Designer Notes ItM #7 - Clan Leaders (factions)

Hello Reader!

Did you get a chance to read post #6? I enjoyed writing about the aspect of asymmetric factions and want to dive deeper into how it is done in Into the Mountain. I personally really enjoy games with asymmetric factions. I hope you also enjoy playing games with asymmetric factions and understand why games have them, how things become more interesting for the player. ~~~~

Clans in Into the Mountain

What do the clans provide in Into the Mountain?

• Passive abilities. These are things that happen when something else happens. Often called triggers in games.

• The unique flag card. ItM is strongly focused on cards. Your clan has a card only you have. Like all other cards, your flag may be played, spent as resources, or constructed. (check out blog #5)

• Immediate gain. Upon receival of the clan, you receive something good.

Very similar to other games, the faction nudges you into a strategy. You're better at building constructs, you benefit more than others from having mines, you're the best when you upgrade buildings. If you want the factions to help support or payoff for certain strategies, you first need to have ideas of your strategies!

This game has 1-4 players and there are about 3~4 different strategies/archetypes. The 3 resource types are gear, steam, and drill.

The archetypes I want to express with these 3 types are constructs, deck manipulation, and building mines in the mountain. To be honest, there's a separate issue with the steam archetype right now, but what I want is deck manipulation (card draw, etc.). The fourth archetype is science. It's another pseudo resource which allows players to upgrade mines into more powerful things.

So the clans allow you to be a little better than other players at doing those things good for all players. I achieve this through the passive abilities and the flag card.

Pledging to a clan

In previous iterations of ItM (v1 - v3) players received clans at the start, just like 99% of other games with asymmetric factions. While I was testing an idea for a different game, I realized I often wished I could decide or receive my faction during the game. There's much more to write about this, I'll get to it later.

What's important now is how to pledge. Here's the pledge card (sorry for the graphics quality):

You may play this card or use it later after construction to pledge to a clan. You must also pay the tribute cost to the clan. I'll write more later about the implications. This is how you get the clans during the game.

The clan leaders

Prince Hothgar, leader of clan Glofarick

This leader and clan are one of my personal favorites. Let's see the breakdown:

Tribute cost: 4 gears

Immediate benefit: 2 discounted construct tokens. (you may spend the token to construct at a discount).

Passive: After you build a construct, place a tunnel (used to build mines in the mountain).

Flag card play: refresh a construct you own

Flag card construct: exhaust this and another construct to gain 2 gears.

What's going on here? The passive and the flag both want you to already have constructs. We call these "pay offs"; they reward you when or later for having achieved something. In this case, they want you to make or have constructs. The bonus for pledging to clan Glofarick is, you gain the 2 tokens which help you do something; in this case it helps you build constructs. These are called enablers. When you're designing a game, keep an eye on enablers and payoffs. In Glofarick I'm quite clearly providing the player with all they need. The strategy helps itself, and it's mildy narrow. The payoff of gaining tunnels is never bad, but it might not be your main focus. Also keep an eye on how narrow or wide you design the potential strategies.

Let's look at another.

Queen Doralin of Clan Cherk

Breakdown:

Tribute cost: discard 4 cards, send your dwarf.

Immediate benefit: gain 6 crystal

Passive: as a free action you may spend a crystal to draw a card or build a tunnel

Flag play: gain a crystal and +play

Flag construct: spend 2 crystals: gain 5 thunderseal ore

For clarification, crystals are resources which stay around until spent and may be spent as gears, steam, or drills. As you see, every ability revolves around crystal. There are 2 enablers and 2 payoffs; quite balanced. But that's not what I want to focus on here. First, crystals are not really a strategy. Choosing clan Cherk grants the player maximum flexibility. You can play for constructs, a strong deck, or mining. There's another aspect, that is very valuable for game design. Cherk always allows players to turn crystals into thunderseal ore (victory points). You can make "mini-games" within the game through factions. You can do it other ways too.

Challenges in clan design and benefits

One of the earliest issues I ran into was balance. I wrote about this in the previous blog, but inevitably after a game is published and many games are played, the statistics pile up and players become aware of who is strongest and weakest. The other issue is, I don't like when players are forced to play a specific strategy. You've randomly got the clan good at building mines. You had your heart set on playing a game with many constructs, but now you have to build mines.

Both of these issues are addressed in the changes to version 4 of the game. By allowing players to pledge to the clans during the game they have a say on the balance and can fight for the clan they want. I'm increasing player interaction, allowing the game to balance itself in the future, and helping players chose the clan and strategy they enjoy.

From the recent playtests of version 4 of the game, I am hitting an issue where players feel there is not enough benefit to pledging to a clan. Plus, I designed the new clans for v4 rather similar to v3. When players receive the clans later in the game, they've missed some turns with the powers, so I need to tune up their power level a little bit. It's part of the development process. I enjoy it.

Furthermore, I really don't know many (really any) other major strategy board games doing it like this. This is an innovative spin to address known issues with a very popular game mechanic in strategy board games. If you have innovative ideas for board games, I encourage you to test them out too.

Thank you very much for reading! I you enjoyed it, feel free to like the post and share with others. It means a lot to me. Did I hit some of the design issues? Do you think I missed something important? Please write me :)

Cheers,

Kevin