My thoughts on the subject are this. When a board is created, reviewed and released, this is the board that should count toward the rankings. Then, maybe the designer comes up with some crazy idea and creates a scenario based mod, ...

In my opinion, the original board should have the standard: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 championship point scale. Then have each mod only have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (or possible top 3, whatever) point scale so that the ranking oriented players still have interest and so that one board doesn't have 15 mods making up 300 championship points.

There also seems to be a need for limiting the number of mods allowable on each board (keeping the point scale low should lower objections to removing a mod if it turns out terrible).

Is this worthwhile compromise or is the desire to have no championship points for the mods (not something I am against).

I guess the main thing for versioning is a team version. I'd like to have a 2v2v2v2 version of Gauntlet. I think maybe if there were a ranked version and a ranked team version (when/if there are rankings for teamplay).
Earlier I said that the BAO (or whatever) version of WG: TG would be completely different and it would and so it should be a separate map since the graphics and borders and everything will be different.
Now for a map like Episode III (for those of you familiar with that map) would we prefer to have the duel version of the map and the Battle Royal version of the map be 2 different maps like on ToS or the same map but one the ranked team version and one the ranked 2 player version? Also, Jedi Battle Royal could be played as a 6 player map or a 2v2v2 or a 3v3....that's really the best example of versioning I can think of. Cram likes to make versions of his maps with different looks but not changing the gameplay. I think that should be allowed.

P.S. Are we going to allow mods by people other than the map maker? I only took advantage of that a couple times but I liked the idea. I would just like there to have to be some sort of acceptance by the original creator like they can allow moding or not. I don't want somebody modding one of my maps just because it is unplayable in it's current version, that's just mean!

i don't see the adjusted point scale for a mod'ed board as a bad thing. should be easy to implement using different whole number versions as the key. updating the original for bad border or color or something would increment the decimal (1.1, 1.2, etc). Making a team or random vs. scenario start or mod'ed by another map maker (with original's approval) would be incrementing the whole number (2.1, 3.1, etc).

i do see different versions being used quite a bit for the team/player config changes or scenario vs. random start changes.

RiskyBack wrote: 
P.S. Are we going to allow mods by people other than the map maker? I only took advantage of that a couple times but I liked the idea. I would just like there to have to be some sort of acceptance by the original creator like they can allow moding or not. I don't want somebody modding one of my maps just because it is unplayable in it's current version, that's just mean!

I would love to be able to support the idea, but there are a number of issues that would need to be resolved for me to be comfortable with it.  For instance, if others could mod the design, could they make changes to the actual map? Perhaps only certain things should be modifiable, and this could be set by the designer.

Then there are a whole host of well intentioned mods that could inadvertently sabotage a map. Consider Risky's Remote control map where we are just discovering that with the minimum allotment set to 0 (as Risky has it currently set) it's possible to have a stalemate.

Perhaps either the designer, his/her proxy, or board of low people in high places (the review team) should need to sign-off on on mods that become part of the register of officially sanctioned mods, which then become eligible for tournaments and stats. (championship points to be decided).  Otherwise, people could make freely make mods that fall into a non-sanctioned category, which could be accessed through their Player Profile pages. The original designer may not want unauthorized mods to list with sanctioned ones.  I know if I didn't sign of on it, I wouldn't want it listed.

tom wrote: I hated that part about ToS - it was really annoying that only one mod was ranked, it just meant that it was the only one that got played. I would prefer there to be multiple possible starting scenarios, all ranked but sharing the same ranking system. That would encourage players to play all the scenarios available instead of just the ranked one.

That's what I meant.  The Board Designer could have the option of making any Mod Ranked/Unranked, but they wouldn't be restricted to only 1 Ranked (stick with a single Default I imagine). 

The player then creating a Ranked game could either choose what Mod he/she wants to play on, or it could be set to Random (I could probably go either way on this, or have an option for both somehow).

Alpha wrote: In my opinion, the original board should have the standard: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 championship point scale. Then have each mod only have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (or possible top 3, whatever) point scale

That's a bit interesting and may allow players to play through the board multiple times potentially, although it could get a bit confusing, especially when showing Rankings per Mod (although will Charts show per Mod?).

asm wrote: I don't know that we really want to get into having the Review people vetting multiple different versions of the same board for gameplay/balance...

That's a bit of a concern of mine as well...but I don't really have an answer...

I like the idea of Board Designers allowing/disallowing Public Mods by other players (perhaps Private Mods are allowed if the board is purchased or set to Free by the Designer, then the Board Designer has the option of setting the Mod to Public).

Some sort of limit on Mods (5?) would be nice. I do think that allowing Customized Rules per private game (and tournament?) by the game Host (or purchasing a board?) would help reduce the number of Mods.  On ToS there would be some Mods that would just be flipping Abandon or Neutrals or something, nothing really "Mod-like" just a customized setting.

I don't have a Remote Control Map

i think he meant Eddie's

Risky, I am 200% in favor of Team Gauntlet. Get to it pronto!

RiskyBack wrote: I don't have a Remote Control Map

Well.. you should.  And when you do, make sure you fix that problem.

For Multiple Scenarios I would like to be able to have complete control over all aspects of Board Design and not just the layout of starting positions/neutrals. More of a linking of Versions/Boards than simply starting scenarios.

