DragonMech Battles Designer Diary #4

[walrusjester]

HELL HATH NO FURY

We're playtesting the game now. It started a while ago, with just a couple of people, and we're steadily expanding the circle. We have RPG authors, experienced GMs, people who've never played mech games, and even a couple of folks that you've seen posting on this board. But until last weekend, we hadn't tried a test with a crucial audience: my wife.

I've known my wife since we were playing TSR's old Marvel Super Heroes RPG together in the '80s. She's always been a part of my roleplaying and game-playing groups. It was inevitable that I'd spring DragonMech Battles on her at some point. She's very bright and very creative. I consult her regularly on my roleplaying projects. Her quick intelligence and her keen analytical mind make her an invaluable resource for game design. They also make her terrifying.

Seriously. She's not going to pull her punches to spare my feelings. If I give her something dumb, predictable, or poorly-thought out, she'll maul it. Which is fine when it's an off-the-cuff Marvel adventure; it's more intimidating when it's something as important as DMB. She's been in the room since work started on version 1, but it wasn't until version 2.4 that I was ready to let her see it. "Okay," I told myself as I laid out the hex map and handed out mech sheets to the players, "this version's not too bad. Right. I'll survive this."

And you know what? She liked it. It wasn't perfect - she and the kitchen table playtesters found a bunch of stuff that needs revision - but she had fun. Even better, she had fun even though she lost the first match and the second was a draw. In the first one, her arcane Shrew got run down by a steam-driven Asp. The Asp tripped the Shrew, then used its bore puncher to insert a squad of boarders, which proceeded to slaughter the Shrew's crew and take over the mech. Fortunes of war. In the second one, her arcane Lancer more than held its own against a much larger muscle-powered Typhoon. Even though the Typhoon's swivel-mounted ballistas neutralized some of the Lancer's maneuvering advantage, the Lancer had a mech jockey and a sorcerer on board. The mech jockey made the Lancer extremely sure-footed, while the sorcerer was flinging powerful curses that ignored the Typhoon's impressive armor and inflicted several critical hits on it. That match was called off because we were all too tired to continue, but it was a good fight while it lasted.

After we were alone in the house, I asked her if she had fun. "Yes," she said. "I especially liked the characters and the ways they affected combat. Maybe it's just a girl thing." But I don't think it is. We've worked hard to make characters - soldiers, crew, specialists - a vital part of the game. And now they've passed the test with my most important critic.

[Arek]

Awesome!

You've piqued my interest, though.

How do characters affect the combat? I assume pilots get feats, but what encourages mechs to fight in formation? Can the crew of a big mech have any bearing on a mech's performance beyond, "making it run"?

Or can you even answer these questions yet?

[mythfish]

We're sill in the process of tweaking, re-tweaking, and re-re-tweaking rules, and the character/crew rules are some that are likely going to get a fairly major overhaul again before the game comes out...so anything we say now may end up not being true in the final product. Keeping that in mind:

How characters affect the combat depends on the type of character. At this point we have two basic character types: soldiers and generic crew. Soldiers are units of infantry who fight outside the mech. The generic crew members are more of a resource to be managed than anything else: as your crew is killed in combat, you have to allocate what crew you have left to running various weapons and other systems.

Beyond the two basic characters, there are also four specialist crew types. A specialist is more like a PC in an RPG campaign...a single individual character with enough skill or power to have some effect on the combat. The four types of specialist crew are mechjockey, coglayer, sorcerer, and warrior. Mechjockeys get skills that give you bonuses to your piloting rolls, allow them to act as weaponry crew while piloting, and a lot of the same sorts of things you see from mechjockeys in the RPG. Coglayers can affect the performance of the mech; they can reduce the effects of critical hits, gain bonuses when acting as gunners, and do some other tech-related things you would expect from coglayers. Sorcerers (and despite the name, DMB sorcerers can represent any spellcasting class from the RPG) get the ability to affect the combat a bit more directly by casting spells to damage enemy mechs, provide magical armor, alter the terrain, and other fun stuff. The warrior grants special abilities to units of soldiers, or gains bonuses when boarding enemy mechs.

[Arek]

We're sill in the process of tweaking, re-tweaking, and re-re-tweaking rules, and the character/crew rules are some that are likely going to get a fairly major overhaul again before the game comes out...so anything we say now may end up not being true in the final product. Keeping that in mind:

How characters affect the combat depends on the type of character. At this point we have two basic character types: soldiers and generic crew. Soldiers are units of infantry who fight outside the mech. The generic crew members are more of a resource to be managed than anything else: as your crew is killed in combat, you have to allocate what crew you have left to running various weapons and other systems.

Beyond the two basic characters, there are also four specialist crew types. A specialist is more like a PC in an RPG campaign...a single individual character with enough skill or power to have some effect on the combat. The four types of specialist crew are mechjockey, coglayer, sorcerer, and warrior. Mechjockeys get skills that give you bonuses to your piloting rolls, allow them to act as weaponry crew while piloting, and a lot of the same sorts of things you see from mechjockeys in the RPG. Coglayers can affect the performance of the mech; they can reduce the effects of critical hits, gain bonuses when acting as gunners, and do some other tech-related things you would expect from coglayers. Sorcerers (and despite the name, DMB sorcerers can represent any spellcasting class from the RPG) get the ability to affect the combat a bit more directly by casting spells to damage enemy mechs, provide magical armor, alter the terrain, and other fun stuff. The warrior grants special abilities to units of soldiers, or gains bonuses when boarding enemy mechs.

Good call on simplifying the classes.

And I guess it makes sense to have crew be like a resource, but I was kinda holding out that an experienced crew on a mech they know well could help the pilot coax more performance out of it--in terms of the RPG, the crew can a close watch on the condition of the mech, and their constant tuning enables the pilot to do things like push the envelope and redline a mech for longer.

Or, the crew could be given general combat training, so if they are boarded, they put up a hell of a fight and make boarding the mech tougher (although the mech temporarily loses crew while they switch over to being fighters.)

[Raptor]

Could you post some stats on the mechs? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen an asp or typhoon in the books (although I don't have all). If their in the books, please, give book and pg#.

[mythfish]

Could you post some stats on the mechs? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen an asp or typhoon in the books (although I don't have all). If their in the books, please, give book and pg#.

They are not in any of the RPG books. We have so far been creating entirely new mechs for DMB, though I'm sure by the time we get to the finished product we'll have recreated some of the mechs from the RPG books.

[walrusjester]

Or, the crew could be given general combat training, so if they are boarded, they put up a hell of a fight and make boarding the mech tougher (although the mech temporarily loses crew while they switch over to being fighters.)

No promises, but this is one of the things we're tinkering with in the latest draft of the rules.

[Arek]

Or, the crew could be given general combat training, so if they are boarded, they put up a hell of a fight and make boarding the mech tougher (although the mech temporarily loses crew while they switch over to being fighters.)

No promises, but this is one of the things we're tinkering with in the latest draft of the rules.

May I suggest the existence of 'simple' rules and 'advanced rules'?

[mythfish]

May I suggest the existence of 'simple' rules and 'advanced rules'?

We're already on it!

[Raptor]

What about monsters? At the very least some lunar dragons would be interesting.

[mythfish]

What about monsters? At the very least some lunar dragons would be interesting.

Yep, we're already on that too!

[Arek]

What about monsters? At the very least some lunar dragons would be interesting.

Yep, we're already on that too!

If you are already working on what we think of, then I'd just like to say it's a pretty good indication that the Goodman Games crew is on top of things and you should be turning out a cool product.

Keep it up! :D

[Oaksoul Elite]

Could you post some stats on the mechs? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen an asp or typhoon in the books (although I don't have all). If their in the books, please, give book and pg#.

They are not in any of the RPG books. We have so far been creating entirely new mechs for DMB, though I'm sure by the time we get to the finished product we'll have recreated some of the mechs from the RPG books.

