Game Design Document - Project Jiggle

Group 4

Camilla von Paykull

Anita Stenholm

Simon Fridell

Viktor Nilsson

Andreas Rodin

Simon Strandh

ContentsConcept.......................................................................................................................................2MDA - Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics............................................................................2

Aesthetic Goals.......................................................................................................................2Malice/schadenfreude:........................................................................................................2Social...................................................................................................................................2Insidious..............................................................................................................................3Avaricious...........................................................................................................................3Powerful..............................................................................................................................3

Mechanics...............................................................................................................................3Open trading........................................................................................................................3Traps...................................................................................................................................3Raids...................................................................................................................................3Building...............................................................................................................................4Income.................................................................................................................................4Only One Can Win..............................................................................................................4

Dynamics................................................................................................................................4Backstabbing.......................................................................................................................4Hoarding.............................................................................................................................4Alliances.............................................................................................................................5King of the Hill...................................................................................................................5Trust....................................................................................................................................5Monopoly............................................................................................................................5

Resources....................................................................................................................................6Income.........................................................................................................................................6Actions........................................................................................................................................6

Action Cards...........................................................................................................................6Theft....................................................................................................................................6Forgery................................................................................................................................6

Walking Turns............................................................................................................................7Trading........................................................................................................................................7

Game Board............................................................................................................................8Building.......................................................................................................................................8

City Cards...............................................................................................................................9List of Buildings...................................................................................................................10

Attacking...................................................................................................................................13List of Soldiers......................................................................................................................14

Defending..................................................................................................................................14Winning.....................................................................................................................................15Setting Up The Game................................................................................................................15A Typical Round.......................................................................................................................15

ConceptProject Jiggle is a multi-player trading game with elements of building and fighting. The players must trade with each other in order to construct the Castle which is the win condition. To aid themselves and sabotage for their opponents the players can choose to hire soldiers for raiding. The concept is aimed towards social players and groups of friends.

MDA - Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics

Aesthetic Goals

1. Malice/schadenfreude2. Social3. Insidious4. Avaricious5. Powerful

Malice/schadenfreude:We want to achieve this by giving the players the opportunity to sabotage for each other. We want them to use these opportunities both to help themselves and to stop other players.A possible risk is that exposed players feel as if it is hopeless and they do not have a chance of catching up. This can be solved by minimizing the losses of such events and allow for easy recovery.

SocialThis aesthetic goal will be made possible by the opportunities of trading and making alliances.The most prominent risk is unsocial players and players that choose not to be social when playing. We will solve this by designing the game so that the players will have to negotiate, trade and make alliances to win. A possibility is to reward making alliances in some way.

InsidiousWe want the players to feel insidious by giving them the opportunity to make secret actions that will affect themselves in a positive way and other players in a negative way.

The biggest risk with this goal is to make the system work effortlessly without being too obvious to other players. To minimize the risks of this goal we must balance the game so that it is possible to keep things secret and to affect others.

AvariciousWe want the players to feel avaricious and hoard resources while wanting more.

The greatest risk is players not trading and resources seeming worthless to the players. We want to solve this by adding upgrades and investments, making expensive objects more desirable. It is also a question of balancing the game very carefully and do a lot of playtesting.

PowerfulThe final aesthetic goal is to make the players feel powerful; this will be done by giving them much positive feedback and rewards.

There is a risk of the differences between the players’ resources being either too small or too great. This can only be solved by doing a lot of balancing and provide much feedback, both negative and positive.

Mechanics

Open tradingThere is an open market system where players put bids for the kinds of resources they either want to sell or buy. Other players can accept these bids.

Players can have a maximum of 5 bids and there can be a maximum of 3 bids per resources. Players can both place, accept and retract a bid and it costs one action.

TrapsBids on the market can be Traps, there are 2 kinds of traps: Forgery, which removes half of the amount on the bid, rounded up and Theft, which steals 2 unprotected resources from the player whom accepted the bid.

RaidsRaids are done through the use of soldiers; they steal resources based on a dice roll. Any success on such a dice steals one unprotected resource from the player being raided.

The raided player also gets to roll any amount of defense dice the player has or can use his own soldiers to protect him- or herself; this is done in the same way as raiding but removes from the amount of resources stolen.

If a defending player get more successes than the raiding player, the defending player chooses one of the attackers soldiers and it is killed.

BuildingPlayers can use resources to build different houses. Each of these houses provides different benefits and effects. The goal of the game is to be the first player to build a castle.

