DND Upgrade

Goal: 

Create a physical cooperative, asymmetric, non-deterministic, perfect information game that requires non-player characters, and have them follow scripted actions. The NPC’s were required to act in response to player actions. Players were not to be allowed to be individually knocked out of the game without a way to get back in. Full party losses were not included in these rules.  Group project of 4 people.

​

Process:

My group struggled coming up with original ideas that fit the requirements, so I started looking for games that already fit, and we could alter them enough to be our own unique idea. The game we could customize the most was Dungeons and Dragons. We quickly started brainstorming but came into an immediate roadblock that would prove to be our greatest challenge. Making fully scripted actions for non player characters that would take place over the entire duration of the game. We first made a map, so that we had a framework that everything would take place in. Next we figured we would start with simple path following for enemies to take. We designed arrow paths on our board that would indicate the direction and path they moved. After that, we focused on the actual player gameplay. We crafted cards that would act as abilities that could be used by the players. These cards would be drawn from a shuffled deck, to keep the game interesting. To entice players to spend more time traversing the map, we scattered “chests” around that contained extra action cards that could help in defeating the final boss. To give players a sense of urgency, we created danger cards. These would be randomly chosen from a separate deck, and would negatively affect the party every few turns. In order to punish bad plays, we created the morale meter. It would decrease upon each player death, making the game harder, and eventually resulting in a full game loss. Player critiques showed that the gameplay was still lacking in some engagement, as most of our systems were not player controlled. To spice it up, we added obstacles to the map, such as explosive barrels and columns that could be knocked down to do damage and block pathways. Our final endeavor was creating a chase mechanic for when enemies spotted players in their line of sight. We decided on having the enemies chase players so long as they were within a certain aggression range, then return back to their designated path once aggression has been broken.

​

Participation:

This game was extremely difficult to create under the required deliverables, but my group came through and was a favorite from participants, compared to other group’s games.