Kacper Szymczak - Turn based tactical design fundamentals

Nice analysis. Although you have missed two other forms of time scheduling.

It seems the presenter has never played Tactics Orge, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Mario VS Rabbids (which he references), amongst many other square-grid tactical games with nature based arenas. Several of his fundamental design philosophies aren't fundamental in the least and are simply preferential design choices. What might not work for one game may very well work excellently in another. So many people in this comment section are taking his recommendations as the tactical game design gospel when it simply isn't. Do your own research on tactical game design, compare and contrast the information you gather, and implement what works for your game. Playtesting and player feedback is key, especially over this single resource.

Really enjoyed Showgunners. Imagine my surprise to find out this vid's lecturer is it's designer. Thank you for this talk.

Super interesting! I didnt even consider the point on elevation.

Very informative presentation!

I think this is very nice of Kacper to mention the shortcomings of RNG. This is probably the biggest wrong turn in game design a developer can make. It is probably fine for games like diablo, where the game is fundamentally a dice-roller, a gambling game about drawing items. but whenever you introduce any type of chance, all sorts of weird things start to happen, it comes from math, chance is a very peculiar area, and also you just make a lazy choice of not thinking through the events and relationships between them. randomnes is just a fools replacement word for unknown variables and factors. If you want to reward yr players for creativity, just ditch randomness totally or SIGNIFICANTLY, and replace it with secrecy, mystery, fog, obstruction of data, think through factors and relationships between events... I think that might require a little more time with a notebook, but it might be legendary. Chess are legendary, what is random there? choosing color? :)

Was a wonderful lesson for game developers. Depply appreciate it!

Some of the principles describe make sense but many are not applied by the games the speaker mentioned as examples to study. He should in those case specifically address why it caused problems to those games or why it was acceptable.

I've been wanting to create a tactial game for years. Damn this talk has awesome advice!

I'll never understand the insistence on making comeback mechanics "secret", be it as a player, game dev, or tabletop GM. I think the TTRPG advice on fudging applies to video games as well: if you're not comfortable with the odds or the result of a roll, to the point of secretly changing your own rules, it highlights that you made a mistake and shouldn't have let that roll happen in the first place.

An explicit bonus per downed units to offset the snowball into failure is great! Why not apply it to the general difficulty adjustment? When I've tried it, I found that (given the right presentation) having your characters grow stronger from being backed into a corner, or the game acknowledging your mastery and upping the difficulty, gets a positive reaction on a both visceral and imagined-narrative level. Not to mention it ups the skill ceiling.

Maybe I just make stuff for a very different audience but I believe we need to stop sleeping on that sorta stuff.

I really wanted an answer on the D&D question, as professional GM!

Where the heck was this talk all of my life!?! This information is pure gold!

Wish this had more views. This was really informative.,

A huge chunk of extremely important tactical turn based golden base rules.

Myślę że raczej jest odwrotnie