The building process is simple, the player that wants to build show all other players he/she got the resources required to build a specific building. Then rolls a dice for each resource of the buildings primary type (which usually is the resource that is the most required for that building) and needs to get a different amount of successes for different buildings. If the player fails this, the player needs to pay a tax of half the required resources.

To build a building requires a player to use an action.

IncomeEach turn, players get a steady resource income. This income is distributed un-evenly, so players need to either raid or trade for one resource and got a lot more of one resource than the others.

Only One Can WinIn this game, only one player can ever win since it requires building a specific building. There are no lasting teams.

Dynamics

BackstabbingThe Backstabbing Dynamic is supported through the Raids, Traps, Open trading, Only One Can Win and the income mechanic.

Players will resort to backstabbing, both to put themselves in a better position in the game and to put other players behind. Backstabbing is done through breaking alliances, attacking players you have sworn to protect or never attack, saying a bid on the market is safe, when it is actually a trap and making promises you never intend to keep.

The Backstabbing Dynamic helps fuel the Avarice, Social and Malice Aesthetics of this game.

HoardingThe Hoarding mechanic is supported through the income and building mechanics.

Players will hoard resources that they are desperate to get their hands on. Especially the resource they cannot get through income and needs to either trade or raid to get.

They need to hoard resources as there is a minimum of 23 of all resources required to win and you need to reach certain thresholds to be able to win.

The hoarding Dynamic helps fuel the Avarice and Powerful Aesthetics of this game.

AlliancesThe Alliance Dynamic is supported through the Income, Raid and Open Trading Mechanics.

Players will resort to temporary alliances, to either get a resource they are getting or secure themselves from harm at a certain point of the game. These alliances can be everything from peace treaties to trade pacts and more.

The Alliance dynamic helps fuel the Social, Malice and Powerful Aesthetics of this game

King of the HillThe King of the Hill dynamic is supported by the Open Trading, Raids, Building and Only one can Win Mechanics. The game is based on King of the Hill game-play, where there will always be an obvious leading player which people will unite to fight. This leading player can be seen by looking at whom has come the furthest through the building tiers, got the biggest army, has amassed the most resources or has set up the most efficient monopoly.

Players often band together in Alliances (Check Dynamics) to beat the King down from the hill through several small raids, or denying the king trades.

The King of the Hill Dynamic helps fuel the Malice, Social, Insidious and Powerful Aesthetics.

TrustThe Trust dynamic is supported by the Open Trading, Traps, Attack and Only one can Win Mechanics. Trust in the game is fragile and players use it to empower their trading relationships. Players that do not use traps and doesn’t attack other players are often given much more lucrative trade offers and can through the use of this either set up for a large fraud later or use the other players to slowly build up to victory.

The Trust dynamic helps fuel the Social and Insidious Aesthetics.

MonopolyThe Monopoly dynamic is supported by the Open Trading, Traps and Income mechanics.Players can maintain market monopolies to either increase or decrease the value of a certain resource. Maintaining one of these monopolies requires both time and actions but allows players to drive up prices on specific resources. Traps can be used to further increase this monopoly and drive prices even higher, by telling players that the cheap bids are actually traps by the player that are maintaining the monopoly.

The Monopoly Dynamic fuels the Powerful, Avarice, Social and Malice Aesthetics.

Resources There are three different types of resources in the game – Wood, Stone and Iron. The resources are used to buy buildings and soldiers with. They can either be earned through income, trading or raiding.

IncomeAt the beginning of each round (and before the start of the game) each player receives a specific amount of resources that is stated on their City Cards (see City Cards for further information).

This income can be increased by buying income or trading boosting buildings (see Buildings).

ActionsEach player has the possibility of making two actions per round, these can be used to place, accept or retract a bid, attempting to construct a building and buying and/or using soldiers to attack.

Action CardsAt the beginning of the game each player receives a stack of Action Cards with the name of their city on the back of them. This allows the players to keep track of which bid belongs to whom and for them to always know with whom they are trading.

Each deck consists of three cards with two hands on them, which represent a clean trade with no actions carried out. There are also two trap cards:

Theft – the player is allowed to steal any two resources from the player accepting their bid (apart from any resources in storages).

