[Thousand Spears] Looking for Feedback and Testers
SuperSooga:
Thousand Spears is my most recent game project.
The Elevator Pitch
Thousand Spears is...
Hercules and the 300 Spartans voyaging around an ancient world varying from Hyborian savagery to classical wonder. Talented Inheritors carry out great deeds only through the sacrifice of their ordinary followers.
What's this going to do that other games don't?
- "Scaling Up" the traditional RPG structure of a party of player characters and maybe some hirelings. In Thousand Spears each player has their own character but each character will have followers. They could have a dozen each or ten-thousand each and the game still works. There are still times for individual efforts but for the most part you'll want to have a bunch of followers under your command.
- "Highlight-based" combat, where individual swings of the sword and exact positions aren't tracked but units and individuals can still carry out actions to sway the battle.
- The setting is a twist on classical mythology. Spear, shield and javelin rule the battlefield but in a world without horses large hounds are used to pull chariots and more dangerous creatures are trained as war beasts or feared as monsters. Sprawling empires exist alongside ancient tribes and defiant city states. Although inspired by our own classical age the world is original and there are no direct analogs for Greece, Egypt, Persia etc.
What Stage is it at?
The game is in serious need of some editing and layout work, but I can get to that time-consuming process soon. Some testing has already taken place but I want to step up my efforts. I'm pretty sure the core of the game works and each of the side-systems seem fundamentally sound too. Now it's more about fine tuning and (urgh) balancing.
So what can I do?
The simplest way you can help is to take a look over the game and tell me what you think. If you want to be extra helpful you can hop into #rpgnet on irc.magicstar.net and help me with a playtest some time. If you want to be ultra helpful you can run a playtest yourself. Try it, I dare you!
Okay, so where do I get it?
It's HERE in Google Doc format. I'm still making tweaks and additions so don't be shocked if you see some real time updating.
Thanks in advance for any help and don't hesitate to hit me up in the irc channel if there's something that needs clarifying.
stefoid:
Link broken
SuperSooga:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1heOUrzhm9JizBOH9vw21uTJWt33WxOcW7z3E0juHiKg/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNDhqs0G#
This should work.
Ron Edwards:
Hi there,
I greatly appreciate that you're working on your game and have told us about it, but this is a discussion forum. It's not for posting an announcement and link as if it were a bulletin board.
Please help out by discussing any of your experiences and concerns with the game, and not in a press-release way, either, but as a fellow gamer speaking to people you think might like it.
Best, Ron
SuperSooga:
Apologies if it sounded a bit like a press-release! At the moment I'd say the two areas of the game I'm looking to work on currently are:
- Scaled Battles. It currently seems like a large unit is difficult for smaller units to touch. While I feel like 1,000 Spearmen should win out against 500 Spearmen in the majority of cases I'd like to allow the 500 to at least make a dent in the larger unit before they go. I've considered lowering the Scale Bonus gap between these unit sizes to allow them to break each other's defences more easily but have the larger unit cause more of a Scale Bonus loss when they personally break the final defence of a smaller unit. In this way a number of smaller units could pick at the larger one but the large unit can take a much bigger chunk out of one of the smaller units on its own turn. Not sure how easily this could be balanced to have battles meet expectations, though. I want the results to feel right so no 50 Skirmishers getting a lucky victory over 500 Spearmen.
- Character Creation. Currently the costs of Abilities and Bonuses are little more than place holder figures, so I'd appreciate any guidance as to whether any seem over/under-priced.
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