Hi, BEAR Nation!

Now that I’ve got your attention… Ahem. I’ve been gone for a long time. I feel like I should explain.

The incarnation of BEAR GAME that I described in earlier blog posts was BG Mk.II. After some brainstorming sessions, I decided to expand upon it in several ways, including a move to an all-digital format. I was pretty excited about the way things Mk. III were going and was gearing up for execution. However, I decided to do some preliminary research on existing and upcoming card games, especially those with a digital format. I happened across Mojang’s Scrolls. Much to my dismay, gameplay was not simply identical to Mk. III, but looked superior to what I had planned. 

Cue Woodstar’s discouraged face.

So I brooded and brumbled for a couple months, thinking about other projects, but always keeping BEAR GAME simmering on the back burner. All I had to go on were a few fundamentals. First, BEAR GAME’s premise is SO GODDAMNED COOL. Even the name itself draws attention and makes people want to know more. Second, I knew that I wanted the mechanics to be primarily card-based. Third, my idea for expanded lore on every card in the game appears to be unique. My hope is that people will want to use individual cards, not just because they’re the best and most powerful, but because they feel a REAL connection with the character and their struggle in the on-going plot. This is one thing that Pokemon does exceptionally well. There is arguably no objectively “best” Pokemon, only a subjective “coolest” or “my favorite“.

Keeping those things in mind, I took a leap. Inspired partially by Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game by Jason Hill, I began developing a 3-on-1 objective-based board game where a team of adventurers would endeavor to bolster their defenses before a Bear sabotages their efforts. This would have allowed for lots of modularity and opened the doors for home-brewed adventures, but the simple fact was that it didn’t fit the tone of the universe at all, and played on a much smaller scale than I wanted. Thus did the book of BG Mk. IV come to an end.

A couple of weeks passed, the game once again on the back burner up in my noggin. But then I was nodding off in my car on my lunchbreak, when a bajillion little ideas started smacking me in the face like so many angry slapping bees. Pieces began falling into place. I realized that so much of what I had was great, I just hadn’t organized it in the right way. Lore is good, but shouldn’t be central. Cards are awesome, but over-done and hard to make unique. The addition of the game board threw another completely fresh dimension into the mix, and it’s one that I’ve latched onto. So here’s what I’ve got so far for BEAR GAME Mk. V:

• Bears are still the primary focus. I lost sight of that in Mk. IV
• 100% of cards in your deck will be either Adventurers or Equipment, each one with a unique story.
• Once played on the field, Adventurers will be able to move around on the board and attack each other.
• Equips can be used both by Adventurers and Bears. Obviously, Bears will be able to use them to greater effect.
• Adventurers that are killed by a Bear may be “Festooned” on one of its 3 available slots. Benefits vary from buffs to one-shot burn damage to board control, etc.
• Special Adventurers known as Heroes will lock a Bear into a state of Hibernation for a given number of turns, but may then be Festooned to gain massive buffs.
• The board will be comprised of modular, hexagonal tiles that players will take turns placing on the table at the beginning of play.
• Among different kinds of terrain, two special tiles will be placed: Towns, which are the only tiles that may spawn adventurers, and Lairs, which amplify the Bears’ Aura and Legacy abilities
• A new win condition has been introduced to cater to more defensive play styles. Lairs can be captured and held. Holding a certain number of Lairs will give you dominion over the board, winning you the game.

There’s one other mechanic upon which I should expand is the new stat system I’m toying with. When I’m building a rule for a game, the phrase I keep in mind is, “Elegance at all costs”. This does not mean sacrificing depth for ease of play. This means altering the mechanic, boiling it down, so that it retains a distilled depth, but becomes a simple concept that can be explained in one or two sentences.

In game design, mechanics which require players to do large amounts of arithmetic and keep track of stats are decidedly inelegant. Even with a calculator or scratch paper, having to add and subtract ALWAYS slows down the pace of the game. In BEAR GAME Mk. II, I had you controlling 3 Bears with 5 unique stats apiece. If I let that carry over to BG Mk. V, you’d have 3 Bears with 5 stats, plus up to 5 Adventurers on the field with active and passive modifiers and it would have been a mess.

So here’s what I’ve done:

• To match the Hexagonal theme, bears have a stat tile with six sides. Each side represents a side of the Bear token that moves around on the board.
• Each of the sides relate to an attack, defense, or support stat.
• Bears now have 3 attacks, one attack, one defense, and one support.
• You may attack, defend, or support from any tile, but you get a -1 modifier to that action when doing so.

That being said, here’s how the numbers are factored in:

• RAGE TOKENS RAR
• Each Bear starts with 3 rage tokens. They act as both attack power and hit points.
• Each Rage Token is assigned to one of the six stat segments.
• Each stat segment can fit 2 rage tokens
• When two or more segments with the same type are adjacent, the stat total for all of those segments are cumulative of all the rage tokens contained within. For example, if 3 attack segments are adjacent, and you have 1 token in the first, 0 in the second and 2 in the third, the effective power of every one of those segments is equal to 3.
• When a Bear chooses to attack, it compares the number of attack action tokens to the number of defending action tokens and deals the remainder to the defending Bear.
• To clarify, damage is dealt in Rage Tokens. When a Bear takes 2 damage, it removes 2 Rage Tokens of its owner’s choice from its card.
• Each attack deals a minimum of 1 point of damage to each Bear involved in the sortie.
• Additional Rage Tokens can be gained in several ways, like sieging towns.
• A bear is killed by any damaging attack while it no longer has any Rage Tokens.

The reason I think this is an elegant solution is that it combines so many of my previous ideas into one fluid mechanic while maintaining the original depth. Attack, defense, auras, legacies, movement speed and HP will all be determined with one stat wheel.

Wow. That was a massive post. I really want to type more, but your eyes are probably tired. I’d like to thank everyone who’s been with me since this idea crawled from the betentacled primordial goop that is my imagination. BEAR GAME is going to happen, and soon. I just had to get my head out of my ass and get excited about it again.

tl;dr: BEAR GAME is back, and it’s better than ever.

P.S. A huge shout-out to Gabriel, the new admin on the facebook page. He single-handedly gave the page 600% more views than it had ever seen since I started it. I’m so glad to have him aboard.

Stay patient, Bearmasters. I’ll talk to you soon.