History of the Wallstorming World - The Game

 This Sunday we played out an insane concept. Trying to teach, run and complete a game for 12 players in a game half finished. Why would anyone put up with that? for me, for my birthday. I do this every year.

Bannisters Big Bad Birthday Bash Bonanza

So for this year, I want to build up some lore & story of the town of J'semby. I need to know some critical things: What buildings needed to be torn down, to make room for the farms and orchards needed to grow enough food for the population to survive.

How much material from the old town will be needed, what stone needs to be repurposed for what other buildings? Where will new wood come from?

In the past, having large conversations usually devolves into chaos, I either need to break it apart into bite sized turns, or break down the concept into bite sized decisions.

A quick way to do this is with cards. Each card has its own rules ON the card, so you can quickly surmise what you can and can't do, no need to ask or look up the rules.

This can sometimes also mean, players can think about their turns in advance, looking over their cards and comparing to others.

So I started with the core premise. what do I want. I want players to choose buildings in their district that are no longer useful, to them, and tear them down, to make room for food production.

The city is under Siege. Refugees are flooding into the city as the zombies approach. supply lines are being squeezed, then shut down. Its a calamity, when people get stressed they panic. multiple refugees in the same location means unease, distrust, mob mentality.

When things get bad, then worse, the city officials need to act. They have too many people for the buildings that exist, they need to house them or lose them. Promoting someone else to take in the masses might be a good idea, maybe load them on ships? 

That's stage one of the game, dealing with the overwhelming numbers. Refugees pouring into the city.

What I did was create a deck builder game. you 'place' all your city buildings, use them to create resources. All starting cards, (cept maybe 2-3) will allow you to draw more cards. Since your hand is 5 cards, with a good draw, you can play out all your cards, and get no inefficiency.

When you get your first refugee, you 'might' get 4 non-redraw cards, but that last one will still allow you to play out your whole hand.

The 2nd and 3rd refugee though, is guaranteed to create a blockage, you now have potentially 6 cards that will block your ability to play more. With a worst case 10 cards left in your deck, you get 3 unrest cards (guaranteed to create further unrest) so you will need to bargain with your neighbours to unblock you.

Each turn after, you need to spend some resources to 'extend' existing buildings. house the refugees, and even feed them somewhat, they will 'pay' at first.

So as a deck builder, the whole idea is to 'clear out dead / not good cards, and buy in better cards. The mechanic of getting ;stuck' with refugees worked out ok, but it was a harder slog than I expected. 

I had 80% regular players, but even they struggled to get the machines rolling in their minds. 

I had to make a decision. Abandon this version mid play, and go back to the earlier drawing board, OR struggle through it.. at what cost and what reason.

Obviously, flipping the script meant 2-3 players dropped out. which would have happened if I continued the struggle. 

The 'simpler' game was not working, it had too many holes. So we closed out at 5 with 'some' parts working, others not so much, but at least I had the 'data' for this run to work from.

Afterwards I thought about it (alot) and thought that maybe a tableau game would suit better. Place out the buildings at the start, AS the map. figure out your meeple=>food from the start, and work from that.

Instead of complex 2-3 possible actions per building, and multiples of wood/stone/coin to build. 

Just boil it down to what's plausible within 1 turn, break larger buildings into 2, 3 or 4 cards to represent costs, i.e. "wood" and show the cost & benefit at the top.

Instead of drawing refugees, you 'place' them, some buildings can cope with some spares (church) and even convert them into meeples (labour) so people feel like its a bad idea to tear down a church later on. (sure the land and the stone could be put to better use.. but the housing for refugees is awesome.

The whole point would be to have some trade-off for each building. 

I want lumberyards to 'store' wood, stone masons to carve stone, neither of which exists inside the city walls at first. you need to build them.

I want townhalls, guilds, theatres, other kinds of buildings that have a use, but in some ways are useless for a whole city to have multiples if the walls are closed and food is scarce.

So back to the drawing board, and we'll see what happens next.

       

Chatting with AI - regular blog

 I think this is kind of weird and kind of funny, you need to take a lot with stride of the AI and its quirks, but if you do, you can gleam some insights.

Explaining your game to AI

to see how much it works,

and trying to ignore the sycophantic nature

    Image Prompt: AI helping me write the game.

The Latest AI is a funny thing, it loves to tell you what a great idea you had, and how it can help you use it. Like any thing in life, you need to control yourself, not get caught up in the nature of the salesman and treat everything like a trap, BUT still enjoy the experience along the way.

I've been explaining my game system to AI and getting it to walk through stress tests and such things. I used to do this with friends every Sunday, but patient can get thin, people have their own desires and push them, and you can get lost in the weeds.

I've explained how one time, we had a 4hour, single combat round, to try to understand HOW this stuff worked. It was the lynchpin that eventually broke up our group, yet it was also a very powerful learning experience that taught me a LOT about roleplaying, gaming, and games mastering that has helped my career as a professional Games Master.

So having a 'robot' to talk through, rationally, (if you can ignore the constant praise) the game rules, its quite nice.

What has it helped me with? blocks of text. that's it.

Each and every time it had an insight? it was just telling me what I already told it, or what I hadn't yet told it.

What it did do, was structure out 12 paragraphs, in a clear and concise way that I had pages of fluff and drivel. 

My 12 archetypes, sure, I had them 'sorted' but clearing up a niggling word or a phrase to match the pattern of the other 11, was very helpful. saved me days.. but only because I knew the topic.

If I didn't know this, I might fall into the trap of letting IT do the work, and oh boy, that would have been a disaster.

So often it has dropped a lifestyle or inserted a new one that didn't exist.

My Skills lists have grown, and shrunk a dozen times from missing or false positives added, or morphed lists. Often the skills don't even match the medieval culture, because AI context only goes back ~100k+ tokens. so the first question gets lost along the way.

As a result, I can't just copy paste its work, I always have to take what it says with a pinch of salt, and I need to double check its lists.

What it DOES do well, is 'create' new stuff that is unimportant. Lists of NPC names, professions, career paths, etc, Its.. the stuff in the background.

Have you noticed, with an AI painting, the first glance everything is right.. then when you inspect it.. things are wrong, things in the background are not quite what you'd expect.. from a distance, without scrutiny, its all ok, just up close that face in the background has a 3rd eye, or is it an ear, that hair colour is not quite natural, that arm, where did that extra arm come from.

As its is with the background noise of NPCs, at a glance, all ok, all useful, then when you need that NPC ist stats don't match its career, its backstory is a little off from the plot of the game. 

Its ok, I can cross out the parts that don't work, mid game, and proceed. It was saving me 'some' time, but I am prepared just in case, as any half decent GM should be.      ;P

Turning the Blog Around

Its been a long slog of a roller coaster, and I've been sporadic. Honestly, I just didn't have focus. The rules are in several documents, my life is in several locations, I'm all over the place.

So its time to clean it up. 

I'm going to turn this blog into what people used to expect from a Blog.. what I expect from a Blog.. a Web - Log of what happens in another aspect of your life.

This is called Dungeonworld Dev for a reason, it was the development blog, but when I wasn't developing, I was just throwing stuff at the wall, and seeing what stuck. There are over 100 'articles' that didn't. I didn't press publish. For a myriad of reasons, fears and the like.

I might still go back and click publish, but, like I've said before, I'll tag them, so you, dear reader, can see the difference.

What I'm going to do, is push forward with this like a proper log of events. When I Write, Draw, Create or do anything related to Dungeonworld, MY game. I'll blog it in here.

Why? Because I think its what I want to read.. someone else making a roleplay game, and all the trials and tribulations of that process.

Where I'm starting.. 

* I have a 99% complete map for my Kickstarter. since it took a year and a half to get here, that 1% will likely be another 2-3 weekends. I need to scan reworked images, crop them into the giant map, and publish it.
* I have Several, Half finished, roleplay documents. Core Rules for Dungeonworld v4/12, Core Rules for DD12 v0.7, Cataclyzm, barely a chapter, Pirate Cave, barely a chapter, Alita ripoff, some NPCs, Paladin Concept, a design draft. An Almost finished Magic Synopsis, written in by my in world alter ego.
* I have a card game, to help GMs make plots for that session/scenario/campaign, based on player input.

I have several ideas for several other things.. another map, but for a city, another map, but for a mega-dungeon.. these need to wait, til map #1 #2, #3, #4 and #5 are finished..

I might migrate this.. I think, a cleaner start might be a good idea.. but maybe not? I might duplicate this to another forum, such as medium or minds.. and 'start' from the next post, or maybe this one..

Good luck to me..

Lets see if this pans out, or its just the coffee speaking.