The next few posts cover portions of the game concept and how they're intended to play out. First up, let's address a few 'surprise outcomes in play' built into this 'sandbox arena'.
A SANDBOX BOARD GAME???
The term sandbox typically refers to an open world in a video game that allows free roaming and a degree of creative problem solving to achieve any goals. For Cards & Combat the board is designed in a way to allow freedom of movement with limited bottlenecks in movement that would force players into a corner. Beyond this each game mode is based on a specific objective/goal - chase, collect, defeat, evade, etc - that give agency and direction for players.
In this case several open world elements are incorporated into the board design. These include, and are not limited to...
Fast Travel (with an element of chance). SEWERS. There are several manholes around the board and all sewers are connected, but it’s dark down there and easy to lose your way. When landing on a sewer roll 1 x 1D6. The number rolled corresponds to the sewer you emerge from. If a STAR is rolled you can choose which Sewer you pop out of.
Restricted Access and Unlockable Areas. All buildings have doors that can be set as either open or closed depending on the mechanics of a given game mode, the effects of a particular card or the abilities of a playable character. In some cases there are small areas of the map that can only be accessed in very rare circumstances.
Standard Non-Player Characters. NPC's. Folks can be found scattered across the board as per the Default Board Setup. Their default state is passive, i.e. they don’t move or fight unless activated by a Card or Character Perk.
Special Non-Player Characters. Special NPC's. Some NPC’s offer additional game play features. To trigger a Special NPC a Player needs to be in an adjacent square, the player then refers to the 'Special NPC Encounter Table' for the current game mode. Roll the designated dice and take action based on the outcome. One example of an encounter table is below:
With the board mapped out to resemble the streets of Learning Stuff Lane populated with characters straight from the pages of the Comic Book Series, the setting was ready.
Next time we'll have a brief look at the Game Play Modes.
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