RSSStoried Age: Working on a Python model
Jul 27
The most recent Storied Age playtest (still need to edit the audio for the podcast and post a playtest report…) demonstrated that there are some issues I need to work out in the design. For one thing, with the current mechanics there is a tendency to put forward the same single trait over and over again until it exhausts. This is kind of boring. The original “exhaustion” mechanic was actually intended to discourage continuous spamming of the same trait, but that got a little bit lost when I switched to the “rising tide” exhaustion mechanic. I have some new ideas, but in order to figure out which way I want to go I’ve been working on writing a new Python model of the game for the past few days.
I’ve had a mostly functional model for a while, but there are a lot of shortcuts and assumptions cooked into it that make it difficult for me to experiment with alternative mechanics. The new model I’m working on is going to be a lot more robust, with space clearly carved out for different AI decision-making points (by far the most difficult part of modeling the game economy is figuring out how people will actually play). It’s been pretty frustrating so far, since I’m not a Python expert and I’ve let what I did know get a bit rusty, but becoming a better Python coder is a hypothetically useful job skill, so I can tell myself that I’m not completely wasting my time.