Forgery – half the amount of resources placed was fake and goes back to the player who made the offer (if an uneven number this is rounded down e.g. if three wood were sold, the player accepting will receive only two)

1 Examples of Action Cards - Thievery and Forgery

2 Example of Action Cards - Friendly bid with no effect

Walking TurnsBefore starting the game all players roll one die, the one with the highest roll will receive the “First-player-marker” and start the game. The player to the left of them will play second, once all players have had their turn it is the end of the round.

The player who was sitting left of the player with the First-player-marker will receive the First-player-marker and play first in the following round.

TradingThere are three different trading places, each in which only one resource can be sold. On the top row you can place a selling bid of the resource traded in that particular trading place (for any other resource). On the bottom row you can place an offer of buying the resource traded in that trading place. (One type of resource cannot be traded for the same type of resource).

In the trading spaces there are three different pricings, when placing a buying or selling bid one must choose what price they want to buy/sell for and place their bid in the correspondent area.

The prices available are: *1+1 Example: Player one sells two wood, player two buys it for three stones (*1+1)*2 Example: Player one sells two wood, player two buys it for four stones (*2)*2+1 Example: Player one sells two wood, player two buys it for five stones (*2+1)

When placing an offer the player chooses one action card, places it face down where they want to place their bid and put the resources they want to trade on top of it.

To accept an offer the player places the amount of resources needed in the opposite box of the offer they wish to accept (they do NOT play an action card). They flip the action card placed by the player who made the offer and any action from it is carried out.

A player may choose to withdraw an offer that they made in a previous round at the cost of one action.

Game BoardThe game board visualizes the three trading places corresponding to the three resources of the game. It shows what resource can be sold in each trading place and the pricing options that are available.

3 The top row of each resource type is for selling the resource of that type, the bottom row is for buying the resource of that type.

BuildingThe players can use the resources they earn to construct buildings, often these buildings need all types of resources to be built and therefore players must trade them from other players. Building costs one action.

There are three Tiers of buildings, each which unlocks a new set of buildings available (see Building Card for a complete list).

To construct a building the player rolls the dice stated on the card of the building, if they succeed they receive a building card and places it in the right space on their city card. If the roll should fail, the player has to pay half the price of the building to the bank (this is rounded up e.g. if the cost is three stones, the player has to pay two).

The player can choose to pay extra of their primary income in order to increase the chances of constructing the building successfully, these resources are in this case added to the die roll. The only exception to using the primary income is for buildings that only have a cost of one type of resource, in this case the player must add extra of that one resource if they wish to increase their chances.

Any effects from the buildings are immediately activated (any income generated from buildings are not received until the end of the round).

City CardsEach player draws a random City Card before starting the game. The City Card states what income the player will receive each round and it shows which buildings are available for that particular player.

The buildings are sorted into the three tiers of which they belong. The top row is Tier 1, the middle Tier 2 and the bottom row with only two slots is Tier 3.

Only buildings that have a slot on the City Card can be bought by the player holding it.

4 Example of City Board

List of BuildingsTown HallUnlocks Tier 1Provides 1 defencePrice: 2 of all resourcesRoll: 2 (primary) of 2+

Wood StorageStore 4 Wood safelyProvides 1 defencePrice: 2 WoodRoll: 2 Wood of 2+

Stone StorageStore 4 Stone safelyProvides 1 defencePrice: 2 StoneRoll: 2 stone of 2+

Iron StorageStore 4 Iron safelyProvides 1 defencePrice: 2 IronRoll: 2 Iron of 2+

Stone Quarry+1 Stone each roundPrice: 3 Stone and 1 of all other resourcesRoll: 2 Stone of 3+

Iron Mine+1 Iron each roundPrice: 3 Iron and 1 of all other resourcesRoll: 2 Iron of 3+

Lumber Mill+1 Wood each roundPrice: 3 Wood and 1 of all other resourcesRoll: 2 Wood of 3+

Militia Training CampRecruit up to 3 MilitiaPrice: 3 of primary and 1 of other resourcesRoll: 2 (primary) of 3+

KeepUnlocks Tier 2Provides 1 defencePrice: 4 of each resourceRoll: 4 (primary) of 3+

Grand StorageStore 4 resources safelyProvides 2 defencePrice: 1 of all resourcesRoll: 1 (primary) of 4+

Grand Stone Quarry+2 Stone each roundPrice: 4 Stone and 2of other resourcesRoll: 4 Stone of 3+

Grand Iron Mine+2 Iron each roundPrice: 4 Iron and 2of other resourcesRoll: 4 Iron of 3+

Grand Lumber Mill+2 Wood each roundPrice: 4 Wood and 2of other resourcesRoll: 4 Wood of 3+

