The concept for the board game is set, now it's time to establish the more nitty gritty aspects of the game. I'll be talking about dice, probabilities, cards, failing how to win, how to fail and degrees of success.
Every game needs a way for players to interact with it. This isn't even going into the mechanics. What I'm talking about is the peripherals, the controls, the UI. In boardgames we see this in the form of dice, meeples, decks, the game board, etc.
These peripherals, or components as I'll refer to them from now on, are essential because they enable the player to interact with the game's mechanics and rules. For this game, I'll be using two custom dice, some modular board tiles, and about 4 different decks of cards.
The game will also have some accessories, things that are nice to have but could be replaced or omitted. The biggest one of these accessories being the hero and enemy minis. They COULD be replaced with generic meeples or any other game piece but the immersion a sculpted character mini brings is part of the experience, just not core to the mechanics or rules.
Action Dice
Old School TTRPGs are a big influence so having dice dictate whether or not the player succeeds feels like it should be a given. The dice are 6 sided and have custom faces, each face indicates at a glance if any given action succeeds and to what degree it succeeds (more on that later)
The first of these dice is The Action Dice. Whenever a player makes an action that isn't moving, opening an unlocked door or trading with another player, they have to roll an action dice. The dice has 1 blank face (which is a fail) 4 successes or 'HITS'. The hits go from weak hit, which can barely be considered a success, up to critical hit which is the best possible scenario for any given action. There is also the fumble face, known as the Chaos Face going further, your action fails AND you draw from the Chaos Deck (more on that later)
That's all fine and dandy but why a six-sided die, and why with these faces?
Going into dice math is weird, on a normal 6 sided dice there is an equal chance for any one face to come up. That doesn't change in this case but i want to ever so slightly tip the scales in the player's favor. 4 out of the 6 faces are HITS, meaning something not bad will happen roughly 66% of the time! 17% percent of the time, you'll land on the blank face and miss! The last 17% percent of the time the player will get the Chaos Face. I feel this spread of probabilities is fun. The player can expect to succeed to a certain degree most of the time while also having that possibility of a negative outcome in the back of their minds.
Defense Dice
Enemies will not be rolling action dice, that's exclusively a player thing. Instead, enemy attacks act more like TTRPG saving throws. An enemy declares an attack, the targeted player will then roll the defense dice! The faces for the dice are like the action's in terms of degrees of success. You have 3 Block faces and 3 Dodge faces. They go up in value from one to three and the enemy's attack will have the Target Number to beat.
A cultist's Dagger attack might require a BLOCK 1 to mitigate. If the player rolls the defense dice and gets a Block 1, 2, or 3, they are safe and take no damage. However, if the attack requires a Dodge 2 and the player rolls a Dodge 1 or a Block (regardless of its value), they take the damage as well as any additional effects the attack imposes.
[no funny 3d render to go along with this dice oops]
Degrees of Success
Why have more than one face that allows the player to succeed? Frankly put, not doing anything during your turn sucks. Let's say a weapon only deals damage on a single face, that means you'll only do something 17% of the time. That doesn't sit right with me, at least not for this specific game. (Resident Evil Board game does this but that game is meant to evoke that sense of dread, it's a survival horror, after all)
This game is more of an adventure dungeon crawler so it should feel fast paced and action packed, an action lost to a miss will be noticed and felt. The degrees of success guarantee that SOMETHING good will happen 66% of the time, be that shoving an enemy or dealing fatal damage to one.
Decks
Decks in board games are comparable to arrays in video games—a list of randomly determined items that can be drawn whenever specific commands or criteria are met. For example, in an MMO, you might kill a boar, and the loot would be determined by randomly picking within an array. In board games, we can replicate this mechanic by using a deck of cards, such as a 'Boar Deck.' Not that I’ll do this; it’s just a way to visualize how cards function in this context.
A natural follow-up question might be: Why not use a random table instead? It’s much simpler—you just need a sheet of paper with 20 or so outcomes, roll a d20, and use the result. While both approaches are functionally similar, a deck of cards is far more engaging to use. It also contributes to storytelling, visual design, and diegetic lore in ways a random table just can't. Plus, we have too many dice already! No more dice!
I've determined the minimum number of decks I’ll need in order to make the game fun, playable and not slow things down to a crawl. This is what I've come up with so far:
[NOTE: Decks with have their own blog post in which I'll go into more detail]
Chaos Deck
Whenever the action dice is rolled and it lands on Chaos (The creepy eye star thing), the action fails and that player must draw from the chaos deck. Cards in this deck are mostly events that will throw a wrench into the player's plans. Things like spawning enemies, dealing damage, forcing a discard or swapping tiles.
Enemy Deck
Quick Reference cards that let players know the attacks and stats of any given creature.
Treasure Deck
Players might come across some chests, these will let that player draw from the treasure deck and get some goodies. Things like potions, keys, weapons, bombs, etc.
Character Deck
A unique deck for each character, each card has a level, action cost, art and effect descriptions. They Contain actions, passives and buff the player can keep in order to power up their character. Players roll from this deck every time they roll a Critical Hit or Enter a Boon Tile (more on tiles later). If the deck runs out, that character levels up! The player will have to shuffle the discarded cards and mix in the cards of the next level up.
[Concept of a Character Card. This one if for the Warrior]
Map Deck
Upon entering a new floor or staring a run, players will draw from the Map Deck in order to set up the gameboard. Each tile has emblems on it that will determine what enemies, buff, events and objectives will be present.
That's about all of it! I think I have a decent concept and in the next post I'll be going into more detail on what the actual rules are.