Grog 1699 Game Design - What would you do differently?

With the advent of Black Sails on the History channel (186 on DStv), I'm reinvigorated in my desire for this to be a success. You can bet your socks there will be both Billy Bones and Captain Flint characters.

If you have any feedback on the process I'm using to design Grog 1699 (working title) don't hesitate to let me know. Let's go into the first stage of Grog 1699 a bit.

It would be called something akin to "Recruit and Equip."

"Recruit and Equip 

Setting: Port (Town)Goal: Assemble your crew and equip your shipChallenge: Attaining the goal while everyone is trying to get the best crew members and equipment. It will require careful management of time and money. I'm keen to include an element of gambling in this portion. Perhaps a card mini-game against pirates in a tavern? Something like that."

This phase would start with all the seafarer cards laid out in the centre of the table. Perhaps there would be around 50 in the final version of the game, but I'm aiming for 20 for the prototype. Drafting then takes place à la Dota 2. So we would have team 1 going, "I'll ban that hero from being drafted." Team 2 responds with, "Sure, we'll ban that hero then."

After this is done twice, each team picks a hero to play with. The strategic implications of the banning rounds are huge. You could aim to prevent certain strategies, strategically limit options with the aim of forcing a certain grouping etc. The possibilities are endless.

The order is this:
Team 1 Ban
Team 2 Ban
Team 1 Ban
Team 2 Ban
Team 1 Pick
===Here Team 2 gets 2 consecutive picks to make up for not getting the first overall pick
Team 2 Pick
Team 2 Pick
Team 1 Pick
Team 1 Ban
Team 2 Ban
Team 2 Pick
Team 1 Pick
Team 1 Ban
Team 2 Pick
Team 2 Ban
Team 1 Pick

The big difference here compared to Dota is that only 4 heroes get recruited. The final member of the team has to be obtained from the Barracks or Tavern.

After the drafting phase, I envision that these 4 buildings will come into play:

• Tavern
• The undrafted pirates are shuffled and three random pirates will be placed face-down here. Only by spending a turn visiting the tavern would you get a peek at the three. 
• Barracks
• All the remaining pirates are imprisoned here. One pirate is revealed every turn. If not recruited, he goes to a pile of pirates that will be released soon, and can be recruited by anyone stopping at the Barracks. Everyone can see these pirates.
• Armory
• This is the "shop" of the game. You can buy five items per turn, and there is a limited stock available. Considering you're gonna have 5 pirates on your team, you'd be aiming for around 15 items or so. I would have to design a list of around 45 equipment to make this a strategic choice. The items would be divided into Mundane, Uncommon and Magical. The pricing would be of such a nature that a team could afford a maximum of 5 Magical items with no other equipment. This wouldn't normally be a successful strategy, so maybe the team would rather go for 2 Magical items, 5 Uncommon items and 10 Mundane items to be distributed among the 5 pirates.
• Docks
• Naturally, this where you purchase your vessel. The ship would have stats such as Durability, Speed, Firepower and Crew (the support guys other than the main 5 pirates). On top of that, I'm aiming for a choice of around 7 unique layout designs. In this way, the ships essentially become the terrain for the ensuing battles. For example, one ship would have 3 defensive battlements, 2 sails and 4 cannon positions. Maybe that qualifies it as a defensive juggernaught, compared to a vessel sporting 4 sails, 1 defensive battlement and 0 cannon positions. This would be a speedy runner-type vessel.

It occurs to me that it would be more interesting from a commander's point of view to have the ability to split up your crew into various vessels than to pack them all on the same one. That way, you could have one battleship supported by maybe two lighter ships. You'd pack 3 heavy dudes on the battleship and some support characters on the little ships.

Gosh, I'm a tiny bit intimidated by how quickly this game seems to be growing in scope. That's both good and bad. The life-blood of games is decisions the players make. At this point, we're in no danger of having too few choices for the player. We are in danger of the scope of the game creeping out of control to the point where it's no longer fun for a newcomer to play, much like Dota.

This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that players have to cooperate in their teams in order to strive for success. It is definitely not an individual endeavour. It strikes me that I would have to prevent the more experienced players from making all the possible decisions for the team.

I'm working on a basic map prototype of the naval phase of the game, and will hopefully post that next time.