As I mentioned in an earlier post, my eventual end-game with Polyversal Passion is to post battle reports in the form of a video production. To that end I would like to eventually referee games with two or more players taking part via social media with a turn-by-turn gaming structure involved. This would allow for a number of factors to influence the game and make it "more realistic" and allowing for a progressive narrative that may or may not affect the story in the Mareldon-verse.
Right now this would take the form of me e-mailing and receiving responses from two players, each one with a different view of the same board. Areas of the board they have an influence on will be able to be seen, while the rest would be somewhat obstructed (the blur tool in photoshop?). The players in their response to me would have to lay their orders for their units that turn and provide me with general (or specific) directions for each unit to follow. Additional features aside from the fog of war would include:
*** Allow the players to select pre-game advantages before the game start, eg Satellite reconnaissance (a sweep of the photoshop brush removes the fog of war in a single "orbital" arc every turn), space superiority (calling in orbital bombardment), air superiority (being able to hot-drop troops with some delay), stealth deployment (units placed before battle within territory) etc depending on the scenario.
*** Different objectives for each player, possibly without knowledge of what the other players objectives are at all.
*** Not being able to micromanage each unit's movement, commanders can't do that anyways on the battlefield.
Not feeling in control might be a problem, because going into a scenario that probably isn't balanced in the first place (though I'll probably try to run through it at least once myself) without direct control of each unit's placement and much less than normal information might be a problem. With both players having this impediment I can hopefully make it interesting enough for both sides and, after completing the scenario, make a production of the event that will reveal the tension and the sway and flow of the battle in a more narrative environment that will, hopefully, further engage further participation.
Alternatively, rather than having two individuals conducting the scenario at odds with each other I could have two separate peoples (like facebook groups) running each side as a collective (the most "liked" plan is enacted). Privacy settings to prevent "peeking" at what the other side is doing would be necessary, as would manual adding of members and doing some legwork to make sure people don't just have multiple accounts to get the info from both sides. A third, neutral, group could be made for people who only have interest in participating to allow both side's story to be posted, but this is more work on top of orchestrating a game and producing a (hopefully) high quality video. Most likely I would just end-cap each of the sessions by dissolving the group and redirecting everyone back to a central point for redistribution.
Thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment