More ideas…little progress

It seems the more I discuss board game design with fellow geeks the more ideas I have and the more ideas I have the little progress I make.  So I am setting myself goals for this weekend and the coming week:

1.  Print out the new cards needed for Redemption City (to be renamed) and mail the prototype to D.

2.  Work on the topic and scenario cards for  Small Talk

3.  Make a couple of videos – one on my games room (man-cave) and the other on a couple of mechanics

4.  Get all my notes together and start putting rules together and ideas together for other games I am working on.

Let’s see if I can get these goals accomplished by next weekend!

Worker placement…new idea?

I have thought of two new wrinkles to the worker placement mechanic.  Would be interested to know if these are new and to get feedback from whoever reads this:

1.  Lose a worker – what if there were workers that could only achieve one task and then ‘expired’ or there were tasks that gave great reward but meant that you lost your worker after the task had been completed…

2. Skilled workers – what if there were workers who had specific skills.  So, all workers regardless of skill can perform certain tasks but if a ‘blue’ worker were placed on the ‘blue’ task then that worker would reap more of a benefit…

Just some thoughts

Above the 49th parallel

I am not a Canadian, but as I live in Canada I have noticed the lack of attention to the geography above the 49th parallel. Maybe this explains why Canadians have more knowledge of the geography of the USA than Americans have of the geography of Canada.  10 Days in th USA is a prime example.  It would have been so easy to add the Canadian provinces to this game along with their capital cities.  And by doing this I am sure more copies of the game would have sold in Canada.  My bet is more people in Canada have a different version of 10 Days.

Anyway – I think I am going to come up with a game called Across Canada: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (a re-working of the 10 Days model).

Over due update!

Hi – Here is a brief update on the games I am working on (some with other designers) – most games have earlier posts:

Ant’s Picnic – this was the first game I ever designed and I think it could turn into an enjoyable and challenging game for younger gamers.  Controlling two ants the players race around a picnic table gathering as much food as possible.  This is a two player game.  A prototype has been made but rules need to be redrafted for changes after initial play testing.

Blackpool Illuminations – create the fanciest most dazzling light show on the Blackpool seafront.  Balance power costs, hiring workers and providing the best light show to win.  Worker placement with an economic engine.  Still just an idea!

Broadway Producer – think Colosseum converted to cards.  Have the prototype but needs to be played.  Game follows a rummy like mechanic of pick up, put down and throw away.  On the back burner.

Dam It! – A hex tile laying game where each player takes on the roll of two beavers building their home.  Played over four seasons, the beavers collect wood and build their dam, use natural water flows to move faster, dodge algae blooms, feed off fish, and then avoid ice as the final winter season approaches.  The biggest and highest dam wins!  Still an idea.

Deep Sea Diving Game – a game that uses the Can’t Stop ‘push your luck’ mechanic.  Players dive to the bottom of the ocean to collect treasure.  The first to collect 10 treasures wins.  Can your team aboard the ship provide a constant supply of oxygen or you to continue your descent or will you have to rise to catch your breath!  Prototype made – needs play testing.  On back burner.

Redemption City (to be renamed) – stoked about this game.  Co-designing with David Short.  A card game where the players react to a revealed street scene.  The first to draw their pistol card from their hand wins the shootout and gains notoriety.  Be the last to draw and get the dreaded wound card!  Most fame wins.  Prototype and initial play testing.  Copy being sent to D with updated rules for continued play testing.

Renaissance Man – short mid to light Euro worker placement game.  Players take on the roll of a great scholar who has to present their knowledge to an esteemed panel of aristocrats.  Played over 6 rounds, players race to various areas of the Great University to sharpen their academic knowledge.  The player with the greatest and widest knowledge coupled with experience wins!  Co-designing with Metz – I need to get my butt into gear and get the first draft of rules written.

Small Talk – A party game in which players are given five topics, people, places, quotes in to which they must incorporate into a ‘small talk’ with another player.  Players get points for using all topics in their brief, timed conversation.  Rules to be re-written.  Prototype to be made.

Space Race Game – this game has been on the back burner even though I think it would be a great race game.  Bid on parts for you ship and hope that you have enough engine power to maneuver along the race track.  Players spend power crystals to charge engines on either side of the ship.  By careful movement the best pilot will win the race and gain extra points for shipping goods and people along the way.

Time Travel Game (yet un-named) – working with David Short.  Just an idea at the moment with a couple of mechanics.  You play a time traveler whose goal is to promote certain streams of knowledge through time so that at the end of the game the final Utopian Age best mirrors a society that mirrors the streams of knowledge you have been manipulating through time.

Tower Defense Game – still an idea at this time.  Sharing ideas with SQ to come up with a solid game.  Need to get some basic rules written.

