Improving the Portal 2 Variant of Arkham Horror

So after play-testing the Portal 2 variant of Arkham Horror I went back and looked over my comments and tried to make some changes to the game to even things out a bit and make some of the effects simpler and/or more useful.  There are a number of changes, so I'll go over them a bit one at a time.

Changes to the overall story and guardian/herald/ancient one:

One of the main takeaways of the play-test was the growing hassle of figuring out who had to roll a die when and what that roll was for.  I've collapsed all the die rolls that occur during a turn to a chart on the overall story card which then references you to the individual effect on a different card.  By only rolling one die you are guaranteed that something is always going to happen.  The roll takes place at the start of mythos so that monsters placed as a result move during that turn.

Changes to herald, Cave Johnson:

It didn't feel like Cave Johnson was doing too much in the play-test, so I added a few more small effects.  I like the idea that there are a limited number of sentry turrets, but I'm realizing that I forgot to specify how many that should be.  House rule!  Choose your own adventure.  Also, if you don't get the reference for 'protect the things that matter most' you should probably search you tube for...wait, I can just link it here...

 

 

Changes to guardian, Wheatley:

Minimal change to Wheatley - 'failure to grasp the basic rules of mathematics' upon closer inspection actually has some very complex math behind it.  If you're paying one clue token to get an extra die you have a 1/3 chance of success.  The extra clue token gets you to 2/3 by switching to a 12-sided die.  However, you could have just spent an extra clue token to get an extra roll at the 1/3, thereby also increasing your odds to 2/3 over the course of two rolls.  So, before you start rolling each are equivalent.  Well, sort of.  If you roll the first and succeed, then you've only spent one clue token instead of 2.  If you roll the first and fail, you now have 1/3 odds again, as the rolls are independent of each other.  At that point, you should look back and say "I should have done the 12-sided" but now you can't.  And even that is somewhat flawed, because you're basically in the same place as you are when you started, with a choice between 1/3 odds on one roll or spending the extra to get the 2/3 on the 12-sided.  And you're STILL going to pick the 1/3 odds because it's only one clue token and you're hoping to get lucky even though you just didn't.  

So...long story short I changed it to a 20-side.

Changes to ancient one, GLaDOS:

Cleaned up the language a bit, lowered the doom track length and set difficulty to -1.  This one might take some iterating.

Changes to the portal gun:

The portal gun was a fun item, but it felt a little underutilized due to the limitations on it.  I didn't really want to make the base item too much more powerful, so I figured it would make it interesting if players had to earn a better version.  The better version, the 'advanced portal gun' is quite a bit more powerful and tied to the players' story cards, making them all the more important to finish.  I also cleaned up the base guns' cards to remove the weapon aspect (which they aren't).

 

Changes to the gravity gun:

Originally just way too powerful.  Toned it down a little and tried to improve the 'push' feature.

Changes to the characters:

The biggest changes to the characters was a little (needed) nerfing of Gordon Freeman.  I also took away one of his starting skills in lieu of some more items.  The other players should only have minor tweaks for the most part.

Changes to character stories:

Biggest change here is the inclusion of the advanced portal guns as rewards.  Also, since Gordon's story requires other stories to be completed (to get advanced portal guns) his benefits are a bit larger, since he basically has to help the others during the early part of the game.

Changes to other cards:

Some of the cards just needed minimal wording changes to work with other cards.

Cards without changes can be found in the original posts.

An Open Letter to Borders Books

Hi - I don't necessarily want to complain, but I want to share the experience I just had in an attempt to buy a book from you that might be insightful to how you try to be competitive with services like Amazon (which - spoiler alert - won out in my recent purchase).

I received an email today for 50% off a single item.  There isn't a Borders in my area, so the only time I really get to use these coupons in person are when I'm visiting friends in a market that has Borders.  I often do use them when they reach around the 35-40% threshold, as that seems like a pretty nice cut.  The promise of a 50% coupon made me look into the idea of using it online (something I've not done before). 

I didn't have any book in mind, but searched a bit on your site and found something that looked good, a book "Standards of Brewing"

(http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?type=0&catalogId=10001&simple=1&defaultSearchView=List&keyword=standards+of+brewing&LogData=[search%3A+26%2Cparse%3A+79]&searchData={productId%3Anull%2Csku%3Anull%2Ctype%3A0%2Csort%3Anull%2CcurrPage%3A1%2CresultsPerPage%3A25%2CsimpleSearch%3Atrue%2Cnavigation%3A0%2CmoreValue%3Anull%2CcoverView%3Afalse%2Curl%3Arpp%3D25%26view%3D2%26all_search%3Dstandards%2Bof%2Bbrewing%26type%3D0%26nav%3D0%26simple%3Dtrue%2Cterms%3A{all_search%3Dstandards+of+brewing}}&storeId=13551&sku=0937381799&ddkey=http:SearchResults) 

The regular price that you sell it for is around $32, so I figured I'd check what Amazon has to say about it.  They're selling it for around $27.  Well, they're better, but you're giving me 50% off, though I did note it would be 50% off the retail price.  That said, you even list the discount as a line item 'promotional' discount of $11.99 off the regular price, which is *actually* a discount of 37%, not 50%.  So you've already lost me a bit there, as this is starting to feel like a shell game.  I figured it would still be a better deal given that it should come out around $20 or so. 

