[Open Design: Mercenaries #9] Our Progress So Far

It’s been three months today since we started our Open Design project here with the card game Mercenaries. I thought this would be a good time to review what we’ve done so far and consider where we should go from here.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #8] Tags on Mercenary and Territory Cards

I’m breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule again to bring you three articles this week. I’m posting this article a day early, and another Building Character post will be going up Friday.

This is another quick update on our Open Design project. You can read all of our previous project articles here. An important factor to the intractability of cards in Mercenaries is something called Tags. Tags don’t do anything on their own, but they can be referred to by rules on other cards, and allow cards to be grouped into a variety of categories.

Humandisaster suggested that we should have a set list of Tags that can be used. This list should also give general guidelines as to what sort of concepts each individual Tag covers. I’m going to present here all of the Tags that we’ve used so far.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #7] Mercenary Cards Round-Up

This is simply a quick round-up of the mercenary cards we've created so far for the game Mercenaries, our Open Design project. We have close to a third of the mercenary cards that we need to get the game to its first playtest. Thanks so much to everyone who has already participated, and I look forward to seeing this project continue to progress. Look over the cards listed below, and feel free to leave any ideas you have for mercenaries in the comments to this post.

Because this is kind of a quick article that didn't take a lot of work to put together, I'll be breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule to bring you three new articles this week. Check back on Wednesday for a new Design Review, and look for another Building Character post on Friday.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #6] Designing Territory Cards

Work is progressing steadily on Mercenaries. We have a working model that should be suitable for our first playtest. We are also making considerable progress on designing the mercenary cards for the game. Let’s mix things up by jumping into the design process for the game’s deck of 15 territory cards. I don’t want to distract everyone from designing mercenaries, but working on the territories simultaneously might create opportunities for the cross pollination of ideas. Also, if you’re burning out on designing the mercenaries, trying your hand at territory cards for a while might be a nice change of pace. Territories should be much simpler to create, because each card only has a couple of substantial features. I’ll explain the format below, and then give a few examples to get us started.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #5] Designing Mercenary Cards

Monday I posted a working model for this game. Using this model, we’ll be able to begin playtesting once we have the necessary components in place. The first set of components we’ll need is the 60 card deck of mercenary cards. I could really use your help in designing these cards. I’ll explain the format below, and then give a few examples to get us started.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #4] Getting a Working Design in Place

So far, in the Open Design articles, we’ve talked about possibilities for the game’s bidding system for hiring mercenaries, the battle system for putting those mercenaries to use, and how your success could be measured by conquering territories. I’ve had some very good feedback from my co-designers – people have brought up good ideas that I genuinely would not have thought of on my own – and I’ve really enjoyed the process so far. Now it is time to collect all of these ideas and mold them into a working design model. These are a basic set of rules for the game that we can use for our first playtest.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #3] Conquering Territory

In the last Open Design article, we talked about the game's battle system - specifically, how complex or abstract it should be. The general consensus seems to be that it should be more on the complex side. Humandisaster brought up the subject of having some kind of system for fighting over territories. So, I've thought up two general designs for how the battle system could incorporate the concept of conquering territory. I'll layout the two designs below and see what anyone thinks of them.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #2] Battle System

This article continues my Open Design project to build a new game from the ground up with the help of my friends here on my blog. The game we’re working on has the working title Mercenaries, and game play consists of two important phases – bidding and battling. Last week we discussed ideas for the game’s bidding system. I’m going to let some time pass for those thoughts to percolate before we settle on a specific model. In the meantime, let’s talk a little bit about the games battle system.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #1] Bidding System

Last week I announced this new Open Design project with the purpose of designing a new game on this blog with my friends. I also polled to see which of three ideas people would like to develop. The votes resulted in a unanimous decision to develop the idea for Mercenaries (check out the original game idea article to refresh your memory on the premise and concept of the game). So, now we begin designing.