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Having looked over the playtest, I really dislike the Hexes, and the Hex tiles in general.

The Line of Sight example given in the playtest is one of the reasons why i dislike games with Hexes. So far it seems interesting but I just loath Hex based games. If you need a grid go with squares,or just go with out some sort of grid.

I don't mind the hexes, I feel like i can do more with them than squares, with the hexes it feels a little more like 360 degrees of action, and the ranges won't be so weird. Like with squares if you shoot 6 squares away in a straight line it's a good distance, but diagonally would be a lot farther away. If you say diagonals count as 2 spaces, then it's too short. But then I think the majority of the fights in the game will be melee not shooting so much.

For movement and placing models and designing the board I think squares work better. Just waiting to get some feedback from some other testers before I decide which format we stick with. I definitely want to stick with spaces though instead of measuring, that's for the skirmish game. I'm looking for more of a combat-oriented board game feel with this, but the folks that just want to play a tabletop skirmish game with tape measures can still use all of the new units with the original rules instead if they want.. I'm planning to have the boxed game and expansion packs still be a great value for the minis alone if you're not into the board game part If it's not too expensive I might also see about including printed skirmish cards with each set too, since the cards for the adventure game will be slightly different.

 Necros wrote:
I don't mind the hexes, I feel like i can do more with them than squares, with the hexes it feels a little more like 360 degrees of action, and the ranges won't be so weird. Like with squares if you shoot 6 squares away in a straight line it's a good distance, but diagonally would be a lot farther away. If you say diagonals count as 2 spaces, then it's too short. But then I think the majority of the fights in the game will be melee not shooting so much.

For movement and placing models and designing the board I think squares work better.

While I hear you and many people make that argument of hexes versus squares and that you get more movement directions with a hex I don't agree.
Hexes give 6, and squares give 8, the ordinal and cardinal compass points. And there is a simple and pretty accurate way to solve the short or long distance with diagonals from squares. Someone once pointed out to me that one of the editions of D&D solved the wonky ranges with squares and diagonals. The first and every odd square counts as 1 and the second and every even counts as 2. In your example if you "shoot 6 squares" straight line is 6 and if a square is an inch 6 inches, using the odd=1 even=2 you shoot 4 squares but it is 6 inches from center of your models square to center of targets, same shoot diagonal is about 5.75 inches to middle, the next square is over 7 so it works very well and is easy to remember.

Plus Squares solve that annoying problem with the line of sight from hexes, so i can see things 1 away, and 3 away but not 2?


(It is kind of funny that this very question hexes vs square vs grid less) came up today in another message board i frequent)

Was browsing around the game shop yesterday and came up with (stole) some new ideas for the board tiles. How about something similar to Mansions of Madness?



I'm thinking we would do all 6" square tiles. They would have 1.5" square spaces, so they can fit bases up to 40mm for larger beasts. We could do indoor mine shafts, outdoor forests & canyons.. even town tiles where some might be a road, others are the inside of a building like the MoM tiles, and you can stick them all together to make a little town.

Just not sure if those tiles would get knocked around too easily, so maybe we could have clip connectors kind of like TerraClips? We could do the puzzle connector instead, but then you can't really flip them over. It would probably have to be like Descent where each side is for a whole separate map.

Another thing I've been thinking about, is removing the skills from characters (and monsters too). Most of them are geared more toward the skirmish game, and since I've already decided that we'll need to have separate character cards for each game, there's really no need to make every character the same exact thing as the skirmish version.

So, I'm thinking we would have 1 hero for each profession. That makes 8 including Monster Hunters. Each profession will have a special ability similar to the skirmish version that all heroes of that profession will have, and then each hero will also get a unique ability for only them just like Hired Guns now.

So I think that will help streamline things, less math to do and it will let players focus on the action.

Also, I'm going to change the way Encounter Dice work. Currently you have a noise level that increases every battle, and goes up faster if you use guns. So that will mean players won't want to shoot anything, and the noise level will go up real fast anyway. So I think what we'll do now is have the GM start with 1 Encounter die.. and then after each encounter, he gets to add 1 so the encounters get progressively tougher and more common.

I'm going to be working a new test pack that will have the 6" square tiles I mentioned above. It will take a while to finish but I'll probably make that be like an open alpha test kind of thing where anyone can download it. I'll also have all of the cards done too, and standees for the different heroes and monsters so it will be like a full print-n-play game

I like the "build your own" idea, myself.
Hex vs squares doesn't really make a difference to me, provided the system is sensible. I do have to say, though, that I really liked the versatility that those "board" sections you showed offered, with the hexes and unusual shape.

Eric

I think I'm going to have to just stick to squares. I like the hex tiles, but after I printed them out and cut them out and started building I found it really hard to make dungeons without needing extra spacer pieces to close off holes in the walls and the maps just didn't feel right. So, I think we're going to just stick with the tried and true square grid tiles. I've been messing around with the 6" squares and it seems pretty good. I think we would probably go with a look and feel of the Mansions of Madness style artwork with that top down look, and we'll probably do some 3x6" corridor tiles too, and maybe a big 9x9" lair. I'm going to skip the puzzle connector so the tiles can easily be flipped. Most boards will only be like 5 or 6 tiles. The minimum is 1 tile for each hero + 1 mine entrance tile, and 1 objective token per tile.


