New Idea: Elfball Campaign thingy...

brownrob · New Idea: Elfball Campaign thingy...

Just been reading other forums, but Ive been thinking a little, an additional supplement that can be added on...

Having a 10 page rulebook etc of predefined teams, scenarios, and a possible quest mode as well, Im not a hardcore gamer, som Im not sure what works and what doesnt!

If you like, you could have a game map, that could be printed out on 2 A4 sheets, this could have multiple paths through Melvins game map, so if you dont have a samhaino team tyet, then you can choose not to go that route... it also adds more use to the nice map use 2 elfball dice to roll up a random predefined team if the challenge merits it. So challenges could be setup with bonus points for achieving various extras

you could track your team through this, another thing that could be done is to start your team off on the path to the "ElfBall Champs" or whatever, then to play a pumped team in the final etc

This could add replayability for guys who dont have the benefit of a big league to play in (like me!) like if your group only has 2-3 people in it

It also gives us the chance to add in tons of fluff, something I feel the main rulebook is sorely lacking

Ill willingy contribute to this idea if anyone wants to work on it, I will warn ye, Im not the balancemaster 3000

Mad Jackal

I don't understand.

How do you play by yourself?

How in this system does a group of 3 play out a scenario ?

Stout Youngblood

brownrob

GalakStarscraper

I know what Rob is suggesting. Wouldn't be that difficult for me to type up.

Just need to create 9 rosters for each race and come up with team names for them.

Galak

brownrob

Is it worth my while trying to work on this over Christmas?

Do you have any requirements of guidelines you would like me to work on, I guess being a roleplayer might be beneficial here... though I am not one!

mattwakeman

For some reason when I read this idea in my mind's eye I kind of saw concentric circles. You start off on the outside ring and have to play various games etc until you do well enough (get enough experienced players? win enough games?) to make it into the next circle and on and on until you get to the middle to play for the final. If that makes any sense.

The nuts and bolts are really about how progress is measured and the actual structure of how the games would be played but I really like the idea of having teams with great players lying in wait for the player to aspire to meet. It would be great fun to think of team designs.

Actually I think what you could do is try and show how a team develops gradually over time. Almost like a rags to riches type of thing. If that was the case then the 'outer ring' of the plan (I will just use my suggestion to illustrate what I mean) would have a player using a team of only, say, 120 points on his own players and playing against teams of values from 110-130.

And then if you do well enough then you go up a gear and now you can have 150 points until you get to the top of the tree where you can play against a great team which has, say, 200 points with some legend players which we could all try and work out.

Is this the kind of thing that you are thinking about mate?

brownrob

Yeah that sounds pretty good actually, makes it more like a sporting tournament type thing, rather than a wandering quest type thing

In addition to this you could have scenarios, take out a key opponent etc to get bonus points

Mephisto

I have been thinking about this and perhaps it could be applied to FF too.

The fact is that I still don't see the whole idea. Could you put please some example?

thanx

brownrob

Hmmm

Ive been thinking a little more about it, and if it played out like one of those RPG books... I played one once but I started to cheat

Anyway...

All teams would start out at position #1. The text would give an introduction to the world, what your about to get yourself into etc. So for the first round you would need to roll up an opponent to play against etc. The outcome of the game would lead you down one of many paths which are branched out.

If you win, go to #2 if you lose go to #3

Thats what Ive been thinking, but I do like the concentric idea also, it leaves it more open than my suggestion

But my problem is Im a painter and not a RPG designer

mattwakeman

I think that the only problem with having a branching system is the amount of work that is needed to ensure that there are no blank areas within it. And by the nature of these things it would take many, many games for players to have to visit all of the areas within it, so to speak. Also there is the problem of re playability with this system. I am imagining that you are thinking of this as something of a one person thing? (If not then feel free to ignore the rest of this) Because if so by the time that somebody gets around to playing it for the 3rd or 4th time then the initial stages, at least, will already start to feel more than a little familiar.

