All physical work on this topic can be found on page 9 of the black sketchbook, and pages 3 - 4 of the black backlog.
Sketchbook (page 9)
Adaptive difficulty in a board game:
I'm not sure whether this has been done before, but something that was brought to my attention was the idea of adaptive difficulty in a board game. This was mentioned to me in the Friday presentation chat, initiated on the last presentation we had.
This applies to my board game as you could set law and order at varying levels of difficulty. For example:
Very Low Difficulty - No law and order
Low Difficulty - Frontier justice (people take the law into their own hands)
Low to Average - Deputised citizen or citizens
Average - 1 Sheriff
Average to High - 1 Sheriff and 1 deputy
High - 1 Marshal and 2 deputies
Highest - 1 Marshal, 2 deputies and a Cavalry squad
You could have different decks of cards relating to a certain difficulty which you determine before gameplay begins.
DECK SETUP DEMONSTRATION DRAWING IN SKETCHBOOK
Colour schemes not accurate at this point in time, low card count
You all decide before gameplay which difficulty you wish to play at. Each deck would probably have a low card count, depending on how each difficulty changes the game. This adds 'replayability' and a reward for familiarity to the game.
(26/11/2019)
Have an 100-card deck and only use the cards for that difficulty.
This means all cards are used more often.
List the card difficulty on the back of the card.
Lower deck number from 7 to 3 or 4.
Backlog
(page 3)
Thursday 21st November 2019
General game design notes: Adaptive difficulty in a board game:
This is a written demonstration of what I am calling 'Adaptive difficulty in a board game'. I am not sure whether this has been done before, so it may be a first in a board game.
'Adaptive difficulty' refers to the balancing system in video games where the difficulty of a game or level is adjusted based on how well the player is performing. For example, in the Crash Bandicoot series, if a player is seen to have died too many times in a level, certain
(page 4)
boxes throughout a level will change from regular to 'checkpoint' boxes, making progression easier or faster.
Obviously, the same principal cannot be done in the same way in a board game because board games are a lot more static in their gameplay.
However, I am proposing a system where:
The game has a set of card decks from the outset which each link to a deck that makes the game either easy or difficult based on which deck players choose
The decks range from Very Low, to Low, to Low to Average, to Average, to Average to High, to High and finally to Highest.
If the game is about being a lawless individual, each deck will add a higher level of law and order, from none to frontier justice to a Sheriff to a Marshal.
This is obviously the most rudimentary version of this idea, and without much context it can be seen as easily changeable. The point of demonstrating it this way is so that it gives a general idea of how it works.
This whole idea came to me after someone mentioned it in the chat after the last presentation we did, using law and order to set difficulty.
Players need to decide before gameplay which difficulty they wish to play at.
Each deck would have a low card count, depending on how each difficulty changes the game.
This adds 'replayability' and a reward for familiarity with the game.
Cards should be colour-coded, as is normally the case with board games.
Of course, this idea can be changed and altered depending on the game.
Phase 3
21/11/2019
Week 6: 04/11/2019 - 10/11/2019
Week 7: 11/11/2019 - 17/11/2019
Week 8: 18/11/2019 - 24/11/2019
Week 9: 25/11/2019 - 01/12/2019