I’ve been designing some miniatures I can get the Shapeways guys to print out eventually, ultimately for use in a pair of games I’m working on. One is a six player (or three or two) elemental sort of chess, so I just need models, but the other is sort of a fantasy/BattleTech mashup, a tabletop tactical miniatures game almost in the vein of WarMachine.
I’m running into a design question, though that I’d like some input on. I’m trying to find a good way to keep track of information for the combat units. For those of you with experience with or interest in mini games like this, how do you like to keep track of unit status? This might include things like hit points, status afflictions (morale, poisons, buff and debuffs, auras, that sort of thing), weapon loadout, special moves, or any of a number of other variables.
I’ve seen games like HeroClix and the World of Warcraft minis game try to encode at least some of this data on a rotating base under the figure. This has always seemed like a gimmick to me, but it does reduce the number of things you have to keep track of on paper off the combat arena. The models seem a bit flimsier for the mechanical base, though, so it’s definitely a tradeoff in terms of usability. They also seem a bit more… “gamey” than the games that just use minis on bases that might have a more simulationist feel.
Other games like WarMachine and BattleTech offload the bookkeeping to papers. This isn’t as easy to tell the status of things at a glance, but it does allow for much more detailed information and thus, potentially more game design elements and clearer design.
Warhammer does a little of both, in a way, letting unit count in a block of infantry be a visible tally of a combat group’s strength, but it also has a lot of data offloaded onto paper, especially for hero units and special gear or magical effects.
One of the strengths of the Magic: The Gathering card game is that they have tried to reduce the bookkeeping and memory issues over the years. Once upon a time you might have to keep track of multiple different upkeeps, special effects and what different counters represented (is that a +0/+2, +1/+1 or +2/+0 counter?). These days, they have tried to distill these issues and have the “board state” give as much information as possible. It’s nice to have a lot of data out there in the gamespace rather than offloaded to paper, but some things just don’t code well in a small amount of space. Reducing the number of things players have to remember also helps speed up the game and make it easier to learn, as well as easier to play.
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My question then is about that data encoded in the figure bases, whether it’s HP, action arcs, facing, whatever. Is that method actually helpful in real gameplay? (This includes noting that it’s more of a hassle if you’re always picking up the models and twiddling with their bases, and on a non-grid gamespace, that’s kind of annoying.) Is it better to have all bookkeeping off-model?
Which do you prefer playing with and why? I have my opinions, but I also have relatively little experience with miniature tactical gaming. I’d like to get a bit more information if possible. Tangentially, how much bookkeeping is too much?
Thank you in advance!
(Perhaps this could be generously noted as a bit of game UI design. Playability is a big component of whether a game sticks or not.)
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Oh, and bonus question while we’re talking mini design. Painted or nonpainted? Shapeways can print in full color now, and it’s even cheaper than nonpainted models. Painted models are more brittle, though, and don’t have as much detail, so again, it’s all about the tradeoffs.
Most of my personal experience is from GW’s 40K series of games, specifically Bloodbowl and Necromunda.
Bloodbowl has cards for the regular teams, so all of your players’ stats are there, together, on one easy to read card. If you had heroes in your team you had a separate card for each of them, but as it was very, very rare (IME) to have more than two heroes on one team having one or two heroes didn’t add that much to the bookkeeping side of the game.
Necromunda followed a similar principle but allowed for the customization of your gang by equipping your models with different weapons, thus it was easy to gauge the strength, threat, and effective firing range of an opponent’s model based on the weapon they were carrying.
Bloodbowl and Necromunda reduced the stat-tracking of models by limiting models’ HP to one point, so a damaging attack removed the model from play. The rules of both games also allowed for models to be knocked down (or pinned down by enemy fire), and this was represented by actually lying the model down on the game board.
I do like the on-base trackers used by the Clix series of models, though, especially if you have to keep track of the stats for multiple, various units. If you imagine playing a game where you and your opponent field a team of 10 identical pawns (ok, yours are black, his are white, but otherwise identical) keeping track of the stats of each of your pawns could prove a nightmare.
“Ok, so that guy only has 15 HP left, right?”
“Aah, no. He has 20, I think. It’s that guy who has 15.”
“I thought that guy had 12. I thought it was this guy who had 20.”
“No, this guy had…er…crap. I have no idea who’s who.”
We’ve actually run into the same issue in our tactical card game, which has troop cards moving on a grid. Even though the innately reduced immersion of cards vs minis allows us more room for counters and tokens, it can still be difficult to track the various statuses, buffs, debuffs and fluctuating stats like HP without overloading a card or confusing markers.
On the other hand, if this problem comes up it may not be a UI problem, it might be a complexity issue with the game. Its a hard line to walk between smooth gameplay and stimulating strategic complexity, so if you find it difficult, clustered and confusing to track all the stats in your game, you might consider consolidating the number of things required to track.
Immersion is also a crucial factor, and as you point out even if the rotating base stats are nifty and compact, it still kills immersion to have to pick up the models to change their stats (not to mention opens up the potential for accusing people of shifting their models slightly in or out of cover).
I think Warmachine finds a happy medium in its system of models and cards, allowing most of the focus to be on the simulationist figures, and the cards being more of a representation of the abstract parts of combat, a troop’s capabilities and state of being. Also allows far more stats to be tracked since it isn’t being done on or around the model’s base. Separation of Troop and State
Quick shameless plug: Conquest Tactics does several things to avoid “UI” clutter and information overload. Our proudest UI achievement is the Knowledge Pool, which solves the complexity vs. UI simplicity issue fairly well. Instead of a Troop’s abilities being displayed on its card or in a rulebook, they’re listed separately on Spell and Skill cards, which in itself isn’t revolutionary by any means. However, each Troop has icons denoting which types of Spells and Skills they can learn (Fire, Ranged, etc), and these Spells and Skills aren’t taught to individual Troops, but are placed in a Knowledge Pool off to the side where they can be utilized each turn by any friendly troop that knows that type. Thus you don’t sacrifice any capabilities or strategic value, but don’t have to endure cluttered troop cards or constant reference to a rulebook or army list, nor do you have to save that spell card for the one perfect time to use it, since you can reuse each turn.
Sorry for the self indulgence but I think it illustrates at least one solution in the vein of what you’re looking for, UI optimization in table top games.
As for the paint vs no paint, I think a lot of people find prepainted to be both limiting and contrived, so I recommend no paint.
The ultimate bookkeeping game that I’ve experienced was Starfleet Battles, the SSD’s are really something. It’s a great game in terms of tactical nuance, but most people take one look at the rules and run screaming.
Games Workshop Epic system abstracted a lot of unit factors into blast markers, and that worked very well, although a lot of players of earlier systems were horrified. I thought it sped up gameplay and was very elegant. Basically hits on a unit would create a number of blast markers based on the severity of the hit, and these would affect morale and capability. Every morale phase one or more of these would be removed.
I would argue that if you have a lot of data to record, it may pay to look for some abstraction that can simplify it. Better to have a quick game that can be replayed, rather than a monster that you can only play occasionally. I loved Empire in Arms, but I’ve only played it 3 times.
I keep wondering if they’ll do Magic as an iPhone/iPad app similar to the Scrabble system, which is cute.
Bonus question: The full color – it’s all about pretty UI’s really. The nasty marketer in me also notes that pieces that wear out can be repurchased too. There might be some issues with packaging and shipping fragile parts though.
I’ve played a lot of different miniature war games and board games over the years, and I generally like a system that comes with cardboard indicators/counters/etc that can be placed beside the affected model to indicate its status (when it differs from the norm – be that buffed, debuffed, or damaged).
I really don’t like counters built into the models because it detracts from the actual models themselves, and makes them less easy to customize/paint/etc.
Regarding shipping painted/unpainted: I’d say unpainted – I like to have the option to bring my own figures to life my way.
Two of my favourite miniature games have been GW’s Battlefleet Gothic and Epic.
In BFG, you keep track of hitpoints of each ship on a piece of paper, but all the rest is done on the board with cardboard chits and dice. The action dice in BFG are shared with Epic and also denote unit status along with cardboard chits. Both were easy to understand and gather useful information at a glance without detracting from the look of the miniatures.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, all! This isn’t something I’ve written much about before, but I have every intention of digging a bit more into it. I love the input so far, and am grateful for your time.
A few minor thoughts of clarification:
Capn’, I like the base stat tracking in the WarCraft minis game, but that games uses a hex grid, so there’s no chance of cheating when noodling around with the models. Since I prefer a gridless system, that’s a concern, rightly noted by Andy. I tend to believe that the complex bases are useful sometimes, but maybe not quite what I want for what I’m doing.
Andy, Conquest Tactics looks interesting. I think I’ll be digging around a bit on your site, thanks!
“Separation of Troop and State”… love it.
On complexity and streamlining, yes, that’s largely at the heart of this question. Interestingly, these two minis games that I’m talking about started as one game. I found myself torn between wanting more complexity and depth, but also wanting a fast and simple game. Maybe it’s the noob way out, but I decided to make two games: a simpler, hexagonal Chess-lite sort of game, and a more complex, gridless squad-based tactical game. I took the core design and streamlined it into the Chess-like game, and ran with some more complex ideas in the other direction. I do still want to keep even the latter game streamlined and playable (which is why it’s squad-based rather than company-based, more WarMachine, less WarHammer), though, so I’m definitely trying to find the sweet spot where complexity adds to the game without bogging it down.
Splitting the two is also the genesis of the painted/nonpainted question. I do tend to lean to nonpainted for the squad game, both for durability and customization (and I’d never buy prepainted Warmachine minis; I’m an artist, I want to do it my way as Andrew notes). The Chess-like game, though, might benefit from precoloring, since it’s meant to be a “pick up and play” game. The durability question is a concern, though.
Kirith, using dice is a tantalizing tangent. I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy that “pound of dice” thing for a while now…
Anyway, thanks for mentioning other games as reference, too, all! I really want to dig more into this section of game design. I intend to have a free PDF game to offer for Christmas, and I really want it to be one of these two. Minis themselves can come later.
It’s also an exercise in monetization; make the game rules and simple pieces free, but offer minis as an upgrade path. It’s part of that whole “Making it Real” thing. (Which of course would benefit from durability; no need to gouge players, methinketh. I hear you, Paul.)
Oh, and Kirith, I love the EVE screenshots.
Have you considered little flag poles on the bases on the pieces? Add some notches at standard intervals and then you can move a slider up or down as needed. This would also give a rough picture of the situation, since a lot of low markers mean low health or mana.
Alternatively, a second, duplicate board which stores the information. This doubles the work since you need to change two boards per move and may be a bit harder to visualize per piece, but it would increase the available space and could still be useful for an overall picture.
Or just a huge Excel sheet on a laptop with every piece listed with location, buffs/debuffs, mana, and health.
“Or just a huge Excel sheet on a laptop with every piece listed with location, buffs/debuffs, mana, and health.”
Hmm… maybe have a webcam hooked up with some monitoring software to automate the process?
Or maybe just play on one of those fancy MicroSoft gaming table things and let the system handle the bookkeeping… but those are so hard to pack into a PDF. 
Tongue out of cheek, if I were to have a second board, wouldn’t it just be simpler to have all the data offloaded to the board and leave the mini alone?
So are you planning on having the theme and feel of the three games be the same, but the monetization and complexity set them apart from each other?
PDF Version with basic pieces -> “Board Game” version with still simple rules and organized board and prepainted minis –> Full immersive version with rich strategic gameplay and serious customizable miniatures
Thats a fascinating idea, splitting the essence of a game in two and transforming it into a progression/learning curve so that players can pursue greater strategic depth or stop when they reach their comfort level. It would produce a larger community of players than the sum of its parts, since more people would be interested in the overall idea even if they’re on different tiers of $kill
Aye, that’s the hope. Break up the demand curve and break up the skill/design curve as well. I really like the idea of letting people dig as deep as they want into the design implications. Also, these actually fit a theme I’ve been working on for a while, effectively a host for a suite of games in a larger world. As in, these are games with a strong theme, games that should be fun on their own, but also part of a bigger whole. Not necessarily that they tie together into one megagame, but more like they could be games that people in the larger fictional world could play. Solid games in their own right, but part of a much larger stage.
Wheels within wheels.
Check out Arcane Legions.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42713/arcane-legions
It take up a lot of space but I like how the design a lot.
Thanks for the recommendation! That does look pretty interesting. I think I’ll be perusing the PDFs when I can make the time.
[...] with just those dice? Maybe add in a pad of paper? A few coins? A whole bag of varied dice? Miniatures of some sort? A game [...]