Quirkworthy

This gets increasingly Blue Sky, but what the heck. Might as well talk about it now, right? Once DreadBall is out, and assuming that we’ve sailed through the Kickstarter levels to get Season 2 out as well, we’ll have a fully developed game with 8 nicely balanced teams and, let’s say, 20-30 MVPs. We’ve got coaching staff, cheerleaders and a slick league system. What else could we possibly need? Well, remember I said yesterday that games have a natural size? This one ain’t done yet.

Ultimate DreadBall is the end of the first cycle of DreadBall – the clean and shiny DreadBall in its official and sanctioned format. This is the one you see on the tri-vids and is where the big name players strut their stuff. What we haven’t touched on yet is three main areas: really big players, variant pitches, and multi-team games.

Of course, while I’m about it I might as well include 4 more teams and a bunch more MVPs. It’d be rude not to. Exactly who these might be is a little fuzzy still, but some candidates include Asterians and a team of John Doe-like aliens (and their friends). These and other teams will probably be closely related to the new rules.

My, You’re Tall!

The larger models in DreadBall already make the hexes squeak at the edges, and I have a hankering for some really big players. I mean, it’s science fiction, and if I can’t have rampaging giant robots then, when can I? I’d also like to do some enormous alien monstrosities because they’d be fun too. All of these mean multi-hex models, and that causes all manner of problems with rules and rule clarity. That’s why they come at the end – more playtest time.

In a practical sense, I think that 3 hex beasties is about the biggest you could have without making all the 1 hex players completely redundant (which would be another, different game entirely). They would still be a pretty imposing sight on the pitch, and would be very dangerous for their opponents. Getting this to balance into a fun game, plus keeping the rules simple, is going to be tricky and will need a lot of testing. By the time I’m done it will be clean and slick and you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about, I’m sure 🙂

Anyway, huge monsters, giant robots and all manner of bigness will appear in Ultimate.

Actually, I’ve just had a thought. I wonder how many hexes a Forge Father Iron Ancestor takes up. He’d need new arms, and is possibly a tiny bit too big to be practical, but it gives you an idea where I’m heading here.

Variant Pitches

The pitch you will be familiar with is the standard format for league matches. However, there are other types of pitch with different patterns of Strike Zones and different overall shapes. Most of these have not yet been playtested as we’ve been concentrating on making the core game as solid as possible. However, I keep all these ideas in notebooks, so if everyone is as keen as I am then I can roll them out 🙂

Would they be posters, mounted boards, acrylic or MDF? I don’t know. That level of detail is getting ahead of ourselves. I’m just letting you know that arenas come in more than one shape and size. Multi-hex players may also need a size and shape arena all their own.

Multi-Team Games

Two player games are great, but once things get all crazy with Ultimate DreadBall I’d like to introduce bigger arenas with giant robots, monstrous aliens and, of course, more than two teams at a time. This is the sort of thing for grand finales of leagues, spectacular demonstration games and other grand events. It’s also loads of fun. It is Ultimate DreadBall.

Mechanically, it’s another headache because one of the central features of DreadBall is its speed of play. More players means more downtime between Rushes, so this requires some serious tinkering with to retain the frantic atmosphere. I have some options in mind, and I’m confident it can be done. But again, it’s more fiddling and a load more bespoke playtesting, which is why it comes at the end of the cycle.

Still, it’s an exciting development

Ultimate DeadBall

So in summary, UDB will add more teams and more MVPs, many of which will be playable in your normal games. It will also add rules for the events after which it is named: Ultimate DreadBall – bigger arenas, multiple teams, giant players!

More?

And while this is the pinnacle of the neat and clean DreadBall, we’re still not done with the sport yet. I have a niggle at the back of my brain that tells me there is one final twist in the tale.

Tune in tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about my ideas for DreadBall Xtreme.

Just for a change of pace, I’d like to talk about where I’d like to go with DreadBall in a design sense. Before I go further, let me say that none of this is carved in stone. The nearer stuff is more solid, but we still haven’t published the core game or finished the Kickstarter yet!

Ronnie, being Ronnie, has already spilled many of the beans with update 26 for Kickstarter. Pesky blighter just beat me to it. I’ll assume you’ve read that.

