Battleyacht - mechanical brainstorming, part 1

Well, it's about time I get some real ideas down in digital ink if I'm going to make any progress on this NaGaDeMon thing...!

As I noted in my last post, I'm taking a crack during National Game Design Month at putting together some rules for naval battles based on the mechanics of the public domain dice game Yacht.

Now, I'm neither a seaman nor an experienced player of naval battle games, but it seems to me that I can probably break down the basic actions of a boat in such a game into very few categories...I'm thinking moving, firing, and (maybe) doing other stuff.

Looking at a score card for the game of Yahtzee that I found online, it's clear that there's a nice breakdown at work there, too:

That upper section is all about getting multiples of specific numbers (and earning a bonus for getting what amounts to three of each).  While the traditional Yacht game doesn't make the division quite so explicit (and doesn't have the bonus), scoring does still come down to getting lots of each number OR putting the numbers together in some sort of poker-style grouping (as we see in the bottom section).

So there's how it's gonna break down...movement will be based on getting multiples of a number in order to move that number of [whatever unit of movement I end up using].

The firing and the doing other stuff...that can be where the bottom section comes in.

At first, I figured a simple need for three matching dice in order to move might be good...and maybe additional dice could increase the movement by a unit.  So a roll of...

...would allow for 8 units of movement (6 plus a bonus of 2).

It's occurred to me, though, that a nice way of differentiating crafts in the game might be to give each of them a sort of Control score which is the minimum number of matching dice needed to make a movement happen.  Those that would take a while to get started might require four of a kind, while something like a jet ski might just be able to take the highest die you roll.  (Plus, the Yacht game itself doesn't make that three-of rule of thumb an integral part of the game, so I wouldn't be unhappy to not adhere to that...)

Additionally, crafts may be differentiated by a max speed and/or a bonus that can be applied to a move result.

More details to come on this as I work it out in my head, but I'm liking the "Upper Section" = movement line of thought.  And next time, I'll try to tackle what it means to fire and do other stuff...

I think I’m gonna do this NaGaDeMon thing...here comes Battleyacht!

A nice little convergence of events has led me to take on what looks to be a fun challenge this month.  On the Sunday before Halloween, I got to run the Ghostbusters RPG for some folks...my first time getting to actually GM a game in a while, and it reminded me that it's fun to roll a handful of d6s sometimes.

On Halloween night, Laura and I decided to play a quick game...and settled on Yahtzee.  It was a family favorite for me growing up, and I had actually raided our copy of it (heretofore unused) to get enough d6s for my Ghostbusters game.  I started to think that maybe there's something interesting about Yahtzee scoring (and the scoring of some of its public domain relatives) that could be exploited for adventure games.

Then, the next day, I was happy to see +Tim Snider's post over at The Savage AfterWorld on National Game Design Month (or NaGaDeMon, which is just...perfect!).

So, the end result of all of this was quite clear:  I need to spend the month of November designing an RPG- or combat-styled game using the mechanics of Yahtzee for task resolution. :)

Yep.  Definitely.

The question became...what should such a game be about?  Well, I remember coming across Yacht in a book of games long ago and realizing that Yahtzee must have been based on it.  And I guess it was, by some path of game evolution, anyway.  So I can start the game's theme with just that: yachts.

Now, I don't really know how to design a game about anything other than fighting, so I guess I know what the yachts will be doing.  But why are they doing it?  A dangerous sport for the idle rich?  War among CGI anthropomorphic vehicles?  Or...well, I remembered a post over at Halls of the Nephilim where Justin threw out post-apocalyptic pirates as a genre mashup that'd be fun to play.

And so the game takes shape.

Now, I may straight up fail at getting this done.  I have a history of not quite getting there on my gaming projects, my current game creation focus is still on getting my next Light City supplement out, and my life is kinda busy these days.  Heck, it's taken me a week (and like five separate typing sessions) to even throw this up on the blog.  But...it's been stewing in the old cranium, and I think I can knock something out by the time the month closes...

Oh yeah!  The final question to answer in this introductory post...what shall I call the game, at least in its development phase?  In homage to the naval combat game that I've probably played the most in my life, as well as one of the finest post-apocalyptic films of the early '80s, it will be known as Battleyacht.

More to come!

(Oh!  And if you're interested in taking part in the game design fun, the center of activity seems to be the NaGaDeMon Facebook page.)