So long as we eventually get the rodwalker and runemechs. Heck, I'm just partial to the animated and undead mechs in general. You don't see anything even close to them in other mech games. It's good to hear the classes are kept simple, although I'm a little sad to realize this leaves out the Hereal ranger. Oh well. If you end managing to find space for "mech feats" (such as well-coordinated crew), "mage jockey pilot" would be nice. One or two extra abilities as long as you have a mech jockey piloting it. Or should it be a sorcerer?

[walrusjester]

If you end managing to find space for "mech feats" (such as well-coordinated crew), "mage jockey pilot" would be nice. One or two extra abilities as long as you have a mech jockey piloting it. Or should it be a sorcerer?

We've talked about something very like this. Certain kinds of mechs and certain kinds of character types should combine particularly well. We definitely want magic-powered mechs to stand out from other kinds of mechs; they shouldn't all feel the same.

[Oaksoul Elite]

If you end managing to find space for "mech feats" (such as well-coordinated crew), "mage jockey pilot" would be nice. One or two extra abilities as long as you have a mech jockey piloting it. Or should it be a sorcerer?

We've talked about something very like this. Certain kinds of mechs and certain kinds of character types should combine particularly well. We definitely want magic-powered mechs to stand out from other kinds of mechs; they shouldn't all feel the same.

I'm glad to hear this. Can't wait for DragonMech Battles.

[Arek]

Okay, since my brain cells are sparking on this, I'd like to ask:

How is playtesting being done?

And, along the same lines, are you going to get outside testing to help you identify problem areas and identify the balance?

If you think about it, you really could do worse than to share the game with a dozen or so min-maxxers and ask them to try to break the game and take notes on how the breakage was accomplished, and any tweaks they might recommend for to patch those holes in design.

[modus666]

while having a slew of new mech figures to work with will certainly be fun... i think it will also be important to include figures to represent the mechs that any established dragonmech players will be familiar with. my groups obsolete old bastion is still their mech of choice, and as an amusing design i think it'd be a shame to leave it out of the new DMB entirely.

[mythfish]

How is playtesting being done?

And, along the same lines, are you going to get outside testing to help you identify problem areas and identify the balance?

If you think about it, you really could do worse than to share the game with a dozen or so min-maxxers and ask them to try to break the game and take notes on how the breakage was accomplished, and any tweaks they might recommend for to patch those holes in design.

We're about halfway through our allotted playtesting time right now, and we're doing it pretty much exactly as you say. Our playtesters are encouraged to use the mech design rules to try to create the most broken mechs they can. Sometimes we (the desginers) will create mechs for the playtesters to use in order to test specific aspects of the game.

For example, just today I ran a game with one of my playtesters where we had an Arcane Lancer face off against a Steam Lancer. They're almost identical mechs, except one is animated and the other is steam-powered. The object was to determine if the advantages and disadvantages of arcane vs. steam were balanced (they seem to be).

while having a slew of new mech figures to work with will certainly be fun... i think it will also be important to include figures to represent the mechs that any established dragonmech players will be familiar with. my groups obsolete old bastion is still their mech of choice, and as an amusing design i think it'd be a shame to leave it out of the new DMB entirely.

Just this week I started really working on converting some of the mechs from the RPG to DMB stats. The Bastion wasn't one I was planning on including in DMB, but since you specifically requested it I'll see what I can do. We still don't know how much room we're going to have for predesigned mechs in the rulebook. Though there will be some new mechs in DMB, I suspect most of the mechs included in the final game will be familiar.

As far as which ones will actually eventually be made in minis, that I can't say. At this point we can't even say for sure that there will be minis (though obviously we're hoping the game does well enough to justify them).

[Raptor]

Actually, I'm not suprised that the Bastion is a favorite of many adventuring groups. It has enough room for an typical party, but is inexpensive enough that if a group pools it's gold it should be able to afford it at 3rd or 4th lvl. It should also be readily available, as an older unit, phased out of mainline service.

[walrusjester]

And the Bastion has a lot of intrinsic character - older, rugged, the castle motif. People who want "traditional" dungeon-crawl adventures in DragonMech could do worse than explore an abandoned Bastion.