This is one of the reasons that I prefer the concentric circle idea and I was thinking slightly more about this. If you imagine the circle as a collection of connected squares and each square is split in half so that the first time that a player goes around then they use the top half and the second time they use the bottom. What then has to be decided is just what would be in each of the squares. Would they be game challenges? Random events? Decisions that have to be made by the coach ('A bigger team wants your best player to leave you and join his team? Do you stand in his way? If so then for the next X games the player has X penalties' that kind of thing).

Also, how would the team progress around the board? I am not overly keen on 'lose and move one square, win and move two' if only because it sounds a bit snakes and ladders but if this can be worked out well enough that may be in one sense the best option. In my mind's eye (back to that again) I can see team(s) (since I think that it would be more than possible for more than one player to be using this board at the same time and should more than one player land on the same square then instead of drawing up a random team they could play each other), anyway, I see teams moving around the board until they reach a certain threshold which will allow them to challenge a more developed team for the right to go up to the next level of the concentric circles where it all begins again. You could even have situations in which if the team does very poorly on one level (it loses just too many experienced players) then it is relegated back down! That would provide nice reasoning as to why you have to hang on to that injured but veteran midfielder.

Of course the devil is in the details and it is how the teams move, how they progress and advance, the choices that they have to make and what is the ultimate goal. Some of this makes sense in my head if nothing else of course!

mattwakeman

Another thought. Instead of it being squares which you use one half one time then another half the next why not have each square have four different possibilities to correspond with the Elfball dice. In this way each circle could correspond to a different tournament or league even. You travel around it and at the end of each trip you have to look at your record (how many games did you win / lose) to see if you can play-off for the chance to go onwards to the next level of competition.

I know that this makes it sound as though it is a little bit like the wandering teams from 'the other game' but at this moment in time I can't think of better fluff to support the structure.

Mephisto

So the idea would be to play one team in different contests, while the other players would play randomly your opponents. So it would be like creating a story for your team, but with different options for the cases you win/loose.

I was thinking on having different stoeries involved. I'm going to take an example of the other game.

Take for example you play the official 2ed teams, before the crushing of the NAF. There were different conferences. One scenario could be in order to access the play-offs you have to beat the Reavers, cause they are leaders of the group. So if you defeat them by 3-0 your orc team accesses the play-offs. Next step would be playing the Reavers agains the Skavenblight or some other team...

It would be like playing the important matches in each conferences, but sometimes you have to achieve some secondary quest, like scoring 3 or more TD, injury the other teams starplayer, that you cannot use your star blitzer or playing against a higher TV team, and try to mantain a draw while playing only one part... with half of your team...

mattwakeman

I don't see why it isn't possible to try and integrate the story aspect into this idea to be honest. But of course where Elfball is hampered (or not depending on how you look at it) is that it doesn't have the teams with huge names and history about them. Anybody that has played the other game for even a little bit will have come across teams like Reikland and players like Griff and Morg (see, only one name required for them). But EB just doesn't have that (and am I the only one that isn't sad about this?). So whilst I think that is a good idea to have objectives to advance the nature of why this is being developed (for people who don't want to or can't play in organised leagues) having set teams to which you have to have to play may not really be much of an option.

And whilst I like the story aspect of it, I would prefer each player to be making up their history as they go even if that means that the other teams lack the name cache of the Gouged Eye.

Mephisto

Well, indeed I'm interested in a system that could be applied to Elfball and to FF. I'm tired of playing leagues with guys who obly put numbers to their players and don't care about the background. That's why I liked this league a lot: http://lbnweb.com

I would like to create my own teams and gave them a history in order that they become as legendary as the reavers, the cowboys and so on. But I know that I could only do that playing with 2 or 3 coaches, that's whiy I was so interested in the system you are developing here.

mattwakeman

What I think could be really (really) fun would be that if we can work out a system that is really good and takes teams on a journey then people could submit their successful final teams or great players for others to use as final opponents. This way the teams don't just come to an end and you think 'so what'. The players that you have created and come through for you (or not as the case may be!) would live on in other people's games. Players could even admit shocking teams / players for the 'Hall of Shame'!