Trading Game – very basic supply and demand commodity game.  Played over 12 rounds.  The player with the most money wins.  Need to prototype and play.

Widgets – a dice game where players use their dice to give to commands to a computer.  The computer then allows you to operate a robot that moves, picks up and delivers goods.  The player who converts the most goods before their robot powers down wins.  In the prototyping stage.

More Time Travel

Another idea – with a big assist from D!

There is a time line that exists of so many spaces.  To set up the time line you roll 6 D6 – each a different colour.  Once the roll is made cubes equal to  the value of the rolls are placed on each time line space.  For example blue D6 = 3, red D6 = 4, black D6 = 1 means that 3 blue cubes, 4 red cubes and 1 black cube are placed next to every time line space.  These cubes represent events/actions/resources or something at that point in the time line.  As a player moves along the time line they use or place resources/actions/events.  So, if a player travels to space 2 on the time line and uses the black cube it is then removed from following spaces along the timeline.  The resource/action can be placed back in the time line and it the black cube would be replaced on any following time line space.

Alternately, as time is already unstable, dice could be rolled for each space of the time line.  Therefore giving a different combination of cubes for each time line space.  As people move they would potentially have a bigger impact on different time line spaces depending on the number of cubes in the following time line spaces.

Additionally, more ideas, traveling further distances on the time line, whether forward or back, costs the player more energy/resources.  Maybe at each time line space there is a deck of cards that represent events and depending on how far you travel you get to look at a certain number of cards and act on one.  So if you travel one space along the time line then you look at the top three cards and act/keep one. If you travel two spaces you look at 2 and act on/keep 1 and any more that two you only see the top card.

Ideas, ideas ideas….

Time Travel in board games

What if the time in the game was the time line that you moved along – so turn 1 is a point in time as is turn 2 etc…  So if you move to a location in turn 1 the outcome of traveling there is different than in turn 2 or turn 3 etc… But maybe you can use some mechanism to travel back to a location as though it were a previous turn.   Continuing this thought – maybe each player has a board that represents what things, characteristics they acquire with each turn.  So when you travel back in time you can only use the things/characteristics you had in that turn but you would have knowledge of things that happened in later turns…

Does that make sense?

Widgets…A game invented in 24 hours – part 3

Here are some mock up boards and images (done quickly in PowerPoint) that help explain movements, points and commands:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is the robot player board (for the blue player) – players place resources or widgets on the four storage circles for transport.  The resources/widgets are removed once converted or delivered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is the factory board.   This has now changed to allow four rooms per side.  The rooms will consist of the Rest Area, Storage, Shipping, Conversion, and Recycle room with some rooms doubling up.  ***Rule – only two robots maximum per room – in a two player game only one robot per room.

Rest Area – robots start in this area.  Also a player may use actions to move to the rest area.  When in the rest area players draw a card from the rest deck.  These cards give bonuses e.g. power up 5 spaces on power track, next widget gives +1 point etc…

Storage – robots pick up resource cubes that can be taken to the conversion area to be made into widgets.  ***During set up 10 random cubes are assigned to the storage room.  These are replenished at the beginning of each turn.

Conversion – robots can convert resources to widgets and widgets to resources in this room

Shipping – when widgets are delivered to shipping the player may activate a goal card for scoring.  All widgets on the goal card must be shipped at the same time.

Recycling – there is a finite number of resources and widgets in the game.  ***Game setup – place a widget of each colour (random size) are placed in the recycle room.  A small widget may be converted to one resource cube.  A large widget for two resources (see colours below for which resources may be chosen).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is the computer control panel board.  This is a quick draft.  Imagine the artwork to be Fallout-ish 50s retro technology.  The board needs to be expanded to include more locations for dice to be played.  S = sequence command action, R = repeat command action

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is the widget to resource, resource to widget conversion method.  Using colours – two secondary make a primary – conversion takes place.  The larger widgets take more resources than smaller widgets.  The grey widget can be converted to any colour resource but a black and white resource can only make a grey widget.

Widgets…A game invented in 24 hours – part 2

Here is the game of Widgets:

Background: The factory is old, the computer antiquated but given the right commands this computer can still be productive.  As robot operators, you give the computer commands which it processes and then orders the robots to perform tasks.  Your goal is to make as many widgets at possible before your robot runs out of power and has to recharge before its next shift.  Will you be the best robot operator?

