Try again…
You play TIME Stories, you reach a point when there is not much to do because of your previous decisions. You make a time jump and start over with all the knowledge you gathered during the first run. This game is all about runs. The first, second, third. Time stories, huh?
You play Pandemic: Legacy, you reach a point when there is nothing left to do, the disease will just explode in a second. You shuffle the cards and play the month again…
You play Imperial Assault, you reach a point where the bad guys kicked your ass and are clearly winning the game? Well, sorry, but the game continues. The bad guys get some cool rewards and powers and will make a harder opponent next time but the campaign won’t stop. You just gave them a few additional tools to screw you up.
Yeah, the campaign games. There is some tricky stuff going on there. Let’s talk about our options.
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Pandemic: Legacy keeps it pretty simple. Whether the players succeed or not, the story continues. They are—after all—only little human beings trying to stop the unstoppable. Pandemic doesn’t give a crap about those few dudes trying to save the world. Pandemic is marching onwards no matter what. Players struggle, the game moves forward every single round (every other round, to be precise . It’s both thematic and simple. Works perfect.
TIME Stories has a super-smart solution, too. When the players are stuck, they just restart the story and try again. Everybody who plays the game tries to do it in one run, but let’s face it—we know a couple of reruns is needed to finish the story. We know that. We are prepared for that. We don’t complain that, OMG I need to play this again from the start!! The idea of replaying the same scenario over and over is actually at the heart of the game.
Imperial Assault has this very efficient way of resolving the scenario effects—the winner gets a reward. The story continues. Clean and swift.
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OK, let’s talk about First Martians now, huh?
An average campaign takes about 5 scenarios. The story evolves, the players struggle, the tension builds up by the hour, with every successful roll, with every emotion experienced, and with every important decision made. Players got attached to their characters, they couldn’t wait for the grand finale and the story’s resolution.
Sorry, but this was not going to happen. In the middle of the fourth scenario, one of the characters kicked the bucket. End of story. He is dead. That’s it. You didn’t finish the campaign. You will never see the grand finale.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!
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This problem is a tough one. Should I ask the players to actually play the whole campaign from the very beginning? Start with Scenario #1 and go through the whole campaign again? Or should I let them replay only the fourth scenario? How would you feel if you were to play again this one scenario that saw you die? How would you feel if you were to do it over and over, if this particular scenario was a difficult one and killed you time and time again?
At this moment—and you need to remember I’m writing these words when the game is still in development—I managed to teach the players that scenarios’ goals, the objectives given by NASA are important, but surviving is crucial.
The game’s campaign mode is built in such a way so that fulfilling the Objective is not mandatory to continue the campaign. The setup or the next scenario’s objective will differ depending on the outcome of the previous scenario, but if you didn’t achieve the goal the campaign will simply continue. The only problem is—the next scenario will probably be more difficult. If NASA asked you to give them coordinates for where to drop the supplies and you screwed this up… well, in the next scenario you will need to search for the place of this drop, because the supplies landed somewhere and only God knows where…
So failing one objective doesn’t end the campaign. It only changes your situation for the next scenario.
However, what ends the campaign is getting killed.
Would you restart the scenario you died in?
Would you restart the whole campaign?
Would you just assume you didn’t finish the campaign and moved on to the next campaign?
I REALLY REALLY appreciate your feedback here. Give me your thoughts on the subject.
P.S. First Martians now has its Facebook Page. Check it out!
I strongly believe that good board game is the one that tells a good story. You play it and suddenly you are sucked into it, you feel chills on the skin. Emotions grow. In a moment you defend castle. You hear roar of warriors. You smell boiling oil. You are into it.
That's how I design my games. I always want to tell a good story. I want players to be into it. As deep as possible.
Interesting blog post. I think, that without seeing / playing the game, there is not much data to go on to give recommendation to designer himself.
One option that you didn’t mention is variable difficulty especially if you have an app driving the game that can handle a lot of bookeeping details for different variants. A lot of computer games like Diablo have a Hardcore/Nightmare mode where you have one life and if you die it’s „one and done”. But on lower difficulties, you either revive with no penalty or some penalty.
Why don’t you consider a variable difficulty settings (starting resources, time allowance, consequence of dying] for the app especially for a game that like Robinson is not competitive but more „us versus environement”? The app could also handle that the events/encounters in easy game will be more „vanilla” and some juicy stuff is only available (or much more likely to happen) in the harder variant?
Any chance to have players control multiple characters? So that a single death does not lead to an instant loss?
Personally, I would rather play the entire game and get some conclusion in the end. It can be good or bad, but it should feel like an ending, as opposed to „sorry, but you’ve died before you had the chance to see what happens in the final chapter”.
Just my 2 cents.
