The subject of my musings was an article in a recent issue of Wargames Illustrated regarding solo play wargaming. The thought kinda horrified me. For me the greatest part of wargaming is going out there meeting people and having a pint and a game of toy soldiers. Why do it on your own? It seems so counter-productive (and sad, well sadder than the hobby is already perceived to be). I can understand what the writer was saying, if you are unfortunate enough not to have gaming buddies close by, then what alternative do you have?
The article touched briefly on the subject of people developing mechanics that determine enemy behaviour. NPC (non-player character for you non-role playing types) programming basically. Although it seems a lot of effort for a game you are going to enjoy alone, it got me thinking...
What if you could have a co-op game against an NPC general?
In board games like Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror the players have to cooperate in order to best the threat posed by the various beings of the Cthulu Mythos, and monster behaviour is simply determined by random card draws, and on the whole provides a great game, even if at times they wander to strange locations.
So why not apply this same logic to other dungeon crawling games such as Hero Quest etc? It seems doable for something like a board game where movement is restricted by grid or hex-patterns. But could it be applied to something larger like, say, a game of Warhammer?
Altough ideas are forming for a dungeon crawl game driven by random NPC foes, I keep drawing a blank on what to do for larger games...
More musings is needed... stay tuned to see if I bother developing this idea at all along with all the other stuff I am working on!
-Banchou Badger
No comments:
Post a Comment