Game Bits: 12 D6 (3 x 4 different colours), 4 D6 white, one factory game board, one computer control panel board, 4 robot player boards, 4 robot counters, large widgets (four colours), small widgets (four colours), resource cubes (6 colours), shift goal cards, rest area cards

Game Play:

1. Setup
2. Program computer
3. Operate robot
4. Change power level on robot
5. Score

1. Setup – each player receives a robot board and 3 dice of his colour robot.  The factory board and computer control panel board are placed in the middle of the table.  The robot tokens representing the players robots are placed in the rest area of the factory board.  The goal cards are shuffled and four cards are dealt to each player.  A player may keep two, three or four of these cards.  The returned cards are shuffled back into the deck and the deck is placed near the boards.  The rest area deck is shuffled and placed next to the rest area on the factory board.  The player who has most recently purchased a new piece of technology becomes the start player.

2. Program Computer – each player rolls their three dice.  The start player is the player who rolls the lowest total on his three dice (if there is a tie then the player who has most recently purchased a new piece of technology becomes the start player).  For each turn the start player for that turn is determined by the lowest roll value.  Player turn then moves to then next lowest roll and so on.

The start player places one or two of his dice on the spots open for commands.  The commands are represented by the numbers 1 to 12.  One or two dice can be used to represent each command.  This means that (potentially) each player will be able to give two or three commands a turn.  Two other commands include the ‘repeat action command’. If a player rolls three of a kind then he may automatically (if he wishes) make a fourth action of the die value (3 threes allows the controller to perform 4 of the three action).  The other action is the ‘sequence action command’.  If a player rolls a straight then he may automatically use another command that is in sequence with the roll (a player rolls 2,, 3, and 4 and therefore may add the 1 or the 5 command).

The 1 to 6 commands can be used by all players on all turns.  The 7 to 10 commands may be used by one less than the players in the game (if three players only two may use these commands).  The 11 and 12 commands may be used by two less than the number of players playing (or in a two player game only one person may play on these commands).  The sequence and repeat commands can only be used by one player.

The commands consist of movement, pick up, drop off, rest, and conversion of resources/widgets (more about the commands later).

2. Operate Robot

In turn each player operates their robot by performing the computer commands.  Commands may be completed in any order.  As each computer command is completed the dice are removed from the board and taken back by the player.

3. Powering the Robot

After a player has completed his robots commands, he takes the total value of the dice roll and moves his power token that number down the power track.  Each robot has 100 power units in its main power cell.  Once the main power cell is exhausted (a player reaches 0 on the power track), the back up power cell does not have the capability to operate at full capacity.  For the next five turns the player loses one dice (rolls only 2 dice per turn).  After five turns the robot can only operate one command per turn and the player discards down to one die.

Scoring

If a player meets the production on the goal card they immediately redeem that card for points.  The scoring token is moved on the scoring track.  The redeemed goal card is put at the bottom of the goal deck and, if needed, the player may draw two more cards and keep both or just one of the cards drawn.

In final scoring any resources still being carried by the robot are -1 point and any goal cards are worth negative points to the value of the card.

ONE MORE POST WITH PICTURES  🙂 with more about rooms, commands and how you score points!!!!

Widgets – a game invented in 24 hours

My brain works in mysterious ways – some of my friends would say it is mysterious that my brain even works!  I don’t know where these thoughts came from but here is the chain of ideas that led to Widgets:

1. Thinking…I like dice games.  Dice games that add that amount of luck/probability/chance to a game without destroying it.  Think Kingsburg, Alien Frontiers, Stone Age and to a lesser extent Settlers of Catan.  I am like Euros that don’t rely on math to win (though I like some of those as well).
2. Thinking…How can I design a good dice game.  Alien Nations has dice that represent ships, Stone Age the dice represent tribe members and their productivity…what could I do…
3. Thinking…Kingsburg uses dice to command people to act…what if the orders programmed a computer!  Depending on the roll and the value of the roll the computer could be ordered to do something…after all data is inputted into computers and the computers have some form of output…but what output
4. Thinking…How about ordering robots to move and perform actions
5. Thinking…Maybe the robots could be working on something, producing something…
6. Thinking…Colours have been on my mind…see previous posts…what if the robots took red and blue resources and changed them to a purple product…
7. Thinking…Rolling dice to control a computer that moves robots to produce goods…to produce Widgets…

More details on the details of how to play the game in the next post…stay tuned

Mechanic drawn from the novel Hunger Games

In the teen novel Hunger Games the ruling government randomly draws names of children who are taken from their families to take part in the ‘games’.  As there is a food shortage in many parts of this fictional world, families may get food packages etc from the government but in turn have a family member’s name added to the draw.  Take food = more chance of losing a family member.

I think this would translate into a great mechanic for a worker placement game.  At the end of each round of play there would be a random draw.  If your colour token is revealed you lose a worker.  I have some ideas about a theme that this could work around but would be interested in any ideas or feedback…