue-glass stones

You'd need a lot of glass stones and where would they go? (the stones that is). Also, XP would aslo need its own set of stones (as the counting method for both should be the same..)

I like EP's idea of a dial, but again - you'd neef more than a few dials..

Either way, the amount of hp/xp would need to be scaled down a bit(lot). This would proably mean that 1 xp per attack wouldn't work though..

what about havind the lvl 1 have about 10 hp, and a standard lvl 1 attack would be 1-3 or something...

[bery]

okay with Viliam we had another idea about leveling:

every class of units, such as elvish archer, elvish druid etc. should have 5 skill cards. Those skill cards (bonus cards or however you will call them) will be all unique. If your unit kills another enemy unit, you can choose which skill the unit will gain. One unit can hold just 2 bonus skills at the time and every skill can be used just once at time.

So you have 3 elvish archers in the game and 5 possible upgrages. You elvish archer kills enemy unit and you choose one of the bonuses. After you choose one its binded together with leveling elvish archer, until the archer is not killed. You can not use the same bonus skill at the same time twice.

One unit can have just 2 bonus skills at the time. so you can own 3 elvish archers, one with 2 bonuses, second with 2 bonuses, third with one only.

If your unit kills another then second enemy(third, fourth...) unit it does not gain any other bonus skill. (maybe can be healed a little bit
)It is because in original Wesnoth normal units can level only until 3rd level.

There should very wide sort of skills, some should be just with one special ability, for example regeneration, some should be combined (for example one more attack and +2HP etc.) skills too.