How To Design A Captain In 4 Simple Steps

Recently on our Discord, our community has been sharing some of their fun ideas for custom playable captains for Captain’s Gambit. It’s super exciting to see the cool and creative ideas that they have been coming up with, but it got me thinking…how do you design a new playable character in a game? How do you make the new character both fun and balanced while still fitting it in cleanly to the existing game?

Today, I’m going to share a quick formula to get you on the right track. This should give you a good starting point to create your own cool captain ideas!

Note: While this guide is going to be focused on how to design captains for Captain’s Gambit, many of the principles I’m talking about are broad and applicable to designing playable characters in any asymmetric multiplayer game.

Step 1: Choose Your Approach

There are two main approaches you can take when designing a new character:

• Top-Down: Start with the lore/aesthetics, then create the mechanics to complement it.

• Bottom-Up: Start with the core mechanic, then pair it with the lore/aesthetics.

We used both approaches fairly equally when designing our captains. Romeo/Juliet, Hamlet, and Prospero were all built top-down, starting with the Shakespeare character and then sketching out their mechanics from there. Rosalind, Imogen, and Titus were all more bottom-up designs, starting with a mechanic/goal and then matching it to a Shakespearean character later in development. Neither approach is inherently better than the other, but designing in one direction may come more naturally to you.

Keep in mind that you can always switch directions if you get stuck. Richard is a great example of a captain who was designed in both directions. While he originally started out as a bottom-up design (i.e. “We want to create a captain that feels like a Raid Boss”), his revised design is much more top-down (i.e. “How can we make Richard feel more like a schemer like how he is in the play?”).

Step 2: Identify the Archetype

Once you’ve nailed down the initial draft for your character, you need to identify what archetype it falls under. Using RPGs as an example, those games tend to have a “Healer” archetype, a “Tank” archetype, a “Support” archetype, etc. In the case of Captain’s Gambit, there are five archetypes that captains can fall under: Assassins, Ascenders, Devotees, Manipulators, and Dominators. Identifying which archetype your captain falls under might be very obvious. Take this captain as an example:

Custom Captain 1: At the end of Round 4, the player(s) with the most health gain a skull token. You win if you kill any player with a skull token. You lose if all the players with skull tokens are killed by any other means.

This captain is obviously an Assassin, because they win by killing a specific target. But sometimes the archetype can be harder to nail down:

Custom Captain 2: You win if the game ends and either exactly two Captains have died, or exactly two Captains are still alive.

If I had to choose an archetype for Custom Captain 2, it would probably be Manipulator. But their first win condition feels a bit like a Devotee, while their second win condition is a lot like a Dominator. So in a way, they straddle the line between all three archetypes.

If you can’t nail down the exact archetype (or if it doesn’t fit into any of the existing archetypes), you can instead think about the captain’s intended playstyle. Are you trying to make a captain that hoards lots of energy? Then it might be similar to Prospero, Richard, or Puck. Are they trying to make a captain that loves to form alliances? Then they might be like Iago or Cordelia. Once you’ve identified which existing captains are similar to your new creation, it’s time to make sure that you…

Step 3: Fill a Niche

Every new character needs to have something unique about it to distinguish it from the existing characters in the game. If it’s too similar, you risk making the new character feel bland and uninspired. Take this as an example:

Custom Captain 3: You win if you are alive and the game ends on round 12 for any reason, or if all players have 0 energy. You lose if anyone wins before then, or if a player ends their turn with 20 or more energy.

Look familiar? It should, because it’s basically just Puck with some added stuff about energy.

See? Basically the same.

While this is in theory different than Puck, in most games it’s going to play out identically. If you want it to feel different, you’ll have to set it further apart:

Custom Captain 3.1: You win if all living captains have 2 or less energy, or if any living captain has 12 or more energy.

Once your design feels distinct, it’s time for the last step…

Step 4: Balance the Meta

The final step is assessing how adding in your new captain will impact the existing game’s balance. Would your captain make the game too aggressive so that Devotees can no longer win? Does your captain pair up too effectively with Ascenders so that no one can stop them? There are a lot of potential issues that can arise. Luckily, there are a few different things you can do to balance it out:

1. Restrict the player count: Some captains can be way too oppressive in low-player games, but are perfectly fine in larger groups An example of this is Romeo/Juliet, who are far too powerful in 4 and 5 player games, but perfectly fine in 6+ player games.

2. Give your captain an anti-req: Many of our captains have anti-reqs, or captains that they cannot be played with. You can use the anti-req to avoid game-breaking interactions, like with Viola/Hamlet, or to avoid having too many similar effects in the game, like with Titus/Richard.

3. Adjust your design: If the first two options don’t work, you’ll need to iterate on your captain’s design so that the negative play pattern is no longer possible. Playtesting is essential to get this right, but if you’re doing it just for fun you can talk it out with your friends instead to come up with potential fixes.

Once you’ve figured out how it fits in, your new captain is good to go!

---

Congratulations, you’ve now ready to create your very own captains! Come join our Discord, where you can find a template to help you share your fun designs with the community. You might even be able to find some people willing to try out your ideas.

Stay Lofty!