Starting Points

When I design a game, I find that it has a natural size – an amount of rules and number of options that just suits it perfectly. Sometimes it’s big, and other times petite, but if you listen to a game it will always tell you.

I may have said something similar with Dwarf King’s Hold because I wrote a similar article for that. We’re most of the way through that vision now, and I am looking forward to the next (very exciting) step. For DreadBall things are a bit different.

Apart from Mantic having a bit more experience about this whole board game lark (making production and so on much smoother), there is the whole Kickstarter thing. That has a couple of facets which make me very excitable, and neither of them are the money. At least, not directly.

The first thing is that (thanks to everyone’s support) I can get my vision for the game done much faster and probably better than would otherwise be the case. Me telling Ronnie that I want to do 4 boxes of DreadBall games sounds less silly if everyone is keen 🙂

Secondly, and probably more importantly for me, it creates an instant community. I don’t know about you, but I am often an early adopter of any game that isn’t one of the top 3. That means I am the one investing time, money and effort finding the game, learning it and then trying to persuade enough people locally to have a viable group. The internet is a bit of a game changer in many ways, but it still doesn’t get me local games. I’ve been reading a lot of forums lately, and have posted quite a bit myself. Talking to people, I’m getting a strong impression that whole groups are getting on board with DreadBall, and people are going out and persuading their friends that it’s looking like something to keep an eye on. And, of course, it is 😉

What all of this means is that instead of a shiny new box coming out and you being the first to get it, there will be a whole community of gamers on the day of release. And for a game like DreadBall which has so much entertainment value lurking in a set of league rules, this is really valuable. It’s a very different situation, and one made possible only by the enormous support the Kickstarter has had so far. Of course, the bigger it gets the bigger this community will be, which is a real win all round.

So thank you for your support, and for those who read this after it has closed, you missed a really exciting time 🙂

4 boxes?

Like I said, a natural size. At least in my head. I’ll talk about the 3rd (Ultimate DreadBall) and 4th (DreadBall Xtreme) tomorrow because I can already see that this is going to be a bit long. For now, let me focus on DreadBall and its immediate expansion: DreadBall Season 2.

DreadBall is a stand alone game, designed to be entirely self contained. There is no need for you to go and buy a bunch more stuff. Except that you will want to because it’s cool 😉

The DreadBall box includes complete rules for one off games and leagues, as well as 4 teams and 8 MVPs. It’s not half a product, because that’s not how I do things. It’s a whole game. Let’s be clear on that.

However, I often struggle to fit my whole idea into a single sane size of product. It’s usually bursting at the seams with ideas, then I have a few more and they have to go somewhere – hence an expansion. DreadBall Season 2 is an opportunity to add a little bit of chrome to the rules with some Coaching Staff, Cheerleaders (because everyone wants them – and why not), 4 more teams and as many MVPs as I can fit in. The core rules won’t change (they don’t need to), and the extra rules will be there purely to allow those additions. I’m very conscious of the cleanliness and sleekness of the system as it stands and don’t want to bury it under fiddly nonsense. Always have to keep a weather eye out for that.

Abilities are a good way to define the character or style of a team or MVP, so I’d expect to include a few of those. A lot can be done with stats, combinations of player roles and so on, but every now and again you need to stick in something new.

Which Teams?

Glad you asked.

This quartet of new teams has undergone a number of iterations so far, and this isn’t entirely final though I feel like we’re getting close.

1. Ladies First. Yes, the girls really ought to go in here. They are still humans, and will have human stats the same as the Trintek 29ers, but there is a spin or two I’d like to introduce to change their playing style a bit and make them a separate team in their own right. I think I can do this without adding any new rules too, which is a bonus. Needs more playtesting though. Of course, you could still use the miniatures to play as a 29ers sort of human team if you like.
2. It came from… who knows? It’s the ZZor, and they’re not telling. This is one of the Warpath races which hasn’t seen the light of day on those battlefields yet, but which we might get to see first on the DreadBall pitch. nasty, nasty bitey things, so lord knows how they got to be in teams. Maybe mind control devices and shock sticks, controlled breeding programmes, stunt doubles or some other cunning piece of showmanship. Perhaps their hive minds just like a bit of sport. I suspect their Guards might be quite mean.
3. Robots! Well it’s the far future, so it would be rude not to. I had a really cool (in my head, anyway) idea for this team, and have sort of dumped a production headache on Mantic. I want the team to be able to change roles as the game goes on. Not like Transformers visually, but a similar idea of mutability. The headache is how to do this as models. However it works it will probably be a bit more effort and cost to collect a robot team because you will need the extra models when they change role (as different player roles will look different). Still, none of the teams is a huge investment, and at Mantic prices I can’t see that people will grumble. Especially as the idea is so much fun. Need another Striker? Sure, I’ll just swap this one out. Should be crazy on the pitch.
4. Judwan. Who? Well they are made up aliens (it’s science fiction, remember). These were spawned by an MVP I was working on, whose race suggested a whole different play style, and that’s what you need for a really good new team. I’m going to try them out with only Strikers, and we’ll see if they work as see them in my head…