Merchants’ GuildBoth players receive 1 of primary resource upon tradePrice: 3 of primary resourceRoll: 2 (primary) of 3+

BarracksRecruit up to 5 Soldiers+1 on die rolls while attackingPrice: 5 of primary and 2 of other resourcesRoll: 4 (primary) of 3+

Walls:Provides 2 defence+1 on die rolls while defending

Price: 5 of primary resourceRoll: 4 (primary) of 3+

Thieves’ Guild Forger and ThiefProvides immunity against Theft or Forgery (only one branch can be bought)Price: 2 of primary and 1 of other resourcesRoll: 2 (primary) of 4+

FortressUnlocks Tier 3Provides 1 defencePrice: 7 of all resourcesRoll: 4 (primary) of 3+

CastleBuild first to winPrice: 10 of all resourcesRoll: 6 (primary) of 4+

AttackingIf a player builds Militia Training Ground (and Barracks) they can use their resources to recruit soldiers which can be used to attack other players. Recruiting a soldiers cost one action.

On their turn the player can use an action to send their soldiers to raid another player for their resources. To do this they choose which soldiers to send and place the soldier cards face down on the table. The defending player then has a chance to take defensive actions (see more under Defending). When all soldiers are placed, the amount of dice accumulated by the number of soldiers played is rolled. Successful die rolls count as successful attacks that may steal one resource, the amount of successful defence rolls are then subtracted from this.

The amount of soldiers available for hire is limited, there are nine militia men, seven infantry soldiers and four men-at-arms. This means that the players will have to compete for the best soldiers.

A soldier can be fired at any time by giving the soldier card back, the soldier will then be available to hire by any player, the same goes for soldiers that are killed in an attack.

Militia Training Grounds – player needs to roll 4 or higher to perform a successful attack. Player can recruit three soldiers.

Barracks - player needs to roll 3 or higher to perform a successful attack.Player can recruit five soldiers.

If the defending player rolls more successful defensive attacks than the offensive attacks, they are able to kill any one of the attacking enemy soldiers. Soldiers that are killed are returned to the Militia Training Ground/Barracks and can be recruited by any player.

Each soldier card can only be played ONCE during a round!

5 Soldier Cards - Militia and Infantry

6 Soldier Cards - Infantry and Men-at-Arms

List of SoldiersMilitiaLevel 1, costs 1 of primary resource and has 1 attack point. Can be hired from Militia Training Ground.

InfantryLevel 2, costs 3 of primary resource and has 2 attack points. Can be hired from Barracks.

Men-at-armsLevel 3, costs 5 of primary resource and has 3 attack points. Can be hired from Barracks.

DefendingIf another player attacks, there are two options for players to defend themselves. If the player being attacked has soldiers, they may choose to play soldier cards by placing them face down on the table after the attacking player. The value of the soldiers is then rolled in the same way as the attacking player.

If the attacked player does not have or wish to spend their soldiers in defence, they receive defence from all tier buildings, storage buildings and walls that they have in their city (see building cards for specific amounts).

The amount of defensive points are transferred into dice and rolled for in the same way as using soldiers. If the defending player rolls more successful attacks than the attacking player they can use them to kill any one of the attacking solders which is then returned to the Militia Training Ground/Barracks where they can be recruited by any player.

A successful roll needs to be 5 or higher when using buildings as defence, walls can be used to decrease this to 4.

See Buildings List for precise information of defensive buildings.Each soldier card can only be played ONCE during a round!

WinningTo win the player must be the first to build the Castle, which is the final building.

The rewuirements for winning is to construct four buildings – The Town Hall which unlocks the Keep which gives access to the Fortress which allows you to build the Castle.

Town Hall -> Keep -> Fortress -> Castle

Setting Up The GameEach player draws a City Card, receives a deck of action cards and rolls one die, the player with the highest roll will start the first round.

The building cards need to be sorted into the tiers in which they belong by reffering to the Building List.

A Typical RoundAll players start with taking their income stated on their City Cards and any income generated by buildings that they own.

The player with the First-player-marker will start the round by doing their two actions, either placing or accepting a bid, attempting to construct a building or hiring or attacking with soldiers. The player can choose to do only one or no action, should they wish.

All players will then take turns making their actions, clock-wise as seated.

When the last player has finished their turn, the First-player-marker will be given to the player who was second to play in this round (buying, selling, trading, attacking), moving clockwise.