Nalpha 2.1, the Learning Curve

This past week I had the privilege to test Nalpha in its current state with two folks who had not yet played it.  One (let's call him Terry) was familiar with DnD as well as MtG.  The other (let's call him Carl) had no experience with RPGs broadly, though he told me he had played MtG years back.

As I have intimated before, I believe Nalpha falls in the gap between traditional pen-and-dice tabletops and TCGs, which was borne out in comments from Terry.  So, it seems that both would have a general sense of game mechanics rather quickly.

What I observed was almost exactly what you'd expect, but I found it fascinating to witness it first hand in such a marked fashion...

Terry picked up the game very quickly.  He understood basic strategy almost right away, and throughout the couse of the campaign he made good choices for himself, as well as being able to counsel Carl well.

Carl, by contrast, had only a faint and distant recollection of TCGs and virtually no RPG experience at all.  His eyes darted from card to card rapidly on his turns, and you could almost feel his struggle to keep tabs on what was going on.  That is not to say that he was learning slowly.  I'd say he was learning at a somewhat typical pace.  It was just more pronounced when compared to someone closer to the target demographic.

All in all, the game went well, and both had a good time (though I dare say Terry had a great time), even though we lost.  I learned a few things about the campaign (it's farther behind in development than the Player Character core of the game) that will make the next edition a little better.

The biggest take away for me was that I think the game does what I want it to for the target audience.  It was more-or-less intuitive once some basic rules were established.   The bulk of game time was spent playing, not explaining.  To me, that marks an elegant system and ups the fun-factor significantly.

Nalpha: Emergence of a Subgenre

So, Nalpha is clipping along nicely.  I'm on the cusp of rolling out the next edition of beta.  Not nearly the huge core changes in this edition that we experienced in the last, but it's still pretty comprehensive.  Or to put it differently, I'm not quite to the point of fretting over the balance of each individual card yet, but those days are not so distant.

I was a bit dumbfounded to discover that, not counting the special "Character" cards, I had tasked myself with the creation of no less than 84 cards for the "Starter" version of the game.  Now, mind you, that is 84 discrete cards - no duplicates at all.

Which brings me to the topic I will be exploring: What do you do with a game that does not fit quite into an existing genre?


To understand my quandry directly, I'll talk a bit about what Nalpha is.

Nalpha (not the real name of the game, for you new readers), is sort of like a trading card game.  I have been clearly and heavily influenced by Magic: the Gathering as well as a few others in the genre.

On the other hand, Nalpha is, by virtue of its design, not a trading card game.  There really is no reason to trade anything.  The cards aren't collectable in any sense.  There is no such thing as a rare card.

For this reason, I have in mind a different idea of "expansion" and enduring marketability.  Forgive me if I don't disclose those to you (and the rest of the universe) here.

To me, the idea innovating a subgenre is exciting, and probably the only way a nobody-indie like me has a prayer and getting published but on the flipside, who do I approach about publication? 

Established TCG companies are a possibility, but they tend to be monolithic and chances of catching their attention seems remote.  Moreover, I don't know if they'd likely deviate from the established pattern of rare-card driven booster sales, since they have a formula that presumably works.  If I don't go that route, then who do I go to?  Table-top publishers?  I'm just not sure.

And that's the rub, isn't it?  As innovation increases so does unfamiliarity.  It's a bit of a double-edged sword.

Still, I have some time before I need to really look into the business end of things.  Maybe I'll have some answers by the time I'm ready to submit proposals.

Nalpha 2.0: First Look

A buddy and I gave the reworked Nalpha a shot and let me tell you: it was better.  Much better.

Now, the game was far from "all that I could have hoped for."  It still certainly has a way to go.  Moreover, what we did was a simple duel.  Dueling is an okay activity in the game, but I think it will never compare to any gamestyle with more than one member per team.

One one level, the metagame is about selecting the appropriate cards, but I think the larger metagame is about assembling a team.

On the whole, variation in gameplay is not as high as I would like.  Down the road I may increase the number of cards a player can use at once but, as I say, that is down the road.  For now, I'm simply pleased that the game is working at the most basic level.

Nalpha: Why it sucked.

So, my wife gracious tested "Nalpha" with me this weekend.

It was awful.  Simply dreadful.  It's not that the idea that it has grown from was bad, but the implementation was.  Gameplay was marked with tedium, and on any given turn (which should be the high point of "fun-having"), it felt as though the game played itself, rather than you played it.

My wife is honest with her words, but much more so with her posture, facial expression, and overall fidgetiness.  I was convinced that the game was bad.  And that is why I am so grateful to have had her try it out with me.

So where do we go from here?  Well, here's the process I went through:

First, I tried to be sure I understood what precisely wasn't working.  In this case I saw two major issues: tedious physical action (particularly when it wasn't my turn) and lack of options.

I try to look at troubleshooting and redesign in a medical kind of way: is the problem a symptom or is it the actual disease?  In this case, it seemed to me that the first issue was a symptom, and the second an actual disease.

A disease is usually easier to correct; you can address it head on.  Symptoms, by contrast, can be simply treated head on, but that may not really fix the problem.  So, you have to root out the actual cause.

I identified the root of problem #1 as being one of the core mechanics of the game.  That kind of sucked, but in a way I always knew I was unhappy with it; I just couldn't admit it to myself.  Altering it would mean losing a fair amount of the "class-diversity" I had intended for the game.  Nevertheless, a diverse game that's not fun is still not a good game.

So I wound up axing the old mechanic, but I did work out a new one that was simpler, faster, and less tedious.  A little tweak to the format of each turn helped save the class-diversity I was afraid of losing.

As for the lack of options, that was pretty easily addressed by simply lowering the cost of many cards so that more actions were available more often.  A rebalance of the potency of those cards was also necessary, but that wasn't terribly difficult.

So, I've printed a new Nalpha set.  Now, I just need to play a few games and see if the changes take.