Simpler Mode vs Tutorial in Board Games

While the simpler mode does offer that feeling of an easy way to play, it is not a tutorial. It is the main game just with a few rules stripped away. A game that I think of is Calico. It is the exact same game but you are balancing less. You only keep track of getting cats and buttons, not of getting the mid quilt scoring objectives. So same game but easier to keep track of everything.

A tutorials goal is to get you up to speed with the whole game. Often times that is going to be walking you through things, but other times it might not. I think of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. It adds in rules each time that you play. Or ISS Vanguard, Tainted Grail or Sleeping Gods, they walk you through each action that you’ll do so you learn the game that way. It’s much more guided.

Why Simpler Modes are Nice

The easy reason is that it makes a game more accessible for more players. By limiting what you need to keep track of, it is going to make the game easier to teach and learn. And that makes it easier for anyone to pick up.

The goal, I think for most, is to be treated like a tutorial. You learn the game and play it and then you advance to the more advanced rules. Though, unlike a tutorial that brings you threw that easier play into more complex game play, you don’t ever need to advance beyond the simpler mode.

Where It Can Fall Down

However, as I’ve played games with simpler modes, I do think they fall down at times. In particular the common way to handle it is to make the game simpler by removing objectives or goals. That sometimes helps, but other times it opens up things too much.

An example of this is Planet Unknown or I would say Railroad Ink as well. In the simplified versions you have limited but general objectives. Fill up your planet and move up your tracks in Planet Unknown. Which track do you go up, which one is the best, who knows, probably the one giving you the most points. But when you play on the more complex side you get different powers and abilities. And each thing you build and what track you go up on, that is all about your specific planet and corporation.

So it goes from a basically, do whatever you want, to a focused game. Now that might sound restricting, but for a newer player to the game, it can be freeing. It gives them a specific thing to focus on. It might be get as much water as you can, or build up as much biomass in Planet Unknown. They get a specific track to move on and a specific goal to face.

Is This Mode Good for Board Games?

So that lands us on if this is good? Because I think it depends on some of the games. Because it depends on what the game is trying to do with it or how the game works really.

Calico is intentionally trying to make the game hard when you play with the quilt scoring objectives. No long does it break up the quilt for a minor annoyance, now you need to perfectly plan where everything goes. So for a new gamer, it is better with the simplified rules.

On the flip side with Planet Unknown or Railroad Ink (vs Railroad Ink Challenge), it leaves it so open that it doesn’t give you great options. Everything is a good option so you want to dabble a bit in it all. It isn’t opening up that really tight board game. It is instead making it too open and directionless.

Another example is Isle of Cats where you can just try and collect and rescue cats into groups. But a lot of the fun of the game is getting your scoring objectives and seeing who can get cats first. Now, for this one, I want a happy medium, actually. I think some of the elements, like getting baskets and feet, that isn’t needed. But the scoring objectives, private and global, make for a more interesting and focused game.

Do you have a game that you really like the simpler mode, either for play or teaching?

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

The Premise

The Characters

The Bosses

The Guilds

The Levels

The Boards

Cards vs Dice

Character Leveling

Skills, Weapons and More

Quests

In Town Activities

Level Events and Monsters

Boss Battles

Building a Character

Building a Level Part 1

So the first level is going to be a bit different than every other level. In those you’re going to be able to start in immediately doing whatever you want. And I do want you to be able to do that mainly on the first level, but I also want to help players along with knowing how to play the game, so I want to kind of create some of a walkthrough or how to play within the first level.

The first level is going to have basically everything that a normal level would have. You will have NPC’s and PC’s to interact with, you will have quests, floor events, the guild and monsters, and you’ll have a shop to go to.

That’s probably the first difference is that you won’t have several different shops to go to, you will have a single bazaar that you will go to and you will go to it on your first turn. The first floor event you flip over, before you decide where you’ll go will direct everyone to go shopping. Why do that? Because you don’t start with armor, weapons, etc. It will take you through the shopping experience, let you spend your money and explain how skills work and weapons work. When you talk to the shopkeeper they are going to explain and give examples of the cards and how they work so that you aren’t having to spend as much time in the rule book learning that. That stuff will be in the rule book for refresher, but it won’t be something you need to read to get started.

The next day you’ll flip a new event and it’ll send you fall out to go fight a monster. This is going to give a chance to show how the monsters work and show one of the key mechanics for a level as you draw a hand of modifier cards and use them. This also will show off how XP is gained and tracked as the players defeat the monsters and get rewards. This should be a fairly boring but quick event for everyone to go through, but it’s also important because besides maybe a few PC and NPC actions as well as the shopping, you’ll be given the option to use modifiers on almost everything and to learn how they’ll be removed from your deck for the boss battle and how you can manipulate that.

The third level event is going to kick off the game proper. It’s going to be a level event that everyone has to go to and deal with. This is where the whole game will kick off. There probably will be some thing that you’ll spend a card on, but I don’t really want to spoil any story ideas right now. But most likely this event will lead to some quests or paths that can be opened up in the game.

Then for the rest of the level, another as many rounds as you want, there really won’t be any negatives, creatures will run out so you can’t grind character levels on level one, NPC’s and PC’s will run out eventually, but from that point you’ll be able to go and do quests, fight monsters, research, whatever it is. Also from this point on, there won’t likely be another set of level events that require all players to do something. It might be a very rare occasion where a player is needed to go to a level event, but that would only be if they don’t want to send a guild marker there, or they can’t because the guild is too small.

Once the players have decided they’ve done everything that they need, the boss monster will be up for them to fight. And I again want to do some of a tutorial for this. That means that this is probably going to be a smaller map, just to fit some text onto the page. I’ve talked about how the boss monsters and boss battles will work, but the first boss battle is going to lay out those details as well as how turn order works. Don’t worry, there will be cheat sheet cards that explain how both the levels and the combat works that will have this information as well, but I want to be able to go into more detail and lay out kind of that first monster turn and what is going to happen as well as how some of the combat will work for the players. I don’t with it, however, want to tell the players what they have to do, no play this card as the optimal play or attack this way as the optimal way.

Finally, just to recap some of the layout of how this will all be set-up. This will be in a book, there probably will be a page of intro story that can be read at the very beginning and how to use the book/mark where you are at, that sort of thing, but general layout will be, on the left page, you’ll have spots for all the actions that you can take. For the quests, monsters, NPC’s, etc. Most won’t be limited as to how many people can go there, but sometimes they might be, in particular for something like the monsters, the quests, or the level events there might be a limit, otherwise people can go to the same spot if they want. With this there will also be spots to put down the cards for the level. That might be the level events, it might be cards that you have unlocked as new quests, it might be a list of the NPC’s or PC’s whom you can talk to, or it might be the monsters that you could fight. These are generally going to be small cards, think like the modifier and item card size from Gloomhaven if you are familiar with that game. They aren’t meant to have a ton of information on them, they are meant to drive you to the story book or adventure book in the game. Then on the right page you’ll have the map for the boss battle. It’s going to also help you know what type of level it is, there will be artwork throughout the levels as well, but this will be generally a large spot to highlight that.

The next part of the level design will start to dive into samples of how quests, level events, NPC and PC interactions and more might go.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

The Bard

When I think of a bard, I think about a wandering storyteller/musician who goes from town to town and tavern to tavern playing and telling stories for their meals, rooms, and drink. Or, on the flip side, I think of someone who is in the court of a noble, telling them stories at their fancy parties and keeping them entertained while the drinks keep flowing.

In Dungeons and Dragons, this is usually the case, and in general, I’d say that you would likely end up as the first type of bard, who then joins up with an adventuring group in hopes of getting the best story ever. In our Dungeons and Flagons game, during the very first episode, Tate is telling this magnificent tale about how Nimrose, Finja, and himself had defeated a horde of dragons. Now, this wasn’t true at all, but he was demonstrating why he would fit well into the party, and that’s how I worked it to get the party together, since Nimrose and Finja already knew each other.

Mechanically speaking, the Bard is going to be a charisma-based character, and probably the face of the group. They cast their spells based off of charisma, and they can eventually become really good at skills like persuasion and deception and other skills that are generally meant to charm the pants off of people, for good or ill. This also lends itself to creating a character that is probably more chaotic neutral in alignment, because they are capable of manipulation. However, you’ll want to be careful that you don’t let chaotic neutral become chaotic evil while still having your character pretend they aren’t bad. The chaotic neutral bard would be the jokester of the group, or the person who is going to say something off-the-wall, or who might start to go overboard when fighting someone who is evil.

So, why might a bard join and adventuring group?

I already gave the reason that Tate did, which is to get a new story. That would be one pretty easy and common reason. Another reason might be that the Bard already has a story, like a long-lost treasure or long-lost city that they are looking for, and they need an adventuring group to help them find it so that they’ll have another story to tell. Finally, I think that protection is a valid reason for a bard to join an adventuring group as well. While a bard is usually able to hold their own in battle, in terms of the story they generally aren’t the strongest characters, and they would probably want someone else to do their fighting for them. Stick them with a fighter or a ranger or someone else who can protect them on the roads, and that makes a lot of sense as well.

What are some backstories I could use?

I’m going to pull first from Tate’s backstory:

You could be the fourth son or daughter of a noble and not be entitled to any land. So you have a good life, but you’re bored and you want to do something more. You start traveling around and listening to stories, and eventually you just start telling those stories again and turning that into a way of life. Your family doesn’t like you because being a bard is degrading, and you don’t like them either because they just want you to be lazy at home and do nothing, or maybe they wanted you to join the church (or a D&D equivalent).

Or maybe, after years of being a soldier, you’re too old to do that anymore. You’ve always been social, and you’ve started telling stories around bars, and people started buying you drinks. Now you’re traveling around telling stories of battles you’ve been in before, but that’s given you the itch to get back out and kill a monster again. So you’re looking for that new story to tell, and better yet, to help create, but you need some help now, as you’re a bit older. This would be a non-traditional build, as you’d still have pretty high charisma, but you’d probably put more into strength and constitution than you would dexterity, which would normally be a bard’s secondary skill. Remember that finesse weapons can be wielded with either strength or dexterity.

Or perhaps in another scenario, you’ve spent years as a bard, but what people don’t realize is that you’re a bit of a criminal as well. Nobles don’t pay much attention to you at parties when you’re performing, and even though they pay you well, you leave with a little bit extra at the end of the night. There have been a lot of scullery maids and butlers getting in trouble and being blamed for what you’ve done, but that’s their problem. You’ve heard of an item that would basically set you up for life if you could get it, and there’s going to be a big celebration coming up at the place where it’s kept; now you just need to get invited and find some people who can help you get it out.

That last one seems to describe a bit more of an evil character, but you could also spin it as you’re helping the poor with what you liberate from the wealthy. Or maybe there is a kingdom that you do this in because their armies killed off your family, and you want to get revenge on them in your own way, so you’re stealing from every noble who was part of the war that killed your family and destroyed your village.

And one last idea:

People like bards, and while they remember your face and the stories you’ve told, people don’t think much of you or suspect you. The fact that you’re a member of a resistance is something that you keep hush-hush. You’ve been in houses of nobles and heard stories that no one else could get, as your music opens many a door. Now they’ve asked you to find out some information hidden away in the manor of the king, and you’re going to need a little help doing it.

Have you played a bard? What sort of backstory did you use?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.