As you can see, it’s a varied bunch.

More MVPs

I want to draw from a few sources for this. There will be some weird aliens, some more for the existing races, plus specific MVPs for the new teams. I’d also like to include a few jokes and you might find homages to some real world sporting legends. Just because I can 😉

Season 2

Overall, Season 2 will add greater breadth to an already tactically deep game, and this in turn will add even more depth to the tactics and counter-tactics (especially for leagues). With more teams and more MVPs the  combinations of possibilities for really interesting matches just gets even bigger.

I look forward to the debates about which team is best 🙂

A couple of people have asked about this, so I’ll take it from the top. Firstly, how it looks in the “real” game that I have in my head, then in the board game.

Scoring Strikes in the Real Game

In DreadBall, a scoring Throw is called a Strike. This term lends its name to several other game terms, notably the type of player who scores the most: a Striker.

A real DreadBall pitch is divided into hexagons, several of which are grouped together in coloured areas to form a total of 6 Strike Zones, 3 on each side of the pitch. Within each Strike Zone is a Strike Hex (at one end) and a Bonus Hex (at the other). In the Strike Hex is the Strike Target.

Only Jacks and Strikers can score Strikes. Guards (and Keepers) may not.

In order to score, a player must be standing inside a Strike Zone and Throw the ball to hit a Strike Target in the Strike Hex that belongs to that same Strike Zone. You might want to re-read that last sentence slowly. Note that the ball must be Thrown, and that carrying the ball onto the Strike Hex does nothing.

Visually, the Strike Target is a small circle at about head height for an average human. The target is less than twice the width of the ball, and so is very hard to hit. When playing Street DreadBall with your mates, this target might be as simple as a bucket on a stick. In most professional arenas the Strike Target will be a holographic image, projected above the Strike Hex only when a player enters the Strike Zone carrying the ball (and so becomes legally able to score). The trajectory of the ball is constantly tracked and a Throw’s success or failure is calculated by computer.

The moment a Strike is made the ball is removed from play and a new ball is launched across the centreline. This removal is either by the mediporter (normally used to remove injured or dead players) or by using the inbuilt anti-grav system to make the ball go straight up.

The actual number of points awarded depends on which Strike Target the ball hits, and where it is Thrown from. Each side may score in any of the 3 Strike Zones in the opposing team’s half of the pitch. The closer two are worth 1 point per Strike; the farther one is worth 3. If you score a Strike when you are standing in the Bonus Hex (which is further away and therefore a harder Throw) you get an extra point, so the Strikes are worth either 2 or 4 points.

Scoring Strikes in the Board Game

This works exactly the same way as in the real game, with the board being a faithful representation of the moderately high-tech professional arena.

The action required to score is called a Throw. I’ll cover this in more detail in the actions article. Basically though, it does what you’d expect – longer throws are harder as is making accurate Throws when an opposing player is in your face. You can pass the ball to friends, and you can also use it as a weapon to throw at opposition players if you really want to.

Losing control of the ball ends your Rush unless you are flukey enough to catch the scattering ball. Scoring a Strike always ends your Rush.

The rules give you a nice clear distinction between different player roles, which all helps to form a clear plan in your head. Guards cannot score, so they (and you) can focus on their job of damaging people. Strikers are the best at it, so when you can you’ll be wanting to get the ball to them. Of course, your opponent knows this too, so they’ll be breaking the legs of the Strikers first, just as you will be to them. For those teams that do not have Strikers, they need to use their Jacks to score, and their inherently lower skill means that they need to adapt their team’s tactics to suit.

