Thursday, July 28, 2011

Death Mesa: New 18" x 12" Card Sheets Available

EDIT (8/8/11): I have uploaded new versions of these files to fix some card value duplicates. Each value should be unique, creating a poker deck with the values.

Death Mesa has been pulled down from Superior POD due to the request of the BANG! rights holders. They are entering into a free print-and-play agreement with me, which will allow fans to download my files and produce for themselves one free personal copy. Hoping to aid that process, I will be releasing more of my Death Mesa files. Below is the new English edition with updated text, title resizing, embarrassing typos fixed, redrawing blurbs on the bottom right of some Death Mesa cards, a few card ability adjustments, symbols further darkened, and more.

Death Mesa 18 x 12 Cardsheet #1

Death Mesa 18 x 12 Cardsheet #2

Death Mesa 18 x 12 Cardsheet #3


I will provide a tutorial in the next day or so on how to use these files with a printing service to produce your 1 personal copy of BANG!. In the mean time, feel free to download these files now, all available in PDF format.

Download: Sheet 1 Sheet 2 Sheet 3 Sheet 4 (Backs)

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Robbers' Roost: Latent Effect Card Design

Since describing how I would carry out the modularity of Robbers' Roost, I have been designing the latent effect cards, and I thought I would show some of my results.

Robbers' Roost Latent Effect Cards

The following should come to your attention:
  1. Purple Border. This border should help distinguish the unique playing style of the latent effect cards. As with green and blue cards, the purple cards are played in front of you. However, when played they have an immediate effect, and at the beginning of your next turn a latent effect (this cannot be stored up for use as with the green card). To help distinguish the color of the card, I made the top left and bottom right corners be a darker hue of purple than the other quadrants.

  2. Pocket Watch symbol. The pocket watch symbol in the middle of many of the card descriptions separates the initial effect (on top) from the latent effect (on bottom). This design style is similar to Dodge City's 2 effect cards (like Dodge), which had a symbol separate 1 effect from another.

  3. Ox Skull Icon. This helps differentiate the latent effect pack from the out-of-turn pack in Robbers' Roost for modularity purposes.

I have finished the general design of all of the purple latent effect cards:

Robbers' Roost Latent Effect Cards Preview

The art still requires some tweeking and I still need to work on reassigning card values for modularity purposes. As with other BANG! expansions/cards, I will try to keep the values thematically appropriate or consistent with their card types.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Design: Character Ability Stats

In an effort to help modders (those wishing to make their own custom expansions for BANG!), I have created a spreadsheet that expounds the intricacies of each character ability in the official BANG! card game and its expansions, as well as in Robbers' Roost. Such a spreadsheet should be useful for modders in both thinking of new characters and balancing the abilities that they think of by comparing them with characters in the game already.

The spreadsheet contain the following information on characters:
  • Character Names.

  • Expansion included in.

  • Number of Life Points.

  • Character Type. As with the character guides, I have broken these up into 3 general categories: offensive (i.e. Slab the Killer), neutral (i.e. Black Jack), and defensive (i.e. Elena Fuente).

  • Ability Type. I have provided several hopefully helpful labels of character abilities that should allow you to sort characters together by their ability type. Thus, Rose Doolan and Paul Regret are both given the ability type of "Sight Modification." Sid Ketchum, Elena Fuente, José Delgado, Doc Holyday, Uncle Will, Porter Rockwell, and Crazy Wolf are labeled with the ability type "Card Transmutation," since they can play a card(s) as something else/for some other effect.

  • Mode of Operation. This column has 2 values: optional or necessary. Generally speaking, it identifies whether the ability can be activated by the character's choice (Chuck Wengam) or if it is forced (Claus the Saint, Paul Regret).

  • Activator. This column describes who brings about the ability's activation. Sometimes this is done by oneself alone (Slab the Killer when playing a BANG!), by others (when Jourdonnais has a BANG! played against him), and by both (Suzy Lafayette, when playing her last card, or by having another player discard the last card from your hand), and sometimes this does not apply (Pixie Pete when he draws his 3 cards; he didn't bring it about, it occurred from the normal course of his turn).

  • Activating Time or Event. This column explains when the ability an be used, such as during a specific phase of a turn, when the target of a specific card, when "drawing!", etc. Sometimes, the ability is continuous (Sid Ketchum, Apache Kid).

  • Cost. This column notes if the ability has a cost to activate it, such as discarding/playing a card(s), losing a life point (Johnny Pope), using a card out of turn from one's hand (Molly Stark), not drawing cards from the deck (Pat Brennan), giving up copied abilities (Greygory Deck), and so forth. Often, there is no cost to use the ability, and this is also noted.

