Balancing Philosophy

I once heard a school of thought described as the SNK philosophy of game balance (as contrasted to the capcom approach) – “Balance is boring”. Making characters perfectly balanced, strips them of makes them mechanically interesting. Instead make every character...

Drawing Straws (Simultaneous Turns cont.)

Last week we described the rationale that led to the reshuffling of encounters between every turn. This resulted in one playtester questioning whether the order which the player draws their encounter card affects the odds of drawing the special character encounter. So...

More on Simultaneous Turns

When landing on a generic square while playing Aethermon, you draw an encounter card – there are 5 for each area. 4 of these cards lead to a battle, the last one instructs the player to draw a special encounter card.  At the end of each round, all used...

Large Player counts cont.

Aethermon can be played with any player count from 1 to 8. As discussed in previous posts, to avoid playtimes bloating at larger player counts turns are conducted simultaneously. However, with 6 or more player counts this system begins to break down and new solutions...

Advantages of acting first and last

In any game where players act in sequence a division occurs: in some games it is better to act first, while in others it is better to act last. In perfect information games with limited resources, players that act first have an advantage (as they have the first...

Simultaneous Turns

I love high player count games. Not because I need 8 players squeezed around a small table – but because I love setting up a game for four and knowing there’s still room for an unexpected guest to join in. Unfortunately, as you increase the number of players at...