Being an engineer I have to respond to your question „it depends”. In some games I’m happy to play it again. If I’m loving playing and there is enough variation, another playthrough is fun. But limiting the number of times you have to play through means you know you will progress as the game is meant to be played, like in pandemic legacy and time stories – the replays are strictly limited.
However in some games, even if I really enjoy them, replaying some of the missions feels like a chore, particularly if we’ve already failed them twice. In these cases we may play it again (e.g. LOTR card game, pathfinder) or if we just think the mission is too hard it goes one of two ways: the game goes in the cupboard for several months as we really don’t want to play the mission again or we just skip the mission. Normally both of these occur!
If I’m enjoying the game, there is lots more to explore and loosing doesn’t feel ’ unfair ’ I’ll probably play through a second time. If there isn’t enough variation or its towards the end of a scenario I’m less likely to want to do this a 3rd time. My game playing time is limited (I have a 10m old daughter) so if it’s set out as a campaign my mentally is to finish the campaign. That said, I’ve enjoyed repaying xcom multiple times… Is it much different to that? The story is essentially the same, events just happen in a slightly different order.
Not sure if that really answers your question…!
I would definitely not make the player play the entire campaign over again. I personally would be too demoralized to do so, if that was the requirement. Starting from the beginning of the mission seems more doable, but it would have to be easy to reverse back to that state, otherwise the simple bookkeeping of starting over could discourage me from trying to get everything set back up the way it was.
Other options:
–players cannot die, but instead they get something akin to a „begging token” from Caverna, basically a failure indicator that will reduce their final score. The final score in the campaign should be tied to story, and the story should seem far less satisfying if a character dies, to push them to want to not get this „begging token.” Perhaps the „begging token” introduces some unsatisfactory story element instead of reducing final score.
–instead of dying, players have a small, campaign-wide supply of „get out of jail free” cards (trauma cards, discarding important equipment cards) that they can use to avoid death, but there is some penalty to using these, either in terms of story, or in mechanics, or in both… if you’re separating achieving missions from living and dying, perhaps use of one of these „get out of jail free” cards makes it easier in the following mission to stay alive, but harder to achieve the mission goals, thus affecting the story. Perhaps it requires your fellow players to focus more on you, thus reducing everyone else’s efficiency, at least until you get rid of it.
–allow players to die, and have them restart from the beginning of the mission, and for each mission, have a „failure” setup state that is enacted once a player dies, which is easy to set up, perhaps easier, but comes with a downside like the ones described above.
–players cannot die, receive a token like the ones described above, but all this does is give them the next scenario on the default difficulty, without any additional objectives. So if you do really well, accomplish all your mission objectives, the next scenario is harder, because NASA sees what a good job you’re doing, and adds some new mission parameters, to try to achieve even more with the limited time and resources on the Martian surface. If you barely scrape by, you get no additional missions to complete. This will affect your final score and the story being told in the missions, and also gives people reason to replay — „this time we can find out what those additional missions are!”
Without knowing any more of the game than what is outlined in this specific post, I would suggest this:
If Scenario #3 was completed successfully, meaning its objective was completed, you get one extra try at #4.
However, if the objective to #3 was NOT completed–which would make #4 more difficult–no retry.
At that point, the players have the option to start at #3, and complete its objective, to have a better chance at #4.
The rollback would continue on any scenario whose objective had not been successfully completed. To put it in video game terms, completing an objective serves as a successful save point.
Of course, after every failed objective, a vote of the players may be taken to see whether they’d rather put the game away and accept defeat. No sense playing a game past the point of fun. That time can better be served discussing strategy for next time over drinks.
Hi ignacy,
I think it would be cool to let the players choose : if you restart all you get no consequences, if you restart the 4th scenario you get some adversity.
Regards from romania
Hey Ignacy,
I’d prefer not to restart the whole campaign, because it would wear out the game quicker. For me, the replayability stays at the max when you switch scenarios as often as possible.
An example: In Robinson Crusoe, I’ve played about 8 games by now. Each scenario just once. And still so many to go! The game feels as fresh as on the first day! And after I’ve played them all, I’ll just play them over again!
Now imagine if the 8 games were just consisting of me being stuck at beagle 3. That would mean: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. I’d be fed up with them, saying „not again” by now.
Hope that helps.
Pozdrowienia z Hannoveru,
Filip
very interesting question 🙂
My answer is, restart the campaign, we can do it again ! if the campaign is short (5 scenarios is short)
Answer from Pandemic Legacy is restart the map with bonuses, it also works quite well.
Is the game about scenario ? or is the game about mechanics ? think about it. Answer lies there. if scenario, then show must go on. if mechanics, then start again from the beginning and improve your skills to reach the end dude !