Anyway, I'm still on board, and enter some personal information to get a cart going.  Shipping has popped up, and I'm looking at about another $4.  I stop for the first time and start to weigh my options.  I'm going to have to put in more information, put in credit cards, etc.  I'm now looking at about $24 to about $27.  Your shipping is 3-8 days, and Amazon gives me free two day (as I have Amazon Prime Student).  Is this worth it to me to spend the time doing it?  I don't need the book in two days, so I'm still saving.  I honestly don't care if it gets here tomorrow or three weeks from now, as I'm a bit busy and likely won't get to it for a while.  I debate internally, briefly.  Yeah, just barely still worth it.  I like supporting Borders.  I continue. 

Now I'm at the cart, and the total is coming in a little higher.  Ah, tax.  I can't fault you for this, and I really should be faulting Amazon.  I'll eat this later on use tax, but in the moment it's tax and shipping vs neither.  I justify tax when I use an in store coupon by taking into account that I get the book right away and don't pay (or evoke) shipping.  With a shipping cost already built in the tax just feels like the last straw.  I'm now sitting at $25 and some change (Borders) vs $27 and some change (Amazon).  The gap is now insignificant, especially considering the work I've put in on your site and the fact that shipping will take longer vs a 30-second endeavor on Amazon that will get me the book by Friday. 

The scale has tipped, I close the window.  Sunk cost be damned, I'm done with that transaction and only take away a bit of knowledge that buying at Borders.com isn't worth it.  By your math, Amazon is giving me very very close to a 50% off coupon every single day.  A 60% off coupon I guess might get me there, but it seems like it would still be just barely better, and I don't really see 60% off coupons very often.  Oh, and don't get me started that to get this coupon in the first place I had to 'like' you on facebook.  The ultimate act of desperation and selling out is forcing people to use one of the worst parts of facebook to get something.  My full intent was to like you for the coupon and then unlike you immediately (already done, actually). 

In the end, I decided that I'd rather give Amazon an extra $2 than support the circus that I had to go through to save that $2.  Like I said, I'm not complaining, because it does feel almost unfair in points.  I just wanted to give you some actual thought process of a customer that was swayed away from you.  Hopefully this will help you in the future.

Oh, and don't make the defense that I could sign up for the Borders Super Special Rewards or whatever to get an additional discount and free shipping.  It's not free if it costs $20.  If I had a Borders store in my town I might, but who knows.  Granted, I have Amazon Prime, which seems unfair, but even if I didn't have Prime this book at $27 still would have fallen into Amazon's free 5-8 day shipping as it's past the $25 mark.  And the fact that Amazon gives students free Prime is simply another good thing on their side. 

Anyway - again - hope this helps.

Best,
Paul

Playtesting Arkham Horror Portal 2 Version

So I had a chance to play the Arkham Horror Portal 2 Variant last night with a few other people, and the overall consensus was that it worked pretty well.  There were a few things that could potentially use some tweaking, so I'll probably do that in the next week or so when I can spare a bit of time.

To begin though I'll hit a few of the bullet points of how things played.

1. The initial overall plan of the game was to play with GLaDOS (ancient one)/Wheatley (guardian) and then at the halfway point switch to Wheatley (ancient one)/GLaDOS (guardian).  We made it though the first part with GLaDOS as the ancient one and Wheatley as the guardian, and that took a bit of time.  GLaDOS' doom track got up to 9 out of 12 before we woke and defeated her.  It may be that I need to take the doom track down a bit to make it workable as a two part game. 
2. At the beginning I was fairly torn with character selection, as I couldn't decide which to play.  I eventually took Chell, and she played fairly well.  I ended up spending a huge chunk of the game completing the story, which meant I ended up neglecting her power of falling through gates.  I was happy that I felt that my actions had to be one or the other, and that I was faced with a dilemma of which I should be worrying about.  Chell also turned out to be great at sneaking, which worked well with turrets, and is something I rarely ever end up doing with other characters.  
3. The turrets were nice, as they actually did make sneak into something a bit more useful rather than just something you sometimes do to stop yourself from dying.  They were also nice in that they were fairly often found guarding piles of clue tokens, rather than just having clue tokens be free for the taking.  
4. Cultists were good, though a game mechanism made them +2 toughness, for an overall +4 toughness, which was very difficult for a while during that effect.  Cultists and turrets overall appeared fairly frequently, which caused us to hit the monster limit more times than we ever have before.  This was great, because we were actually really worrying about the terror track, which we usually aren't.  At game end the terror track was at 9, and all the stores were closed.
5. The robots' stories were not as easy as I thought, as Atlas ended up failing his in fairly short order, and P-Body simply never finished either way.  It might be the case that I can make the rewards for them a little better to compensate.  Gordon's story was meant to be solved in the Wheatley part of the game, and turned out to be very hard in the first part.  The idea was that any character could get a card that sent you to the science building to have an encounter, where they could then drop a portal for him to enter.  It simply didn't happen.
6. The gravity gun may have been a little overpowered on the combat bonus, but the special action was never used.  I may need to work that in a little better.
7. The portal guns were used a bit, but were drastically nerfed by having them wiped when you entered a gate.  Atlas started the game in Kingsport and left a portal there, but after returning was knocked unconscious, wiping it.  Later P-Body was able to produce a stable link between Arkham and Kingsport, which was useful.  Overall, I was worried these were going to be overpowered, but they actually played very nicely.  If anything it might make sense to take the moment cost away from them to make them a little more usable. 
8. I was afraid that clue tokens were going to be very easy to come by, but it turned out that they really just kept piling up on gates.  Since you don't get them until you close/seal the gate, they didn't help in sealing, so you still had to be aware of how many clue tokens you had at any given time.  There were two or three turns where as a group we failed to get the necessary 2 clue tokens, and at the end of the game the board was getting pretty sparse in terms of clue tokens remaining.  
9. There was a lot of rolling at the beginning of rounds, and it was a touch confusing who had to roll what when.  It might make sense to just have one person roll three dice in sequence or something.  Also, we decided that cultists should be played before mythos, as then they move during that turn.
10. GLaDOS was not very hard to defeat, though we had a decent number of weapons and things by that point.  We all had a decent number of clue tokens from closing late-game gates, as well, so she wasn't really a huge threat.  It might make sense to make her a bit tougher.  

