Wesnoth as a board game??

[Shadowfury333]

why not just have figurines on the board, and the cards to the side.

That's what I was trying to say.

EP, I was replying to some of the other posts.

BTW great minds think alike

[ryn]

Wouldn't it be simpler to have a standard piece with the unit name printed on it? The card would be put aside until the unit does something that requires it (as I hope people understood from what I said earlier) and maps could be printed out easily enough (if they're larger than a piece of paper they can just be glued on a hexagonal piece of cardboard or whatever) resistances can be printed on the back of a card so its up to players to decide if they want to play with them. To do day and night you would have a piece of paper on which are listed all possible daylight states. You would move some sort of counter/coin along the different sections every time its the first player's turn. Keeps don't have to come with the map - you can put pieces of cardboard on the map so that you can play with variable number of players. If you had some mechanism to keep the cardboard on during the game and still be able to remove it later, the same thing would apply to terrains.

[Circon]

I really like the boardgame idea, and I think we should simplify it down to about 5 basic units per side. There can be more advanced units, those are rare enough to keep track of. Let everything advance to different units, hehe. Now here's my vision of the game:

Undead: Bat, Skeleton, Dark Adept, Ghost, Skeleton Archer
Elves: Merman, Fighter, Archer, Scout, Shaman
Loyalists: Spearman, Mage, Heavy Inf, Horseman, Naga
Orcs: Grunt, Troll Whelp, Naga, Archer, Wolf Rider. (We can cut poison out of the game, how about that?)

And I like the "unit cards" too.

Skeleton
Undead
Cost: 15 gold
Melee Damage: 5-3, 7-3, 9-3
Movement: 4 hexes
Special: none

Mage
Loyalist
Cost: 20 gold
Melee Damage: 5-1, 6-1, 7-1
Ranged Damage: 6-3, 8-3, 10-3
Movement: 4 hexes
Special: Ranged Attack hits on a 4 or better (assuming dice are 1-10. If dice are 0-9, roll 3 or better.)

Terrain is variable and modular. Keeps are 7-hex pieces one drops onto the board.

This is looking good!

Villages give a plain 2 income and you pay 1 gold per unit level per turn.
(Bother the Loyal trait. Bother traits in general.)
Players have an income of 5 from the start, not 2.


Hmm... we could have resistances, in a very basic form...
Keep the attack types. Skeletons take half damage from Piercing, take double damage from Holy. Drakes are immune to Fire, take double damage from Cold.
Immune, Half Damage, Normal, Double Damage.

Now we need a mechanism for keeping track of each unit's hitpoints.

[Circon]

Time: When the first player takes his first turn, spin an arrow on a disc (or roll a die) to determine starting time. Then change it by 1 each time he starts his turn again.

This should be moved to the Ideas forum, or is that only for Wesnoth the PC game?

[Viliam]

Now we need a mechanism for keeping track of each unit's hitpoints.

Unit has a figure on the board, and a card next to board. Hitpoints are some small coloured items placed on the card. Red items are hitpoints; green items are experience points. (One point for kiling first level unit; two points for killing 2nd level unit, etc.)

The question is, if player has more than one unit of a kind, how can s/he tell which card belongs to which figure.

Possible answer (with a great change to gameplay): player can only have one unit of a kind. Or maybe two, which would have same abilities, but different design (e.g. male/female?). This would be good for small maps with small number of units.

Another answer (without change to rules): There are small items with numbers. Each figure on board has a number, each card has a number. Instead of numbers we can use names, or other identifiers. Or simply, each figure and each card has some symbol (rune?) written on it.

The trait system is unnecessary complication. However, if there is a card for each unit, the cards do not have to be the same. So, instead of saying "this unit is quick", it would only be like "this card is Elven Fighter with movement 6; that card is Elven Fighter with movement 7". When recruiting Elven Fighter, player can either choose a card, or must get all Elven Fighter cards, and choose one of them randomly.

[Circon]

The question is, if player has more than one unit of a kind, how can s/he tell which card belongs to which figure.

The trait system is unnecessary complication. However, if there is a card for each unit, the cards do not have to be the same. So, instead of saying "this unit is quick", it would only be like "this card is Elven Fighter with movement 6; that card is Elven Fighter with movement 7". When recruiting Elven Fighter, player can either choose a card, or must get all Elven Fighter cards, and choose one of them randomly.

Wow. Really great. Differentiate units by trait. Then we can give them names too.

I suppose second level cards could be placed on top of the first level unit, like in Pokemon. The new stats show up beneath, but the name and trait (which will be at the top of the card) can stay shown. Then all the 2nd level cards can be made identical.

Nice XP idea. One green counter per kill level, three to level up.
HP will still problematic though. Nobody wants to keep track of, say, 17/42 HP. We have to find a better system than dots, or lower the hp to the point where the top units have about 10 hp.

I think this will be a wonderful idea...

[wobbegong]

I like the idea of unit cards that combine traits into the different units - keeps it simple, also gives some options to developing scenarios as well.

How about divide HP by 5 for a more managable figure? (That way a shaman would heal 1HP to any unit upto a maximum of 2 and a white mage 2HP up to a maximum of 4 - close enough and easy to explain).

Also speed up the combat resolution by changing all units into either 1 or 2 attacks per round - for instance a 5-3 computer unit would become a 2/1 boardgame unit (first attack does 2 damage, second does 1). Slow could remove the first attack perhaps?

Having an attack that does 2 damage rather than means you roll two dice is a toss-up really : it makes the game a bit more random, but speeds it up and involves fewer dice... Would be easy to make an optional rule where you role once for each point of damage as an 'advanced' option.

Keeping day & night is important I think to the feel of the game. One way to keep resistances would be to simply have them add or subtract to the chance to hit rather than the damage - this could also be done for day/night (with a 10% chance of either a hit or a miss no matter what modifiers...).

This would change the rules of Wesnoth noticably, but would allow for a lot of the feel to be kept. Keeping things streamlined and simple is really important in a board game as we no longer have the maths done for us and all the book-keeping kept automatically.

Geomorphic map-boards are fairly easy to make using either squares or hexagons, and would allow for multiple map layouts from a relatively small number of mini-boards. If you want to use big figures then anyone with Settlers Of Catan and the expansion sets has a fair number of big hexes that could be used for much of the terrain (lots of mountains, plains, forests & water - desert for sand and mud/clay for hills?) for a small skirmish fight. Large boards (in terms of number of hexes) would likely be too big for that scale though!

Got me thinking has this - have to see what I've got in old game boxes...

Cheers,

Tim.

[govert]

>Another answer (without change to rules): There are small items with numbers. Each >figure on board has a number, each card has a number. Instead of numbers we can use >names, or other identifiers. Or simply, each figure and each card has some symbol >(rune?) written on it.

Maybe the cards should not have pre-printed numbers, but they should have an empty space, where you can put a loose (sticky?) label with a number on that corresponds with the "hard coded" numbers on the figurines. (or symbols instead of numbers).

Or, you could just write the figurine ID on the card with a pencil.

[Circon]

wobbegong: I strongly dislike making the game into that much of a toss-up. I just had an idea meaning we can keep the hp: Some area on the card, specially treated, where you can write and erase an infinite number of times. (blackboard/whiteboard comes to mind.)
Some bookkeeping, yes, but anyone who played Lone Wolf will know that some bookkeeping is very tolerable.

As to healing...
Heals: At the beginning of your turn, up to 2 units next to this unit gain up to 4hp.
Cures: At the ... up to 3 units next to this unit gain up to 8hp.
These do not stack.

Leadership: +1 damage (I think it actually used to work that way!)
Charge: As usual
Slow: Said before, as usual
Backstab: Keep this
Poison, Invisibilities: Remove

[Elvish_Pillager]

Things are coming along well, however I disagree with this:

Keeps are 7-hex pieces one drops onto the board.

That would.... well... it's odd. How would their locations be chosen? That's kind of unnecessary too... it seems much better just to use the current system. (There can be multiple boards you know! There could even be 'expansion packs'!)

[Circon]

Things are coming along well, however I disagree with this:

Keeps are 7-hex pieces one drops onto the board.

That would.... well... it's odd. How would their locations be chosen? That's kind of unnecessary too... it seems much better just to use the current system. (There can be multiple boards you know! There could even be 'expansion packs'!)

I thought Keep+6Castle tiles in the interests of simplicity and modularity. Certain boards could have "Keep should/must go here" rules. We could include extra castle tiles, too.

Hey, what to do about terrain? Let users print it out? Give it out with boards? With tiles?

[Elvish_Pillager]

Hey, what to do about terrain? Let users print it out? Give it out with boards? With tiles?

Uh.. do just what we do now in the computer, only have the maps on boards rather than data. custom maps can easily be printed on paper...

Although it would be kind of silly (in a good way) to have a metal "castle" piece, in real 3D, that you put on a 2D map...

[turin]

Interesting so far.

for HP, what not have a counter on the figurine that is on the gameboard? There is a game that has something like this. (i just saw the figurine, i've never played the game). that removes the need for a bunch of counters, which become very annoying to keep track of. heck, some people can't keep track of all the houses/hotels in monopoly, and this would need much more than that, and they would be smaller too.

i don't think we should have the 2 hp max on healing. With high HP, it worked, because it could heal 2 hp to each unit, healing a total of 4 units, but with this, it might be best to have no max healing, just a limit of 1 hp per unit.

A metal castle piece would be awesome.

btw, what was the plan for distinguishing different pieces? having a bunch of different-colored flags to put on the figurines would be nice...

[Shadowfury333]

Ifor HP, what not have a counter on the figurine that is on the gameboard? There is a game that has something like this.

I think you are thinking of Warhammer. Anyway, why can't people just write down the present health on a seperate piece of paper?

[Dacyn]

why can't people just write down the present health on a seperate piece of paper?

Games that do not involve writing are better, IMO.
Why not just have 1,5, and 10 HP counters? That doesn't seem hard to keep track of...