Structure of one player campaign rules

mattwakeman · Structure of one player campaign rules

Ok, well starting from the suggestion made by Brownrob here I have been trying to work out some rules in order that people who don't have access to a league can take a team and play more than just one-off games with them. Please bear in mind that at the moment these are just outline rules and there is a lot of work to be done on the details and rules. But as ever, any and all feedback is of course welcome (as long as it is vaguely constructive that is!).

One of the ironies of Elfball is that its structure is fantastically suited to a league situation in which coaches are working on a fixed roster without damaging things like attribute increases or uber-skills. However, this is an irony because the 'other game' with its more open team is actually more suited to the kind of system that I am setting out. So some changes to the rules have been made in order to give the structure not only some shape but also the feeling of a team making progress. What I want to do with these rules is to create a situation in which coaches create a team and from these small beginnings watch as it grows and gets better as they play more games and undertake challenges. But the current structure of 180 value teams is actually more restrictive than helpful.

In order to get around this I am proposing some fairly big changes in how teams are created and how they will develop. But what I am trying to do is to link development of the team in a league structure in which teams will start at Level 1 (think of it as village level) and progress up to Level 5 (full blown stadia). So if you are playing at little places then you could only afford to have a small roster right? After all, you need to balance the books and the outgoing has to be at least similar to the incoming.

At Lvl 1 teams will gain money for each game that they play equal to 120 points, the equivalent of eight players. This will go up by 15 points for each Lvl that they progress to. So it will look like this:

Lvl 1 - 120 points (8 players)
Lvl 2 - 135 pts (9 players)
Lvl 3 - 150 pts (10 players)
Lvl 4 - 165 pts (11 players)
Lvl 5 - 180 pts (12 players)

I am also thinking that each game that you play, if you win you will get a bonus of 1 Gold Point which is worth the wages of one extra player. I am also thinking that not only is there no limit to the number of players that you have, but also you don't have to buy them. You simply recruit them instead. What this means is that if you get relegated (more on this in a bit) then the extra player that you have doesn't have to be got rid of straight away. You can afford to run with a bigger team...as long as you are getting the results. But if you lose then you won't have enough money to pay the team in full...again, more on this in a little bit.

Within each level you will play a certain number of games and depending on how well you do you may well get automatic promotion, go into a play-off situation or even be relegated. You will play a different number of games depending on the level that you are at so for example at Level 1 you would:

Play 5 games

If you win all 5 Wins= you get automatic promotion
4 wins and you have a one game playoff against the team that you lost to
3 wins and you play both teams that you lost against and if you win both you get promoted.
0 wins and the team disbands.

So for all the levels it now looks like this:

Lvl 1: 5 games / 5W: Auto promotion / 4W: 1game playoff / 3W: 2game playoff / 0w: team disbands
Lvl 2: 7 games / 7W: Auto promotion / 6W: 1game playoff / 5W: 2game playoff / 4W: 3 game playoff / 2W: team is relegated
Lvl 3: 9 games / 8W: Auto promotion / 7W: 2game playoff / 6W: 3 game playoff / 5W: 4 game playoff / 3W: team is relegated
Lvl 4: 11 games / 10W: Auto promotion / 9W: 2game playoff / 8W: 3 game playoff / 7W: 4 game playoff / 4W: team is relegated
Lvl 5: 13 games / 11W: 2game playoff / 10W: 3 game playoff / 9W: 4 game playoff / 5W: team is relegated

If the team wins the final Lvl 5 playoff (it cannot get out automatically) then it ascends out of the game completely.

But who do you play against? Well all that happens is that when it is time to play a game then you choose a team randomly from those that are available to you as miniatures. Then, assign each player from the team sheets an equivalent card from the deck and draw out as many cards as a team should have at this level. So for example if you are playing in a Lvl 1 game then you would draw 8 cards. For a Black Widow team if you drew out an Ace then that would be a Hunter, a seven would be a striker etc. If you draw a King however then this does NOT count towards the number of players and instead the opponent team can draw 15 pts of random support. This is to reflect that the team is not created with a team in mind but could be really short-handed in certain areas.

Each Level would also have a number of random areas (Tavern, Apothecary, Wizard's Tower, Bookies, Old Coaches etc) equivalent to their level so a lvl 1 location would only have 1 such area whilst a lvl 5 would have 5. I then want to work out rules about what coaches can do in these areas such as gaining experience or betting on their team.

I also have in mind some rules on random events and also the concept of players having personal attributes as well as physical ones. What happens if you get relegated and you have more players than you can afford? Do you just cut a player? Or do you underpay them all? Or just one? If you choose not to pay players then you have to make a challenge roll to see what happens when they don't get a full wage. What happens if you have a skilled player who a bigger team wants and you don't want to let him go? What happens when your players go out on the town at night? Which player doesn't mind being in the starting 6? All these things can be checked out with a challenge dice and help to add some personality to players and make it feel as though you are dealing with more than just miniatures.

What I would really love is that if I can get some balanced fun rules that people like then their could be a place in which coaches could submit the teams that they have at the end of each season (especially the teams which ascend at the end). Once you have enough then when other coaches need to play against a team then instead of randomly creating them you can play against other teams which have been forged in the heat of the game itself. Players and teams would live on and legends would be born. Cool huh?

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

Mephisto

Nice.

I'm going to try something out for the other game and then tell it her.

But please, continue with your work, 'cause it's great and it's giving very good ideas.

brownrob

Good stuff!

Could have some preset teams also, particularly for the real big teams towards the end

mattwakeman

More just thinking out loud at the moment but I would like to start working on the ideas of players personal attributes. I can see these being heavily linked with the random events which pose something of a chicken and egg situation since I obviously want the two to complement each other.

I would also like to have some kind of crude racial stereotyping going on with some of them but what I don't want is for these things to be so strong that people feel as though there is a big disadvantage in choosing a certain team. So what I was thinking is that for each of these attributes ALL players will start with 2 in them. No exceptions. But some players will have a weakness and if they do then that means that they have to replace one successful dice and reroll it. If, on the other hand they have a positive attribute then they replace one failure die and reroll it. This seems to me to offer a weakness/ strength without it becoming just too over the top. Maybe if you roll a 2-dice challenge and get 3 (4?) successes then you can even go up a point or if you flop then you lose a point (maybe).

Possible categories (and some effects that I have been thinking about are):

Loyalty: How likely a player is to leave the club if another one comes knocking for him.

Teamwork: Alters chance of player getting unhappy points if he isn't in the team (this is an area that I really want to get in the game somehow)

Troublemaker: Some players just can't seem to avoid getting in trouble whilst others are like paragons of virtue

Ambition: How eager a player is to get to the next level. Maybe a bonus the first time that he plays at the higher standards but what happens to him if you get relegated?

Cash: Some players really, really (really) don't like not being paid what they think they should

? Any other suggestions would be lovely. I would like there to be a balance and have six of these to match up the six physical but I am also aware of the need to try and balance them as much as possible. For some teams this seems very easy (Dwarves, loyal but looove money) but not sure about just making some players / teams have negatives. Having everybody have one strength and one weakness is kind of boring really but neither would I want a coach to look at a team and just see negatives. Maybe have it so that teams with only negatives can never lose an attribute point but those with only positives can't gain a point but I want it to be at least partially elegant.

Feedback as ever is appreciated.