Anyway, that's how it played through the first time.  Like I said I'll tweak some things on some of the cards and repost them with changes.  Do certainly take the time to leave comments if you have a chance to playtest this yourself or have any other thoughts or comments.

Interesting Internet Video Part 1

I don't watch a ton of YouTube, but there are a number of channels that I really find quite amusing.  I've decided to highlight a few of these over a number of posts.  The first post is dedicated to the good (Canadian) folks over at Epic Meal Time.  The idea behind this exceptionally unique series of videos (new one released every Tuesday) is that eating food should be nothing short of extreme.  The first video that really showed me how high they set the bar was last year around Thanksgiving.  They decided that a turducken is just a little too simple.  Instead, they put a series of birds into increasingly larger birds, and then finally into a pig, which they smoked.  The video is below, and from there you can find the rest of the channel.  Keep up the good work, guys!

More Portal 2 Arkham Horror (spoiler alert)

In continuation of the last post, I've made up a bit more relating to the idea of having an Arkham Horror customization for Portal 2.

WARNING: WHILE THE FIRST POST HAD ONLY MINIMAL SPOILERS, THIS POST HAS SOME FAIRLY LARGE SPOILERS.

I've put together a few things, including a Wheatley Ancient One/GLaDOS Guardian to complement the GLaDOS Ancient One/Wheatley Guardian from the last post.  You can play either of those pairings separately.  However, I got to thinking and decided to set up an overarching story card for the whole of the experience, which actually has you first fight GLaDOS and then fight Wheatley.  To finish things off I've created some investigator story cards, which really work best with the full story card.  I suppose you could play the game in parts over the course of two nights, but I'm interested to sit down and try to play through the whole of it all at once.

I would strongly suggest using the overall story card regardless of what setup you play, the only difference would be that you might ignore the last rule.

Again, all characters are original creations of Valve Software - I only put this together for fun.

Finally, did I mention how awesome the Strange Eons character creator is?  Because it is.
http://cgjennings.ca/eons/index.html

Wheatley Ancient One:

GLaDOS Guardian:

Overall Story Card:

Chell personal story cards:

 

Gordon Freeman personal story cards:

 

Atlas personal story cards:

P-Body personal story cards:

Portal 2 Characters for Arkham Horror

So I play a decent amount of Arkham Horror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_Horror), and have also been playing around a bit with the Strange Eons game editor - which is AWESOME - and can be found here (http://cgjennings.ca/eons/index.html).

I've also recently been playing a bit of portal 2, which is also awesome.  I would highly recommend it.  If you haven't played I suppose there may be minor spoilers found in these characters, so be warned.  Also, obviously these characters are intellectual property of Valve Software and I only wanted to put these characters together for fun.  Hopefully these characters interest fans of Portal 2 in Arkham Horror, and fans of Arkham Horror in Portal 2. 

Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go in terms of putting together some characters and things based on the game.  I haven't had a chance to play test it yet, so I'm not sure how balanced it is.  If you get a chance to play test it please feel free to leave comments on how you think it works or might be improved.

Also, if you're interested in buying Arkham Horror or Portal 2 you can find them on Amazon, here:
























P-Body:

Atlas:

 
Chell (the character from single-player):

And to get to 4-players, Gordon Freeman:

I also figured that these four characters could use a custom ancient one, so here's GLaDOS:

And a custom guardian, Wheatley:

And herald, Cave Johnson:

Finally, here are the extra items/monsters you'd need in order to play with this set: