In my last post I mentioned my doubts about this Black Cauldron game doing what I needed it to do. Well shortly after publishing the post and wondering if I would just scrap the whole thing, I scribbled down a small game board. This game will NOT be scrapped, though the Meta-Progression probably is.
It sounds a bit silly, and trust me, it even feels a bit silly to me when I think about it, but the simple act of putting the card decks I already made and placing them on the board suddenly opened up a lot more opportunities to explore different possibilities. Rather than keeping these "Chapter Decks" out of sight until the current Chapter concludes, I now have the ability to Activate the next Chapter by shuffling Hen Wen in at random, rather than always being in a concluding end of the deck. Hen Wen still initiates the opening of the next Chapter, but now players can go forward CHOOSING which decks to draw from, with each having their own advantages and disadvantages.
I have also replicated the source material a little bit more closely by recreated the Morva Cauldrons, the seemingly infinite number of black cauldrons that make it near impossible to find the one actual magic Black Cauldron. Unlike the film, where only Taran and his friends learn about the location of the Cauldron through the Fair Folk, I have given the Horned King a fair shot at finding the Cauldron should he choose to engage in the near-impossible task of sorting through a deck of black cauldrons. In this way, the Horned King could dedicate his actions to digging for the Cauldron BEFORE the Chapter 4 deck has even been Activated, which could give him the advantage over Taran who needs the Chapter 4 deck to find and equip the Sacrifice card - after all, true to the source material, even if Taran has the Cauldron, he can't do anything with it until the Sacrifice is made.
I have also replicated the source material a little bit more closely by recreated the Morva Cauldrons, the seemingly infinite number of black cauldrons that make it near impossible to find the one actual magic Black Cauldron. Unlike the film, where only Taran and his friends learn about the location of the Cauldron through the Fair Folk, I have given the Horned King a fair shot at finding the Cauldron should he choose to engage in the near-impossible task of sorting through a deck of black cauldrons. In this way, the Horned King could dedicate his actions to digging for the Cauldron BEFORE the Chapter 4 deck has even been Activated, which could give him the advantage over Taran who needs the Chapter 4 deck to find and equip the Sacrifice card - after all, true to the source material, even if Taran has the Cauldron, he can't do anything with it until the Sacrifice is made.
So I just finished playtesting it with the new board, and I am happy to report that my anxiety about the repetitive direction my original design was taking was squashed! Rather than waiting to move on to a Chapter, we are able to push ahead and double-back as needed, both players can race to achieve the game goal or target different decks to complete different objectives along the way. We did still have to readjust a few things as we went; obviously the decks I made were meant for the original game setup, and a lot of the mechanics we adjusted to the first time now needed to be adjusted back to fit the new format.
Even after playing, we did some discussing about things, component-wise, that this new version of the game would need, since, as I am sure you can see in the picture above, there are a LOT of cards to keep track of as you go! So I whipped up a couple of makeshift player trackers (on scrap paper because that's what prototypes at this stage look like!), and we'll try it out again on another day with the new changes and see if it feels smoother.
So far we have been switching back and forth each time we play, one person as Taran, the other as the Horned King, that way we get both perspectives about how each character is balanced against the other. We only played through this one once, mostly because up until now we've only played through 1 or 2 Chapters. Add some frequent disruptions from children and some game adjusting along the way, and I think this play-through took us about 2 hours. We'll see how it goes with the new changes from the start, and while I can't predict that the children will be less disruptive the next time, at least we shouldn't need to start, stop and reset a turn quite so often if all goes well.
Fingers crossed that I have a winner here. Not for the Game Crafter contest, obviously. Not only am I abandoning any thought of making it Meta-Progressive, but this design is 100% based on copyrighted materials that I have ZERO license for (yet!).
If it works, my next steps are figuring out that solo player possibility (no idea if it even is possible anymore, but only one way to find out!), and then exploring re-masking options if the Black Cauldron element is unobtainable.
Fingers crossed that I have a winner here. Not for the Game Crafter contest, obviously. Not only am I abandoning any thought of making it Meta-Progressive, but this design is 100% based on copyrighted materials that I have ZERO license for (yet!).
If it works, my next steps are figuring out that solo player possibility (no idea if it even is possible anymore, but only one way to find out!), and then exploring re-masking options if the Black Cauldron element is unobtainable.
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