With enough commitment from us all we could develop a really nice, fun system that adds so much more to each game. Well, that is the hope anyway.

mattwakeman

Was also thinking that these rules might allow much more role-playing of teams and players to exist. For example, each time that a game starts then all of your players who are on the pitch gain contentment points (or whatever) to reflect that they are happy at starting and being looked at as valuable. Conversely those who are not gain disenchantment points as they begin to fret over their role to the team.

So many points in a category and maybe something could happen to a player; they may want to leave, they could settle for being paid less (they cost less money on the roster), they gain temporary skills or lose skills temporarily. The possibilities are endless. And you could even have it so that certain players (and maybe this would be gained from some kind of random events table) would never gain contentment points! You could even have quirks so that certain players (the smaller the number of them on a roster the more likely they are to gain them perhaps) become unreliable; sometimes great and sometimes bad.

All of these suggestions are so that players begin to take a life or their own and as you progress down this campaign trail it is less like play game, play game, play game etc but more like having to make tough decisions and being really irritated by your own players! I would love to see a Black Widow coach finally lose patience with a star Widowmaker and then have to face this player again at some point in the future (oh, and look, the Widowmaker now always has Cheapshot AND Malicious when playing against you!).

With enough time and thought there really is no limit to how much fun and fluff can be added around each game that is to be played.

mattwakeman

More fluffy thoughts on this. I was thinking about the background to really set the scene for players. And a couple of options really kind of jumped out to me. A basic storyline could be that of a player who wasn't a real super-star but was a decent Elfball player but was then forced out of his team because of injury or just because he didn't fit in. All very standard so far but of course this could have an effect on the team that you begin with.

If it is the latter story (and this is thinking that the game will be about creating a small team and working your way towards being a much bigger team) then when you are selecting your team why not make it so that one of the players is allowed to start off with a couple of skills because they will represent the coach themselves! Now if you choose the former storyline instead of it being a one man vendetta you will have a much more balanced team to begin with. For some reason the idea of a coach being on the pitch is one that I think instantly makes players not only identify more with the team but also gives them some real incentive to give more when they play.

I really think that the next step would be to try and work out a system of how teams would move around the board and get games. How many games they should ideally play. What level they should begin at (as long as people don't want to just start at 180 points) and also how they can progress. As ever, thoughts and comments are most appreciated.

mattwakeman

Another idea. I was thinking about the map and how teams would move and maybe there is a way in which a simple deck of cards could be used instead of having to go to the expense and time of making up a map. This way when you start off down at a lowly level then certain cards are removed until you go onwards and upwards. Each card would represent an area and there would be corresponding rules to show what it represents and what happens there. It could be as simple as every Spade card is a game that you would play and the higher the card, the more difficult the opponent.

Does that make sense?

mattwakeman

I have been thinking about this and the more that I have been thinking about cards as being used to determine what may happen in a game the more that I like it. Think of something like this:

X X X

X A X

X X X

The A is the starting position (Ace of Hearts of course!) whilst the X represents cards that are face down. You can then move your team one square (including diagonals) where you turn over the card and see what lies beneath.

The cards all represent things such as:

Spade / Clubs: You can play a game (and maybe you have to play a game or suffer some kind of penalty). The higher the card means the tougher the team

Hearts: Places and locations. Maybe you can only recruit at certain places, so wizards will only be at picture Hearts or something like that. Or not all players are available at all cards.

Diamonds: Random events.

You could even double them up so that you have a red card and a black card together so that each game then is played somewhere different with rules for the locations and facilities available as well as random events and the like. Of course you could then tailor the map accordingly. It could be any shape at all. You could have more than one team on it at the same time. You could set it up so that you go in at one end and have to work towards the other:

X X X X

A X X X X S S S

X X X X

Where here the S represents high value teams to play against and you can only get to the next S if you beat the preceding one. I think that this really works as an idea but I would love somebody to give me some feedback on whether this all makes sense before I sit down and try to work out things like which card is which and what proportion of games to have in a set-up for example.