| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I invite any and all to help me create what I hope will be a simple and fair scoring method for any adventure regardless of the amount of players or the characters chosen.
While the game scenarios are cooperative play within your own group, I can see at least a little bit of a competitive nature of "this group" vs. "that group" or even "this party (Valeros, Lem, Kyra, Merisiel)" vs. "that party (Harsk, Seelah, Sajan, Seoni) and wanting to compare how they did vs. the same scenarios/adventures. I also see a potential for "organized play" tournaments based upon marathon sessions of several adventures put together by many different "parties" competing for a prize!
Ok lets gather some different pieces of info that could be used for scoring criteria. I'll start with the most essential at the top, least nearer the bottom. [x] will be the starting suggestion for scoring for this category
Did you WIN?: Yes = Set Bonus [+10]. No = Zero.
Blessing Timer turns left: This is core mechanic of the game, and the more turns left = the better you did. Faster game is usually a more successful game. But a two-player game is quite different from 6-player game, how do we make scoring system fair based upon party size? Answer may come in follow up items. [+1 per remaining blessing]
Number of closed locations: Perm Close > Temp Close, but Temp Close will happen with more players and save Timer blessings. So this can be balanced via number of players. [+3 per permanently closed location]
Boons acquired: This is easy enough to compute, and can scale to the number of players. Count your final card count (hand, draw, discard) and subtract your starting deck size. This number is how many cards your entire party gained. Divide this by number of party members, that gives you your Average Boons Gained. Note that buried cards end up counting against you, so character deaths will really be penalized here.
[+1 per Average Boon Gained]
Banes defeated: This one is harder since they go back to the box, but you can keep a tally or something. Again, divide by number of characters to get the average. I think you should get more for defeating banes than acquiring boons, as it is generally a little harder and less banes as well. Evaded summons will not count since they aren't defeated. Sorry Merisiel. +2 per Average Bane defeated]
Henchmen defeated: Perhaps overkill, but sometimes you beat the henchmen but then don't quite close the location. You should still get something for having dealt with the henchmen. [+1 per defeated location henchmen (not summoned henchmen)]
Character deaths: Not that there isn't enough of a penalty, but added incentive to run away and fight another day. [-3 per character death]
Ok, so lets see how this might score out. Just making up some numbers. 4 man party beats villain with 10 turns left. Beat 15 banes, 4 were henchmen, acquired 16 net boons. No char deaths. Closed 4/6 locations (the villain location counts as closed, so two were temp closed)
Win - 10pts.
Turns left - 10 pts.
Closed locations - 12 pts.
Boons gained (avg) - 4 pts.
Banes defeated (avg) - 7.5 pts.
Henchmen bonus - 4 pts.
Total: 47.5 points
Further thought for failed scenarios: You get your score above until you complete it with a Win, but lose 5 points for every retry.
Whew, this took longer than I thought... but what does everyone think? I want to go to some gaming CON's in the next few months and try and run some marathon sessions. Then I could score the different parties against one another. Be interesting to see how different party/character distributions affect the scoring. Luck will always be a major part though, that's just fine!
Motrax
seems interesting overall. Only comment that I would make is to not worry about temp closed locations at all, and just focus on perm closed ones. the balancing factor will be that a group of 6 will have 8 locations, and a group of 2 will have 4. I would probably also consider adding an option for groups that want to run with more locations, and you probably shouldn't double penalize character death, as that will skew players away from certain characters (seoni comes to mind immediately).
seems interesting overall. Only comment that I would make is to not worry about temp closed locations at all, and just focus on perm closed ones. the balancing factor will be that a group of 6 will have 8 locations, and a group of 2 will have 4. I would probably also consider adding an option for groups that want to run with more locations, and you probably shouldn't double penalize character death, as that will skew players away from certain characters (seoni comes to mind immediately).
Yeah I probably wasn't clear but I was only scoring 3 per permanently closed location. Temp close = 0 pts.
Looking back on this I think I either am overvaluing defeating banes or undervaluing remaining turns left on Timer. Timer turns should be fairly valuable. I think [Turns Left * 2] is better.
Ok, on character death penalty: Lets say a character in a 5 man party with 15 card deck dies. 15/5 = 3, only currently a 3 point drop in the boon bonus. However, I didn't think it through completely... what if a 15 card deck dies in a 2 player game? That's 7.5 card boon loss. Hmmmm. Penalty is much harsher on smaller parties. And the smallest parties tend to be the ones with the highest danger of death. This isn't fair by any means.
How about this: Boon bonus is computed based on the surviving party members. If a character dies, his deck will not be used in the computation, but then a [-1 * party size] death penalty is applied. So a two man party that loses 1 character, gets a -2 penalty. But a 6 character party that loses 1... gets -6! And if they lose 2, -12!
Oh, and TPK = 0. You can't go negative but obviously if the whole party dies... you get NUTHIN!
Looking back on this I think I either am overvaluing defeating banes or undervaluing remaining turns left on Timer. Timer turns should be fairly valuable. I think [Turns Left * 2] is better.
This does skew things towards closing quickly over maxed out exploration. You might wanna add an alternate similar point system for people who close out all locations, and make it an "either/or" as opposed to getting both. That way, you can accommodate those people who prefer completionism, and those people who prefer closing things down fast.
How about this: Boon bonus is computed based on the surviving party members. If a character dies, his deck will not be used in the computation, but then a [-1 * party size] death penalty is applied. So a two man party that loses 1 character, gets a -2 penalty. But a 6 character party that loses 1... gets -6! And if they lose 2, -12!
I'd probably use all boons acquired, as this will let you cater to a wider audience of groups and playstyles. I'd go with just counting acquired blessings from the scenario for all surviving players, and then giving a flat 1 point/blessing bonus; since it's a team score, we should look at team activities.
You might wanna also track how many times a group defeats a boss, and track how many times henchmen are defeated in total (that would include summoned henchmen from various sources).
Oh, and TPK = 0. You can't go negative but obviously if the whole party dies... you get NUTHIN!
makes sense.