Having a number of Strike Zones, and making them worth different points depending on which one you use and where you throw from, all gives the pitch far more tactical “texture” than a field where you can only score at either end. You constantly have to balance risk against reward, working out how many actions a plan will cost and how likely its success.

DreadBall, like most games, involved a large number of people in its production. I’m happy to say that many of them are now floating round the net answering questions and explaining how things work, and while I am the designer I am not the only person who can deal with detailed queries. I had two playtest leads, and loads of playtesters, among others, and many are very active posters. Hopefully this means that you’ll be able to find answers to your questions here or elsewhere, but just in case you can’t I wanted to explicitly ask what you’d like to know more about. Some people are shy about speaking up, and I’d much rather they just asked. So…

I’ll do an FAQ to cover any gameplay issues once the game comes out. What I’m asking here is for topics you’d like to see me discuss in these Design Notes articles. I’ve got several planned already: scoring system, winning the game, board development and leagues, for example. There may be more I’ve missed.

What I’d like to hear is any areas of the rules that you’re curious about. Do you want to know how something works? Are you more interested in why things work this way?

Ask away.

And feel free to post this link and this question wherever you like. Whilst my flying monkeys patrol the skies over most of the net we can’t be everywhere at once. I always check this site daily, so if you ask here you can rely on getting an answer.

Looking forward to filling in the gaps in your DreadBall knowledge 🙂

I want to take a step back from the detail of the dice and stats, and look today at a slightly bigger picture. You already know the overall picture of trying to win the game by scoring Strikes and you know the nitty-gritty of rolling dice, but what comes in-between?

Planning your team’s actions is the answer.

Team Action Tokens

In each Rush, a Coach gets 5 Team Action Tokens. Each token allows a single player to perform a single action from a list that depends on both the situation and the player’s role. Actions are things like Run, Throw the ball, Slam an opponent, etc – many of which use the core dice mechanic to determine their level of success.

The Coach allocates a token to a player, selects the action to attempt and then resolves it. Once that has been completely resolved, the next token is allocated, and so on. This continues until all 5 are spent, he runs out of players, or loses the ball.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting. Each player can have 0, 1 or 2 tokens played on them in each Rush. As there are a (legal) maximum of 6 players on the pitch and only 5 Team Action Tokens per Rush, this will obviously mean that you will need to prioritise your allocation, and that some players will probably not act in each Rush (depending on your level of injuries).

You do not have to pre-allocate all your tokens, so you can adapt as things go right or wrong during your turn. If you want to spend 2 tokens on a player then they do not have to be consecutive (though they could be if you wanted). You could activate player A, then player B, then player C before activating player A or B again.

In practice, a Coach will generally work out a play involving several players and then try to execute it with his tokens. Ending your play with a Strike on the 5th token is ideal because this doesn’t waste any. You only have 7 Rushes in a game, and 5 Team Action Tokens in each, so they are a very limited resource. Spend them wisely.

Free Actions

So how do you get anything done with only 35 actions in a game? The answer is that you really end up with rather more than that. The first way you get extra actions is by doubling certain other actions. By doubling picking up the ball, for example, or doubling a catch, you earn a free action with that player. The circumstance list which type(s) of free action you can take, and a free action is exactly the same as one bought with a Team Action Token (apart from the limit to type and the fact that it’s free). This free action could, in turn, generate a subsequent free action, and so on. You can chain together as many as you can get – they do not count towards your 2 (or 3 – see below) action maximum in a Rush.

Obviously, working out how to engineer these free actions for your players is all part of a Coach’s skill.

Another Trick up my Sleeve

And this one’s a card trick.

DreadBall has a deck of cards as well as dice. These are used for a number of functions, and I’ll talk about them in more detail another time. For now, let’s focus on one type of card – the most common type – Special Moves.

Special Move cards are, in effect, extra Team Action Tokens, but ones that restrict who they can be spent on and what they can do. So, whilst you might be lucky enough to have an “Any Player, Any Action” card, you could also have a “Guard, Slam” card, or a “Striker, Throw”. These latter examples allow only that specific combination of player role and action. However, they are allowed in addition to the normal 2 action limit per player from Team Action Tokens – each individual player being allowed one more action from a Special Move card for a hard maximum of 3 (paid for) actions per rush. Remember that free actions are just that: free, and do not count towards this total.

Cards can be bought with Team Action Tokens, which means that (whilst they are not all Special Moves) you can effectively save an action for a later turn if you don’t need it now. By building these Special Moves into your cunning plan for a winning play, you can sometimes surprise your opponent who can calculate what you can do in 5 actions and defend against that, but can never be sure which cards you have up your sleeve.

Stir it All Together

This flexible combination of tokens and cards gives a very different game from one where every player gets to go once each in a turn, without fail. It puts a load more tactical options in the hands of the Coaches, and helps to keep the game balanced, fast-moving and exciting.

You could, for example:

• Spread your actions among your players so that most of them did a little bit of something – a slow and steady approach.
• Focus your actions on a few players to send them deep into the opposing half. They’d be unsupported, but what if they could score a Strike?
• Focus your actions on a few players to reposition them against an opposing threat, perhaps scurrying back across the board to protect a Strike Hex when you’ve been wrong-footed.
• Use all your actions to support a star Striker, using the minimum effort to make a hole and then sending him through with the ball for a Strike.
• Spend your actions to break the opponents, ignoring the ball and closing down or hurting their best players.
• And so on…

As always, you never have quite enough tokens and cards to do what you really want, and have to carefully manage your resources to make the best you can with a constantly evolving situation.  You plan your move, hoping perhaps for a double to give you the extra free action that the plan needs, but it’s never guaranteed. Even the best players fluff the odd dice roll, and it’s the job of the Coach – ie you – to keep the whole team rolling forward and scoring Strikes, no matter what.

Are you up to it?

So now you know what stats and roles do and how armour fits in. Now we get to the meat of the game: the core dice mechanic.

At the heart of the way actions are resolved is a single mechanic that covers the vast bulk of dice usage in DB. There are a couple of other things that dice are used for: launching the ball, scattering the ball, doing Ref checks and so on, but these are less common and are simple cases of form following function.

Core Dice Notation

The core mechanic is used for most action tests, and that means most of the game. A test is written in a standard format. This means that I can, should I ever need to, introduce other tests and they will slip neatly into the core of the game without a ripple. This notation is as follows:

3 dice Skill test (1)

This notation is made up of three parts.

3 dice Skill test (1)

The first part tells you how many dice you get to start with for your roll. This is usually 3, but can vary. Also, it can be modified by your player role and the situation. It is very important to understand that modifiers always apply to the number of dice you roll and never to the the number you are rolling against.

3 dice Skill test (1)

The second part is the stat you are rolling against. This can be Strength, Speed, Skill or Armour. They are all defined as X+, so 3+, 4+ and so on. This number never changes during a game. Each dice that rolls this number or better is called a success.

3 dice Skill test (1)

The final bit is the target number. This is the number of successes you need to roll in order for the action to succeed. There are 3 possible types of target number.

• (1) A simple number.
• (X) An opposed roll – you and your opponent roll and the one with more successes wins.
• (123) An increasingly difficult target – each time you try that roll within the same action the target number gets one higher.

So, the example above (which is for picking up a loose ball, by the way) means that you roll 3 dice, and each one needs to be equal or better to your Skill stat in order to be a success. If you roll at least one success then you pick up the ball.

Modifiers

Most of the rolls have a small number of possible modifiers. A fair number of these are +1 for being a specific role. This helps make each role better at what it is supposed to be good at. The rest of the modifiers are situational and include things like standing in opposing player’s threat hexes. In general there are only a couple of these for each test and they are memorised fairly rapidly.

Rolling Up

So you roll a handful of dice, compare each to the appropriate stat and that’s your number of successes. Well, yes, but there’s more. Each dice that rolls a 6 counts as one success and you get another dice to roll. Leave the first one where it was as a reminder and roll another dice. If you get another 6, do it again, and so on. If you roll several 6s then roll each of them up. In this way a lucky player can beat someone with far better stats. It’s always fun to be able to turn the tables once in a while.

Doubling

Many (but not all) rolls have an enhanced effect which kicks in if you double the target number. For example, if your roll to pick up the ball gets double the target number of successes, ie 2 or more, then you not only pick up the ball, but get a free action to either Run or Throw as well.

Interactions

So, by combining the simple stats, roles and armour together with a pretty straightforward dice mechanic you have something altogether more subtle. The difference in stats is compounded by both the way the dice mechanic works, plus the role bonuses to makes apparently similar players from different teams work very differently on the pitch. Let’s look at an example.

I can never decide whether I prefer Orx or Veer-myn Guards. They are both Guards so they have the same armour and same bonuses for different actions. Their other stats (Strength, Speed, Skill) are:

Orx Guard: 3+, 4+, 5+

Veer-myn: 4+, 3+, 5+

Not a big difference, right? Wrong.

Start by ignoring the Skill. Guards can’t pick up the ball so it’s never used.

Strength is mostly used for Slam actions, which is the signature theme of the Guard. You run up to someone and thump them.

Speed for a Guard is mostly used for Dodge responses to opposing Slams. You see, when someone Slams you then you can choose to either Slamback or Dodge, ie you fight it out or you get out of the way. However, if you are looking the wrong way and they Slam you from behind then you don’t get to pick – you can only Dodge.

A Guard making a Slam will typically roll 5 dice (3 basic, +1 for being a Guard, +1 for taking a run up). Rolling against a 3+ gives an Orx Guard an average of 3.9 successes (including a likely roll up). A Veer-myn in the same position will have an average of 2.9.

Dodging looks rather different. If the Orx is Slammed from behind and needs to Dodge they will probably be rolling 3 dice and will get an average of 1.75 successes. The Veer-myn has an average Dodge of 2.3.

Slams and dodges are opposed rolls so your number of successes is compared to your opponent. On the pitch these numbers translate to the Veer-myn generally surviving better than Orx, especially against Strength 4 Guards (humans and other Veer-myn) who can’t knock them over easily when they sneak up behind. Orx against Strength 4 Guards are not enormously vulnerable, but it’s a world away from the lethality of attacking them from the front (3.1 Slamback vs 1.75 Dodge). And people you hit from behind don’t hit back if you lose.

The differences in these average numbers are not large, but the cumulative effect of all these slight variations, plus other considerations such as Veer-myn moving faster, plus the differing numbers of each role available to each team all mount up. It is this interaction that gives the character to the sides, and a point of stat here or there adds up to a noticeable difference.

Coaching Dice

Still not quite finished with the wrinkles.

Each team gets a number of Coaching Dice at the start of a game. These are usually blue so that they stand out from the white dice for the home team and the red ones for the visitors. The reason they need to stand out is that they are one-use per game dice that can be added to any of the above type of rolls at the Coach’s discretion.

As well as starting with some Coaching Dice, you can also earn more during a game by impressing the crowd. Your cool Strikes and brutal tackles get them going, and their cheers in turn inspire your team to greater efforts.

When you choose to use these dice is up to you, but you must decide before you roll any dice for that test. In the test they work just like any other dice, so an Orx will be more likely to get a success if he adds a Coaching Dice to a Strength roll than a Speed test, but he’d not need the help as much there either. It’s a balancing act.

What is particularly interesting is that Coaching Dice can be used to attempt something that would otherwise be modified to zero dice and therefore be impossible. So do you save it for then?

Either way, when they’re gone, they’re gone. You could always use more than you have.

Well I was going to talk about dice tonight, but I think I’ll do that tomorrow because I just remembered that I’d not really mentioned armour. I want to quickly describe this now as it works the same way as the 3 alliterative stats, and you need to know that when we talk about dice mechanics.

Armour is a role-defined value, so every Striker has the same protection, every Jack has the same, etc. Armour is defined like Speed or Strength as X+.

Striker armour should obviously be the lightest as they need to be agile, and it is indeed the weakest at 5+. Guard and Jack armours are both 4+, which may seem odd at first because Guards should clearly have heavier kit, right? Well, fret not. Guards get an extra dice whenever they roll an armour check, so they are likely to resist more damage even though the value they are rolling against is identical. Cunning, eh?

All this makes is extremely easy to remember what the value is you’re rolling against, which in turn makes the whole thing roll along very briskly.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about dice mechanics and it should become rather clearer how all these simple rules overlay to produce something more subtle and interesting.