  • Outcome. This column observes the outcome of the ability after all else is considered. Thus after playing a brown card and discarding a BANG! during phase 2 of his turn, the outcome of Lee Van Kliff's ability is that the effect of the brown card is replicated. Some of these outcomes are complicated (Crazy Wolf, Claus the Saint), but I try to express them as best I can.

The hope is that this spreadsheet is that you will be able to group together characters with a similar ability type to a character you are considering to create. If his ability tends to be stronger than characters of his ability type, this should suggest to you that the ability needs modification.

I would love to get some feedback on this spreadsheet. It has taken a good chunk of time to put together, but I am sure there are typos, inconsistencies, and some poor labels. Feel free to post comments here.

I have made the spreadsheet available in both Open Office Calc and Microsoft Excel formats.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Death Mesa: More Positive Feedback of GFBR

In Geekinsight's recent recap of his gaming weekend on Giant Firebreathing Robot, he noted the following about Death Mesa:
Bang! and Death Mesa. I’ve been dying to try out the new Death Mesa Beta Version [link requires Google sign-in—Ed.] to the table. Let me say, there has been much improvement. In both of the games that we played, the ghosts felt like they were at right about the correct power level. Ghosts still had an influence in the game, and could still help their teammates, but not nearly as much as when they were alive.

I’m looking forward to more plays, especially to try out the Zombie Renegade version. Go get it and test it!

And in his weekly Errata, he recommended BANG! for 8-player games and again mentioned Death Mesa:
The other standby is Bang!, though you’ll need the Dodge City expansion. And, with eight players, I’d recommend giving the Death Mesa variant a shot since that will avoid the player elimination that might otherwise cause the game to bog down.


If you haven't looked at Death Mesa yet, check it out now!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

BANG! Card Game Downloads

News (9/28/20): Added player aids, Gold Rush, Valley of Shadows items. Also added Death Mesa in French and German!

News (9/27/20): Updated lots of rulebooks, fixed some broken links, added various language rulebooks.

News (8/21/11): Put in the A Fistful of Cards and High Noon Hungarian rules, as well as the Spanish FAQ for High Noon.




Rules.


BANG! the Bullet“English “Italian “Spanish “German French “Czech Hungarian Chinese “Vietnamese
BANG!“English “Italian “Spanish “Portuguese “German “Dutch “Greek Hungarian Croatian “Russian “Japanese “Korean “Vietnamese
Dodge City“English “Italian “Spanish “Czech “German “Dutch Hungarian
A Fistful of Cards“English “Italian “Spanish “German Hungarian “Russian
High Noon“Spanish Hungarian See BANG! the Bullet rules.
Wild West Show“English “Italian “Spanish “German Hungarian
Gold Rush“English “Italian “German “Russian
Armed & Dangerous“English “Italian “German
Valley of Shadows“English “Italian “German
Death Mesa“English
El Dorado“English Hungarian
Robbers’ Roost“English
2-Player“English “Italian “Spanish “Portuguese Czech Chinese French Hungarian
1-Player“English “Italian “Spanish Czech “German

FAQs.


BANG!“English “Italian “Spanish “Czech Hungarian
Dodge City“English “Italian “French “Czech “Portuguese
A Fistful of Cards“English “Italian
High Noon“English “Italian “Spanish
Wild West Show“English “Italian
Gold Rush“English “Italian

Player Aids.


BANG! Player Aids“English “Spanish “French “German “Polish “Hungarian “Russian
BANG! Teaching Aids“English “Hebrew
Death Mesa Aids“English

Tournament.


Tournament Rules “Italian “Spanish “Czech “Portuguese “German “Dutch
Tournament Order Cards“English
Tournament Cash“English

Expansions.


Death Mesa“English “Italian “German French
Robbers' Roost“English
El Dorado“English
O. K. Corral“English “Italian
Peterson Pack“English

Modding Tools.


Character Stats (OO)“English
Character Stats (XLS)“English
Playing Card Stats (OO)“English
Playing Card Stats (XLS)“English
BANG! Symbols
Custom Character Art
Playing Card Art
BANG! Card BordersOfficial Size, 2.5” x 3.5” Size
BANG! FontsPlaying Card Titles (Perdido), Event Card Titles (Playbill), Descriptions (Palatino Linotype)
BANG! Master TemplateNOTE: For InDesign only.