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OnTableTop Towers // I Need YOU

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Tagged: game design, lancorz, Ontabletop towers

This topic contains 4 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by tornquistd 6 years, 5 months ago.

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June 19, 2018 at 8:06 pm #1213224
lancorz
Participant

5700xp

1
I’ve been toying with the idea recently of having an in house game that we as a community can play with the staff here at OnTableTop. I want to create something that will keep the guys in the office involved for 5 days running with an eventual finale to overcome on the Friday as we finish the week.

This idea stems from Base Building games where you maintain an upkeep through the week and rally the results at the end for a final boss while also keeping your staff (the team) satisfied in their tower.

My idea is that we each get one die each to roll and add to a location each day for the benefits and negatives that follow:
- Dungeon – Treasure / Threat
- Tavern – Happiness / Loss of treasure
- Kitchen – Food
- River – Water
- Forest – Wood
- Market – Merchants
This is very basic however at the beginning of each week there would be a roll to signify the requirement resources for that week and we would need to upkeep that. If we can, great! more populace; if we cannot, oh no! We’re threatened with famine, opposing armies, drought etc.

Ranking up and down

I believe if we are successful we can up our ranks or degrade depending on what rolls we achieve and how we allocate our staff on the map.

These are some numbers I jotted down during my downtime at UKGE, obviously with some rolls better than others will grant some benefits such as ranking up.

Above are some ideas on how to achieve the ranks which will help later with resources if you’re maintaining your upkeep. Another thought I had was the Dungeon on the right hand side, each dice rolled will only be able to assign itself to a specific spot during the week. As an example, if I rolled a 3, my worker would mine those resources and they would be completely null for the rest of the week, if someone else (Lloyd) rolls a 3, he would need to assign it elsewhere on the map.

Where do you come in?

Well, here’s the thing… I’m stuck. I can’t figure out how to involve the community (you) in the weekly process, engage the team with the game throughout the week, the number crunching, and most of all; keep it engaging and fun.

Do you have any ideas?
June 19, 2018 at 11:12 pm #1213477
davehawes
7768xp

2
Just one idea that might be quite cool. Have a vote before the team rolls, for the community for a special effect. So click XP +1 to one of 5 posts that each detail an effect. Whichever post has the most XP at a certain time, that effect is active that week. Then the team rolls, places their workers and the effects resolve. When you post the weekly summary the next week, also post the new special effects to vote on.

I am guessing at how the mechanics work here, so clearly they might need to be adjusted, but hopefully, you get the idea.

e.g.
- Drunken Brawl: Fighting in the taverns has generated threat! But all the extra drinking has boosted the coffers so less treasure spend than normal in the tavern.
- 6 carpenters and 6 weeks: More wood than normal is generated from workers in the wood due to some over-eager lumberjacks. However, happiness is reduced due to constantly missing their over-optimistic deadlines.
- Travelling Gourmet Chef: Food costs treasure this week, but is much more effective.
- Flooding!: You need to place workers on the river, or you’ll lose happiness.
- Thieves in the Market!: Workers in the market will stop thieves and increase the happiness of the populace. But without workers in the Market, you’ll lose some treasure this week.
If I understood the mechanics better I’d be happy to draft say 30 options like the above, enough so each week for 5 weeks you could have a unique set for people to vote from before cycling again.

Just an idea anyway!
June 20, 2018 at 12:03 am #1213544

oriskany
60771xp

2

Sounds like a great idea. I’m not sure how many suggestions I can offer, as I’m not terribly familiar with the the genre of game under discussion. From what I can see, base building games are mostly video games like Fallout, etc.

You have a home base/fort etc.
You leave it to gather supplies, do missions etc and come back to your home base/fort.
You might have to defend your home base/fort.
Sounds like this is going to be cooperative, not competitive

(sorry of any of this is super-obvious, I’m trying to get a baseline here).

I also see where you have six areas “with positives and negatives” but not all of them have negatives?

Dungeon – Treasure / Threat
Tavern – Happiness / Loss of treasure
Kitchen – Food
River – Water
Forest – Wood
Market – Merchants

So how about:

* Dungeon – Treasure / Threat (find a treasure or a monster emerges to threaten the group)

* Tavern – Happiness / Loss of treasure (generate happiness or violence breaks out that damages the tavern)

* Kitchen – Food / Famine (good feasts for everyone, or vermin get into the larders and spoil the food)

* River – Water / Flood (steady current provides sanitation, clean drinking water, and power via waterwheel, or floods and damages crops and waterwheel).

* Forest – Wood / wildfire or bandits (good resources and source of both wood and game. Or … bandits infest your woods, and a wildfire breaks out).

* Market – Merchants / Mafia (steady, lawful commerce generates tax revenue for your castle, or a criminal element / gang takes root and starts corrupting, intimidating, extorting merchants, they start leaving, business declines).

How to engage the community

Just some very basic ideas (again, I don’t know the mechanics of the game too well so none of this might apply) …

The community could represent the peasants / residents / merchants / guilds of this little fiefdom. I really like @davehawes idea of presenting some kind of “menu” of 5-6 bonuses at the beginning of the week, the one that gets the most +1s at the end of the week applies.

Maybe a menu of negatives as well – so the community gets a chance to “screw” with the team a little. 🙂

Maybe each team member should be “in charge” of a cetrain area of the tower, like Justin in charge of the dungeon, John in charge of the forest, etc. That way community members could try and vote for (or against) certain people (you want to mess with John, vote for the hazard: “bandits in the forest.”

OR …

Set up a little forum thread for the game, where community members could narratively describe certain bonuses of their own, specifying which category to which they would apply. Say I wanted to help John in the forest, I could write a little snippet about a militia I’m trying to create to help against bandits on the forest trails. Say I wanted to hinder Warren in the kitchen, I could write a little story about how “Oriskany the disgruntled cook” releases a swarm of rats in his ANZAC biscuits (and then the community lynches me, I’m sure). Who doesn’t like playing the villain? 🙂 🙂 🙂

One entry per week is selected to apply, either through popular vote in the community (+1s) or voted on by the office team, announced in the weekly VLOG?

June 20, 2018 at 12:53 pm #1214146
timchubb
Keymaster

3166xp

1
@lancorz have a few ideas which could be added to the site, send me a pm…

@oriskany for kitchen i would have washing up as the negative…

For public consumption:

Community Engagement
1. Live Stream – maybe add a dice bot to the chat, https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/512at4/looking_for_a_dice_roller/ that way people who join could effect a random event, could even be possible to make it fire when someone joins the chat and people who are actually engaged get some involvment
2. Vote threads – downside easy to game/gang up on @dignity (because lets face it we would ;))
3. Add a second tower, and the community plays against the team, would require some dev work but nothing that couldn’t be done, could then have a push/pull of population between the two towers based on who’s tower is most appealing/least worst 😉
4. Maybe have a name Vote OTTT and OTT will cause confusion, my vote is for TTOOTT (The Towers of On Table Top) because i like palindromes and always thought they sound like a player class in a RPG 😛
June 25, 2018 at 10:15 pm #1218073

tornquistd
301xp

0

Perhaps more of a collect and store resources system like Minecraft and some tasks like digging a well. For example, for food hunt or harvest. Resource collection could be done one person at a time with simple random wildlife hazards. The building of the base would be everyone together on the last day using a recipe that requires x of resources for each feature.
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