Hands-On Golem Arcana: Using Bluetooth for Seamless Tactics
Winninger related another such scenario, where a water spirit gives the player some mana to carry to her sister in another body of water on the map. Mana is a valuable resource that players can spend to empower their warriors or debilitate enemies, so the player should be well tempted to spend it. If players delivered the mana they got victory points towards winning the game. If they went back on their word and spent the mana for a boost to their units, the water spirit took her vengeance out on the player with a lost turn.
But that's not the extend of the plan. The app reports every piece of data to Harebrained Schemes' servers, so the developers know which factions are, for example, being jerks to water spirits. As the trends start to emerge, the developers can change the world's ongoing story to match the actions of their players. The lore is, in a way, in the hands of those playing the game. When I commented that the game's story was much like how people play competitive MMOs like Planetside or Dark Age of Camelot, Weisman cracked a grin. "My goal is a tabletop MMO," said Weisman in regards to the story. Emergent play will drive the developers' choices in advancing the story, and that story will be . It's Weisman's plan that you'll get summaries of stories after each fight, with weekly newsletters summarizing other nearby players' battles. Some of those, the winningest players, will be promoted to a General tier and their stories will reflect the direction of the overall war between the games' factions. "In MMOs the reflection of [players'] actions is limited to gameplay - to fights and battles mostly - but we want it to be part of everything in Golem."
Golem Arcana debut at Gen Con after shipping to Kickstarter backers and is now available in stores, with the starter set including a large amount of story scenarios for players to play through. Widespread organized play will start next year, with patches altering game balance between rounds. That'll be an interesting process for tabletop games, which usually have a longer time between identifying a game problem and fixing it. Another patch introducing custom scenario creation is on the way as soon as possible - within "about eight weeks" said Weisman.
I was very impressed with Golem, and we'll be sitting down to tackle the game for a serious review soon. If you're curious in the meantime, you can visit their website here. [http://golemarcana.com/]
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Winninger related another such scenario, where a water spirit gives the player some mana to carry to her sister in another body of water on the map. Mana is a valuable resource that players can spend to empower their warriors or debilitate enemies, so the player should be well tempted to spend it. If players delivered the mana they got victory points towards winning the game. If they went back on their word and spent the mana for a boost to their units, the water spirit took her vengeance out on the player with a lost turn.
But that's not the extend of the plan. The app reports every piece of data to Harebrained Schemes' servers, so the developers know which factions are, for example, being jerks to water spirits. As the trends start to emerge, the developers can change the world's ongoing story to match the actions of their players. The lore is, in a way, in the hands of those playing the game. When I commented that the game's story was much like how people play competitive MMOs like Planetside or Dark Age of Camelot, Weisman cracked a grin. "My goal is a tabletop MMO," said Weisman in regards to the story. Emergent play will drive the developers' choices in advancing the story, and that story will be . It's Weisman's plan that you'll get summaries of stories after each fight, with weekly newsletters summarizing other nearby players' battles. Some of those, the winningest players, will be promoted to a General tier and their stories will reflect the direction of the overall war between the games' factions. "In MMOs the reflection of [players'] actions is limited to gameplay - to fights and battles mostly - but we want it to be part of everything in Golem."
Golem Arcana debut at Gen Con after shipping to Kickstarter backers and is now available in stores, with the starter set including a large amount of story scenarios for players to play through. Widespread organized play will start next year, with patches altering game balance between rounds. That'll be an interesting process for tabletop games, which usually have a longer time between identifying a game problem and fixing it. Another patch introducing custom scenario creation is on the way as soon as possible - within "about eight weeks" said Weisman.
I was very impressed with Golem, and we'll be sitting down to tackle the game for a serious review soon. If you're curious in the meantime, you can visit their website here. [http://golemarcana.com/]
Permalink