For example for GearSweeper I have 3-4 other "Mods" already ready (I created them when I created GearSweeper, and had thought about releasing them separately but didn't due to the low response of GS, myself included). With these Mods I have different Image, Starting Scenario, Borders/Modifiers, Continents (Territories are the same, but would like to see them modifiable too), Cards, Player Colors (I think), Rules, and even a different number of Min/Max players due to the scenarios. Like I said, I probably won't try and release these as separate boards, but wouldn't mind throwing them in with the GearSweeper board, so control over all aspects would be nice!

Sorry I only just read and digested this properly Yertle... that's a good idea, it would be a nice shortcut to getting multiple scenarios set up because there wouldn't need to be any major updates to the Designer. There would just need to be a way to link board versions together to form a set of scenarios.

The main downside I can see is you lose the concept of inheritance - i.e. if all scenarios derive from a base board then a change to the base board is inherited by all the scenario versions (e.g. fixing a missing border is done once on the base board). If there are separate boards then you would have to change each board copy individually. This means more admin overhead for designers, I can imagine it being a bit of a pain if you have 6 different starting scenarios for a board and you want to change a simple rule setting.

The upside is it gives more flexibility - I originally envisaged the separate scenarios as being managed within the Designer with certain things being fixed - e.g. territories, borders and continents would not be updateable between scenarios.

The main things that would be changeable would be the rules and the starting scenario. My view was if you are going to change the actual structure of the board then it should be a new board completely. Scenarios were really about allowing custom starting setups for different numbers of players / teams and for allowing different rule variants, not about allowing a different overall design to be added.

Then consider that an enhancement for the multiple scenario enhancement

Concept of inheritance is a somewhat downside, although I would think everything is copied to the new Version, so just be really sure your base is completely correct before making your Mods.  If not, then yep you will have to make the change across all the versions if it's needed.

I think one of the coolest things with the Mods on WF was that you could drastically change the board.  I think it was even used quite a bit, and was starting to be used more and more (Toaster did it with his Vlad set, I think Cumber was going to use it with his Doom board and used it to a degree with Mortal Kombat).  Perhaps this is more of a talking point when/if boards here become available for sale though, more options with a board purchase is nice for both the designer and the purchaser.

Although, even for slight Rule changes I think it's a good idea to change something on the Image so that you can look at the map and know it is different from the Default/Main board rather than every single time you join a game having to look at the rules.

Like my GearSweeper example, I don't think the boards are necessarily good enough to stand alone and "clog up" the Boards tab, but I think it would be cool if they were all tied together as "Mods" of the main board.

When I first read Yertle's post about wanting to be able to change *everything* I thought it was a bit overboard in that it opened the door for all kinds of possible foolishness.

But then I considered it some more and thought that doing so would be useful in at least one case - suppose you made a board that worked well as a X player game due to it's size, but you could make it work for a larger or a smaller number of players (or for teams) by increasing/decreasing the number of territories. I can see how that would be appealing.

My current thinking is to go down the route of completely separate boards so everything is changeable between scenarios, however to ease the effort in maintaining multiple boards you can choose to lock or unlock datasets relevant to the original.

For example if I make 4 scenarios where only the starting positions change between scenarios then I only unlock the scenario settings, everything else stays fixed to the original board. So if I subsequently change a few borders I only do it once on the base board and the scenarios inherit the changes.

I think that changing the image and continents could be cool with random scenario settings, so if you could hide the continent information, you could make people wander around until they found a continent or find a hidden border. I would like to just see team scenarios and multiple scenario only changes first, but it might be something to think about. I personally don't like the inheritance setting because if I'm trying to change one thing to see what works better, it changes the old version too, so I can't play 2 games at once and see what works better.

tom wrote: My current thinking is to go down the route of completely separate boards so everything is changeable between scenarios, however to ease the effort in maintaining multiple boards you can choose to lock or unlock datasets relevant to the original.

For example if I make 4 scenarios where only the starting positions change between scenarios then I only unlock the scenario settings, everything else stays fixed to the original board. So if I subsequently change a few borders I only do it once on the base board and the scenarios inherit the changes.

I like it!  (Right?  This is pretty much the multiple versions suggestion but with the ability to make mass changes correct?)

So would Ranked games be available on any "Mod" (is there a better word than Mod?)?  Or maybe settable by the Designer?

Edward Nygma wrote:  so if you could hide the continent information, you could make people wander around until they found a continent or find a hidden border.

 Huge BLECH!!!

Edward Nygma wrote: I personally don't like the inheritance setting because if I'm trying to change one thing to see what works better, it changes the old version too, so I can't play 2 games at once and see what works better.

Well in that case you could just turn off inheritance...

Edward Nygma wrote: I personally don't like the inheritance setting because if I'm trying to change one thing to see what works better, it changes the old version too, so I can't play 2 games at once and see what works better.

Wouldn't inheritance only work going downstream? I don't see why a change to the child board should alter the parent. If you want to test variations, just make a new version of the parent or a copy of the child and then don't change the parent until after you've figured out what you would want propogated through all versions.

I think hiding the continent information could be lots of fun. Raptor is working on a bingo board where the borders from each territory are "random," but this is difficult to do, since there is only one version and you can see the border, which just makes it difficult. If he made different version which each had a different set of random border, and you couldn't see which version you were playing, it would be much more random.

On my pokemon map, it would be nice to set 8 pokeballs on the map and only have 4 of them work... to make that work I'd need to make multiple versions where different pokeballs connect to different pokemon, and the only way to make it truly discovery based would be to hide the continent and border information until you get there. I think that option deserves better than "huge BLECH."

Risky did some of this with his series of hidden maze maps in the Old World and it just never really worked out. In theory it sounds better than it plays in practice, I think.