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Also trying to decide the best way to handle the objectives. I have 2 ideas.. So, the GM places 1 token for each hero anywhere on the board, but can only have 1 per board tile. The hero walks up to it and flips it over for his action.

first is where you have tokens with a ? on one side and an icon on the other. There would be 4 or 5 different icons and the objective cards will have each icon listed on it. Then next to the icon on the card it will tell you what happens or what the hero finds. There would be maybe 15 different cards each with a different thing happening for each icon. So this way the story can unfold randomly. Descent does something like this for their quest cards that you draw on campaigns between missions.

Or the other idea was to just have generic objective tokens and a larger objective deck. You just draw the card and read what happens. The GM can also build the objective deck a special way with specific cards if he wants the adventure to have more of a set storyline. I think this method would be easier, but I just worry it could be more expensive as we'd need more cards printed, and more artwork for them.

Got some new ideas for campaign advancement. Right now, some creatures are worth XP, usually 1 XP for killing a Fiend level beast and 2 for a Monster. And every surviving hero gets 1 point after a game. I have a row of boxes going across the back of the hero card, a total of 40 of them and every 10 earns a +1 to an attribute or bonus skill or item.. like Doctors can get snake oil to hand out to the posse.. You basically would use a dry-erase marker to mark off your xp on the back of the card, and it should take several games to max it out.

Had another idea that I'm pretty much stealing off Descent. How about having a deck of mini-cards with skills and bonuses on them? Descent has a separate deck for each class, which I don't think I want to do. I was thinking 1 deck for all heroes, maybe 30 different cards, we need at least 20 since you will need 5 heroes and 4 skills each. When a Hero earns enough XP, the GM shuffle's the deck and hero draws a card for his new skill or ability. Or, the player just goes through the deck and picks the one he wants? I thought random would be better, to prevent min-maxing? Then as we release expansions later on, they can come with a few new skill cards.

Then players can just keep the card handy with their hero card throughout the campaign, so they don't mark up their cards and mess them up. But, there will also be loot cards too that players can keep or sell after a game.. so you could end up with a lot of cards to keep track of. but I think cards are just more fun and nicer than having tons of charts to roll on for randomness...



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Oh also.. one other idea for campaigns and xp, if we did it with cards is to maybe not include them in the base game to save on costs and have a slightly lower retail price. So the rules would talk about how to just set up and play, and then sell the XP deck separately with a small "how to run a campaign" booklet. Just thinking not everyone will play campaigns, so maybe making it optional would be a fun way to expand the game?

I like it better with the player choosing. Most players want to be on control of their character (think how popular D&D would've gotten if everything about your character was randomly determined, rather than just attributes).

Also, if you do it that way, you can do a LIST of skills, rather than a deck. You could also have the option to have "profession specific" skills. Maybe they're a bit more expensive?

If you're using a "dry erase" idea, the skills could always just be written on the cards.

Eric

Yeah i was thinking a list at first, but cards are just more fun I think since you have something to hold, same with the loot cards. We could do a couple of profession skills, but I didn't want to do full profession decks like Descent does. There's going to be a lot of professions.. All 8 in the main boxed game, and then each new hero in expansion packs will be an all new profession. No duplicates unless you make your own guy from scratch.

I was thinking if there's a deck of like 30+ cards, each skill or bonus point would be a first come first serve basis. If another player in the campaign pics the last +1 HP card, no one else will be able to get it. So that's why I was thinking random might be lead to less bottles of mountain dew being thrown at people for stealing the skill someone else wanted.

Right now with the little check boxes I have what you'll get printed on the card. like it will say at 10 XP you get +1 Str, and 20 you get this new skill, etc. So I was just thinking the mini cards might look nicer and be more fun than just checking off boxes.

Yeah. If you're doing cards, you definitely don't want one deck for each profession. That would just become unmanageable.

As for me, I'd rather have the "upgrades" printed in the rules, choose what I want & track it on my card or something. Card decks mean bent, ripped and lost cards. I like as few items that HAVE to be tracked as possible in my games.

Have you figured out at what point they "level?" I mean, there has to be SOME way for a Henchman to become a professional and a professional to become a leader/hired gun. Right?

Eric

The heroes are all as tough as a gang leader or hired gun, there's no henchmen or professionals. But the monsters have the 3 levels, Monsters, Fiends and Minions. I tried it with normal gangs at first and the heroes just didn't survive too many encounters, but making them all tougher worked a lot better, and it's still a challenge since you have so many fights. They cut a bloody path through hordes of beasts to get to the boss at the end.

So, I still wanted to have a level up function so I came up with the heroic advancement. 1 XP for killing a fiend, 2 XP for a Monster, nothing for minions. At 10 points, you earn a point somewhere. At 20 you learn a new ability and are an Infamous hero. at 30 you get another point and then at 40 another new ability and you're a legendary hero. And 40 is the max.

When you build your own map, you use 1 board tile for each normal hero, 2 for each Infamous hero and 3 for each legendary. The bigger your map is, the more traveling is required to get to the end, and the more random encounters you have to fight through... and the more loot you can pick up on the way too. So I think it scales up pretty good. It will usually take 8-10 games to get your first legendary hero.

I was also thinking you could sell your loot and buy XP points, for like $100 per point.. most items will only sell for $5 or $10.

I'm liking the way that sounds!

Eric