THE GREAT HUNT!: Introducing the Great Hunt

The deadliest game in all of the world of Erv is The Great Hunt hosted in the endless wilds of Kulragkh, an ever-shifting patchwork wilderness named after the god-like man who owns it, and hunters, young and old, experienced and new, of all colors, races and creeds, converge every time a new Hunt is announced to prove their worth. The prestige, power, or prize that pushes each person varies, but all are here to experience the most deadly sport, for here in Kulragkh, you die a failure, or live as champion. Whatever monster Kulragkh has marked as the prize monster is to be tracked down and killed by the hunters when they are ready.

The Great Hunt is a competitive multiplayer tabletop boardgame where you take on the persona of one of the hunters and traverse a section of Kulragkh in search of the most ferocious and cruel monster, the Prize Monster. Each hunter is aided by a small team of supporters who help the hunters make up for their deficiencies or power up their strengths. They take their separate journeys through several designated areas. Every area has a set number of hexes that the players can move between. In most hexes, you are told to draw an event card, but some hexes are more treacherous while others hold special secrets. In each area, you can encounter a set of monsters, and perhaps trigger the prize monster to appear. The game ends whenever a player takes out the prize monster.

 As you can tell, I've started to create a new board game. I'm taking a bit of a break from working on my RPG system to put this together. While this may be disappointing to some of you, I am actually really excited about this game. I feel like it's a unique idea, and it's a smaller project that I can easily work on in bite-sized chunks. There's things I can learn from designing this game which I can apply to my system. For example, I can learn a lot from figuring out how to create challenges that are balanced against characters' stats.

Speaking of stats, I'd like to talk about the basic stats that every hunter will have.

Every hunter has:

• Attack
• Defense
• Stealth
• Health 
• Arcane

Attack and Defense are pretty straightforward. When you encounter a monster, you roll your attack and compare it to their defense. If your attack is greater than their defense, it deals the difference in damage. The baseline for defense is about 1/2 of the die being used to roll attack higher than the baseline for attack. Because I'm thinking about using a 12-sided die, that means if baseline attack is 0, then baseline defense would be 6. Various items can increase your attack and defense, while other items and various events check for your attack or defense to be able to activate them or survive them unscathed.

Health is also somewhat simple. You have a number of maximum health equal to the health score. When you take damage, you reduce your number of current health by the number of the damage. This doesn't effect your maximum health. By spending various resources or going to certain tiles, you can recover health. A small few events check your max health, and a few items increase your max health.

Stealth is used to get away from a monster that is too strong. Monsters have a sense score instead of a stealth score. Stealth plus the roll is checked against the monster's sense score, and if it's higher, you get away. If it's lower you take the difference in damage, but still get away. Some events check your stealth in order to escape them unscathed.

Arcane is the most complex stat. It, like health, has a pool which has a maximum equal to the score. You can spend points in this score to boost various things or activate some abilities. Most notably, any hunter that has a current arcane of more than 0 can spend arcane during a fight to boost his attack or damage. However, not all hunters start with arcane scores that allow them to boost things, and instead rely on their supports to grant them arcane scores or powers. Some hunters and supports grant abilities which can be activated by spending arcane. For example, one of the hunters is a witch whose main power is he can curse an enemy and decrease their attack and/or their defense as well as buffing himself, allowing him to kill his enemies easier. Some items and events may check for your max arcane, while others may make you use arcane to activate them or survive them unscathed. Various resources can be spent to recover arcane.

The three basic resources are:

• Food
• Money
• Herbs

Food is necessary for life. Food can be spent at specific times in a turn to regain health. One food is consumed at the end of every turn or your character takes 1 damage. Food can also be used to bait monsters out, set up traps, or power certain abilities. Several events deal with food by allowing you to gain easy food, making you lose food, etc. You usually gain food from killing monsters.

Money can be traded for goods and services at the base camp or in various tiles or events. There may also be some items that make you spend money to activate them. Quite a few different events deal with money in various ways, forcing you to part with it, giving you more, etc. You can also negotiate for other resources with the other players, trading money for things. Money is usually gained by selling items or resources at the base camp.

Herbs are probably the least useful resource, and not all characters have to carry herbs. Herbs are usually spent to recover arcane. However, they can also be used to fight easier monsters, deal with multiple checks, and can be sold for money at the base camp. Several events can deal with herbs in different ways. You usually gain herbs by killing monsters or from certain areas on the map.

So this is the first post on creating The Great Hunt and its mechanics. I hope to craft some engaging mechanics and make the game fun to play. Hope to see you on my next post about THE GREAT HUNT!