Blog Post 3: Play Logs and Session Reports of "Pirates and Ninjas Do Not Get Along"

One of my favorite past-times was to play chess. I loved the strategy and the tactics behind it. Along the way some of my friends ventured out and played an extremely simple but extremely deep Chinese game known as Go (Baduk in Korean, Weiqi in chinese). Through the simplicity of the gameplay, I learned that there was endless strategies and combinations. In chess you could have the best computer controlled engine play on par or even best the players in the world. In Baduk this would merely result in the computer becoming broken. The combinations are endless and even patterns would be nigh impossible for a computer to break down.

Recently, in our Intro to Game Studies class (taught by Morgan) we were invited to create our very own board game. We partnered up with someone who was not our own major. I ran into Benn who was a Digital Design major and we came to brain storming some ideas. For some reason I was fixated on making it a treasure hunt of some sort but still maintaining some simplicity to the mechanics to keep the game open strategically. He also liked the idea of keeping it simple as to possibly use it as a drinking game.

Our very first idea was terrible. We decided it could be 2 vs 1 NPC entity. We thought of ninjas trying to steal money from miners. We couldn't decide on a good map layout and had too many variables. It was getting too complex and we kept coming up with strange scenario rules. We decided to scrap it and move onto something else. Alas, we took no pictures of our shit idea.

Pirates vs Ninjas in it's rawest form

You can see here the board was 9x12 and treasures were randomly placed. We thought of trying to keep it random in the placement. We started with 5 ninjas and 5 pirates all starting on their side of the boards. We rolled one dice to give movement but allowed the value to be divided among the pieces. We wrote down the rules on the piece of butcher paper we had and you can see how we crossed out certain rules as we played because it didn't seem to work too well. I came up with the idea of pieces not dying, but when they came into battle they would push the other piece away.

• One rule we were able to agree on, to get a treasure, you needed two of your pieces on the treasure square. We started off with needing multiple turns (like we had to mine the treasure) but we had no way to keep track how many turns it was. We knew we had to scrap that but didn't come up with a solid solution.
• Another rule we had was battles were decided by rolls. I wasn't too fond of the randomness behind the game but it kept it kind of tense and fun. We ultimately decided to keep that rule. We also made it so the winner got to move the loser's piece by how much they lost by. I altered that rule in a later iteration.
• We also had boss pieces that had +1 to their rolls but we felt it was too imbalanced and took it out. All pieces were made equally.
• Another rule that we definitely decided to scrap was battles were on the same square. So two pieces of different colors were on one square. I don't know what we were thinking. I made a key change her in a later form.

We began to play a bit more and found out that there was some strategy involved with the two to take a treasure rule. We liked how it wasn't just a race to grab a piece of treasure but about working all of your pieces as a team. Unfortunately we ran out of time but Benn was winning in this pathetic raw form.

Our second play test resulted in Benn being away from class (he also had the board so I had to make a new one). He unfortunately had to tend to his ill grandmother (hope she's doing alright). I was unable to play test with him in class and helped my friend Richard play test his game. All was not lost as I stole one of his game mechanics. His game involved a race to get more castles than the opponent but landing on a castle meant you had to move your piece back to the start. I borrowed the idea of not necessarily starting over but not being able to go through. This fell perfectly in line with the idea of simplicity and strategy.

I did a second play test in the library with my friend Arjun, who happened to be one who I played Splendor with in the library. On the board I decided to make it odd lengthwise at 9x15. I taught him the basic rules and though we didn't finish, I got to try out a few different mechanics.

• I decided to implement a new method of counting out the moves. I felt sixes were too common and almost game-breaking. I wanted to find a way where 6's were less than 1/6. I decided to implement the idea of the difference of two dies. (5 & 2 was 3). Doubles meant you got the average. So (4 & 4 was 4). This dropped the amount of 6's to 1/36. Perfect. The full data was rolling a 1 was 31%, 2 was 25%, 3 was 19%, 4 was 14%, 5 was 8%, and 6 was 3%. This slowed down the game the right amount. I felt the halving rule slowed the game down far too much.

The difference rule slowed down the game just the right amount. Here 5-2 = 3

Doubles meant you got the average. Here you get 3 moves.

My final game test I was able to put in some cool features that improved strategy and gameplay. These ended up being the final rules that allowed for about a 20-30 minute play time with both simplicity and strategy involved. I introduced terrain! Pirates like water so they would get a +1 when they're on water. Ninjas like hiding so they would get +1 in the forests. This became an interesting feature that allowed for strategic movement of pieces. I took care to allow for evenness of the board and created a 15x11 board.

Terrain was introduced in the third iteration.
Pirates get +1 in battles when fighting from water.
Ninjas get +1 in battles when fighting from forests.

Territory battles: Ninja on neutral territory with treasure and pirate on water with bonus.
This was a memorable flank battle.

Rules for Play (A Turn)

1.  Collect any treasures if you have 2 pieces on one piece of treasure.

2.  Roll, calculate the difference (6-2 = 4), doubles count as the face value of a die shown (2 & 2 = 2), and you can divvy up the moves amongst your pieces. Pieces cannot go through other pieces. Pieces that have moved can move again (for you indecisive people).

3.  Pieces that are touching (adjacent) to an enemy piece may choose to fight. Take turns rolling two dice. Remember to calculate difference when fighting. Roll again if tied. Winner gets to move enemy piece 1 square (if they won by 3 or less) or 2 squares (if they won by 4 or more). Winner may take a vacant square left by a lost enemy.

Special Rules

•        Two of your pieces are needed to collect a treasure. If you start a turn and there are still two on a treasure, you may collect the treasure.
•        Pieces cannot go through enemy pieces, if an enemy piece occupies a square you have to go around or fight your way through.
•        You cannot go diagonally
•        You must finish divvying up your roll before starting the fight stage.
•        Ninjas get +1 on their fights when in the forest, pirates get +1 on their fights when in the water
•        1vx fights are done as 1v1 fights. If the 1 wins, he fights another 1v1.

Strategy

• Teamwork makes the dream work.
• Use territory to your advantage, the +1s may come in handy.
• Sometimes blocking your opponent may be better than reaching the treasure first.
• One piece with a roll bonus can be a nuisance

I was extremely satisfied with the way the board game turned out. Eager to playtest some more. Some of the game mechanics were:

Game Mechanics

• Turn-based
• Dice Rolling
• Area Movement, Area Control
• Grid Movement