I am experienced with creating formal, technical design documents as part of the design process. This is a more informal example as I am the lead designer of the game and have not yet brought enough team onboard that I would need to fully tighten up the formatting and the specificity and accuracy of the language.
Battlepop is a collectible, zone-control miniatures game played on a board. In Battlepop, two summoner’s are vying for control of an arena round to round by knocking out their opponent’s characters and ending the round with sole control of point-value squares. Each of your opponent’s characters you knock out grants 1 control point and squares closer to your opponents portal have increasing control point values. The first player to win 5 rounds, wins the game.
The Dice
The Battlepop Dice is custom made for the game and has 3 attack-damage values, two misses and 1 gem of a given type depending on the dice color being rolled. During an attack, gems are used first to power your character’s local abilities, you must spend as many gems as possible unless an ability reads ‘may’. damage values of the roll are then added together and then applied versus the defense of local enemy units. Each player begins the game with 13 total dice in their available pool, factional dice are limited in quantity to this original 13.
A flame gem can only be used to power flame abilities, just as a wave gem can only be used to power wave abilities, unless a specific game effect would change or modify that rule.
Characters
Summoning Cost: Inside the cloud icon is the summoning cost of the creature that must be paid to play into the arena.
Defense Power: This represents the character’s ability to resist being defeated. If damage equal to or higher than a character’s defense is applied to it, the character is moved off the arena to the defeated zone.
Attack Power: This represents the character’s ability to defeat other characters and generate gems. During an attack, a character contributes 1 dice per point of attack power.
Ability: Many but not all characters have abilities. Each ability is shown with its activation requirements on the front and a more detailed description on the back.
Restoring Characters
When a total of 7 is naturally rolled by players at the start of the summoning phase, both players are allowed to spend their total summoning energy to restore characters from their knockout zone to their bench. Extra energy gathered from play effects can also be used to restore characters. A restored character is placed on the bench and not into the arena unless a specific effect would allow it.
Shrines
Shrines are special units that are not characters and generally do not move after being placed. Shrines can raise, lower or provide no effect to the value of a given square.
The Arena
The arena is the area of the game space where the vast majority of play takes place. It is divided into 15 squares. Each square has a base control value ranging from 0-3, if there is no listed value in a square you should assume it’s base is 0.
Portals
Each player has a portal square located in the bottom right corner of their respective side of the board and then a thinner shrine-portal area located along the edge. Portal areas do not count as squares for the purposes of game interactions or abilities. A player may summon characters into their portal by default, and they may summon characters into shrine portal areas if they control a shrine in the column.
Arena Squares
Each arena square has three character spaces per player and one shrine square. The maximum number of characters in a square is six and the maximum number of characters per player is three. The maximum number of shrines in a square is one.
Each arena square has either zero, one or two control-point values that are color coded to match a player. If you are the blue player then squares with a value given in blue can be scored if you have sole control of that square at end of round. Sole-control means that there are no enemy characters present in the square and you have a friendly unit present in the square.
Shrines can raise or lower the value of a square and that modifier is shown on the shrine within the crown icon.
The Bench
Each player begins the game with 13 characters and up to 2 shrines in their bench zone. A player may have up to three copies of a non-unique character on their bench. Unique characters are labeled by the * in the front, bottom-right corner of their character card. Players may only have 1 copy of a unique character on their bench. Characters on a bench may be selected from up to 2 unique factions, plus neutral non-faction characters.
Defeated Zone
When a character is knocked out from the board or a card ability would knock them out, they are sent to the defeated zone. A character in the defeated zone may not be activated or played unless a specific game effect allows it. When a 7 is rolled during the summoning phase of a round, players may spend energy to restore characters from their defeated zone to their bench.
Playing a Round
Phases
Summon Roll (d6)
P1 Summon
P2 Summon
P1 action phase (move/attack)
P2 action phase (move/attack)
P1 action phase (move/attack)
P2 action phase (move-attack)
Round Scoring / Cleanup
Phases Explained
Summon Roll
Each player rolls a six sided die and the sum of those dice is the base amount of summoning energy that both players will each have to use in the current round. The player with the highest dice roll will become the turn player and have priority in both the summoning and main action phases.
Summoning
Each player will have a chance to summon units from their bench to a portal area. The units summoned must have a summoning cost equal to or less than the total summoning energy they have for the round. The total summoning energy is the total sum of the base amount rolled plus any additional effects or bonuses added from the current or previous round.
Action Phase (move)
A player may declare their action phase to be a move phase. If they do, they may move any characters in the arena up to 1 square (no diagonal movement). Characters who are in conflicted squares cannot move during the move phase unless a specific game effect would allow it.
Action Phase (attack)
A player may declare an attack phase. If they do, they may attack one time per conflicted square. If a square would become conflicted due to the effect of an ability, the priority player may attack in that square as well if an attack has not already occurred there that phase.
When a player attacks, they roll a number of combat dice equal to the sum of the attack power of character’s in the local square where the attack is occurring. If a player does not have enough faction dice in their pool, they may roll generic dice for the excess. Gems rolled on generic dice cannot activate gem abilities requiring a factional gem.
Scoring and Cleanup
After each player has fully completed their action phases, the control points are tallied for the round. Control points can be gained from the following:
Defeating an opponent’s character generates 1 control point for the round.
Solely occupying a square in the arena generates control points equal to the square’s stated value.
Shrines can add/subtract control points from squares.
Character abilities may generate additional control points in a round.
Winning
The player with the most control points gets a round win on the score track. In the case of a tie, both players get a round win. The first player to reach 5 round wins, wins the game. You may not win the game due to a tie, instead a player on 4 round wins will stay on 4 round wins in the event of a tie.
Changelog:
7/18/2022
Lowered sword Bear’r attack from 3 to 2
Lowered Grizzled Captain defense from 5 to 4