High Speed Scenario Design for Hover Tanks

Another guest post from friend and fellow designer, Tom Russell. Today he talks about designing the scenarios for High Speed Hover Tank. To quote the Tiny Battle Publishing's website: "HIGH SPEED HOVER TANK is a fast-paced, card-driven-ish, dice-slinger's paradise. Ten unique models of Tanks - from the slick, speedy Viper, to the paralyzing Falcon, to powerhouses like the monstrous Tiamat - give players new tactical and strategic challenges in each scenario. A deck of Action Cards  enhances your options, and keeps you in doubt as to what your opponent can do, while the aptly-named Kerplow! Deck can change the battlefield dramatically or suddenly bring the game to a close. No scenario is going to play out the same way the second time around."

Take it away, Tom.

Once again Designing and testing scenarios for a game like High Speed Hover Tank can be a difficult undertaking, and committing to ten of 'em-- more than any other game (so far) in the Tiny Battle line-- only made it harder. Harder for me, anyway.

Most of my designs have a historical basis, and that makes it relatively easy to design the parameters of the game, as I can draw from the source materials to compose the orbat, the time scale, and the special rules. A game like HSHT works on pure imagination, which is simultaneously freeing and frustrating. Further, most of my designs have a very limited random component. While I fear neither dice nor chit-pull cups, they serve more as statistically-acceptable randomizers; the game isn't going to swing wildly one way or the other as the result of a single roll or draw. In HSHT, there's a much higher random factor, not only due to the preponderance of die rolls, but also the Action and Kerplow! Cards. I think this is thematically appropriate, but it still made it harder to achieve the proper balance.

There wasn't much a hard science or numbers involved; it was more about just playing the scenarios over and again, and making sure there was a more-or-less equal chance of both sides winning, and that, more often than not, skill trumped luck. There were a couple rules of thumb I utilized, mostly by assigning numerical values to each tank, and making sure the totals for each side were about the same. If one side started on the map, and the other started off the map, I would give the latter a few extra "points" worth of Tanks, since it would take a few turns to move them all into positions from which they could effectively act and react. I then would make further tweaks and adjustments depending on the weapon types available-- for example, is one side heavier on Pulse Shots?-- and the special rules.

Coming up with said special rules was sometimes very easy, and sometimes not-so-easy. I wanted each scenario to feel and play differently, and to have its own unique "hook" arising from a mixture of the victory conditions, the special rules, the orbat, and the empty deck effect. I try to think of them with a "this is the one that" construction, e.g., "This is the one where one side starts Immobilized", "This is the one with the turncoats", "This is the one with Ethel."

Or, to put it another way...

There's something I try to remind myself of whenever I'm designing a game that uses multiple scenarios: There's no such thing as an ordinary or typical scenario. Every single one should have its own spice, its own point of focus. To make doubly sure that I wouldn't fall into a trap and repeat myself, I made sure that each Empty Deck Effect appeared only once. Even if it was a really good one; even if I had another really great idea that would use that effect-- nope, use it once and that's it. For any future scenarios, designed either by myself or other designers, I'm going to be a stickler and insist that each have its own, 100% unique, Empty Deck Effect.

Thanks, Tom. If this sounds like fun to you, pick up your own copy of High Speed Hover Tank right here.