Blood Sweat and Tears

Just some possible theme ideas for my current obsession for a board game with campaign.

Winning player of the first game would be able to pick from blood, sweat or tears, affecting the way the game will play in the future, with subsequent winners having similar choices. Losers will get consolation prizes which will increase their outlook with the frame the winner dictated.

Blood is the aspect of magic, coming from the places in which it is cast. This would introduce more random elements to the game.

Sweat in the physical aspect, brute force in numbers.

Tears are the aspect of faith, power coming from artifacts. Area of effect, indirect fighting.

Onion: Or How To Make a Boardgame Campaign

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition) is getting big with my group of board gaming friends. Having played a couple of missions in a campaign, and an encounter from the Wyrm Queen expansion, both as a hero. This system is basically a pen & paper RPG, narrowed in scope to deliver a quicker experience (nothing wrong with that.)
Other examples I can think of are wargames, taking cues from history to link multiple missions together and Risk Legacy in which the board is changed permanently, which I think adds gimmicks to a pretty bad core game.

How do I link together plays of something more constructive, where players attempt to build an engine to score the biggest point or reach an objective faster? The thing would need to be built in layers, like an onion. It would start with a strong core mechanic, with each subsequent play adding more to the mix. Winners would need to be rewarded, while everyone else would need some way to balance things so they stand a chance of turning the situation around and not necessarily facing a rich gets richer problem.

I'll probably write more about this later.

On a side note, I didn't play it myself, but a game of Illuminati was brought over to last game night, which made me think of other ridiculous themes for games, such as Scientology. And if we are talking about Scientology, why not a game about Tom Cruise, that is more than just a Trivia Pursuit or Monopoly re-theme? ;)

Building a Village

Sketched out a rough idea of how the game could work. How a player wins made a big contribution to this.


The game would start with only a few places to populate with workers: A central hub (village center) which can hold any number of workers in it, and will perform some sort of general action everyone might need to do at some time. I'll need to think on what that might be, probably something to do with excess goods.
There will also be a number of areas in which a player can add raw good cards to his deck.
With enough raw goods, a basic factory could be built corresponding to each raw resources, allowing to pull processed good cards. If a forest produces wood, the sawmill will make planks, ore from mines to steel, etc.

With enough processed goods, the advanced buildings (selected by players before the game began) may be built next. Advanced building will allow to pull cards with various abilities, such as pulling more resources, linking cards together or improving worker abilities.
A player will want to focus on his own buildings, but can use buildings his opponent built to improve his deck. Perhaps I will award the owner of the building.

Once a player builds all his advanced buildings, he will need to focus on building his (or her) totem (or monument, temple, etc.) The first to finish this final building is the winner.

Card Ideas

Been thinking of the cards for my facebook worker placement deck builder.
The Dominion formula has players buying cards with currency. My idea has a player drawing cards from sending his worker to the appropriate spot.
Certain cards (character) will give you the ability to relocate your worker, enabling the player to pull more cards into his deck, as well as giving special abilities and allowing for combos.
A different type of card will be resource. These will be needed for expanding the tableau from which you can build your deck.

An example would be playing a villager from your deck, moving him into the sawmill to draw a wood card. On the next turn, a builder card will be played, moving that worker to the city hall to build a forge, from which you could draw steel cards.

These cards may need more abilities to offer deeper gameplay and prevent skipped turns.

Worker Placement Deckbuilder for Facebook

Still thinking about my solution to the ultimate facebook game, with neurons firing on all cylinders.
From the mechanics of the game, such as how the cards and board will interact with each other, how I'd like an experience that is has more interaction and less "multiplayer solitaire," to whether I want the board game elements hidden under the interface.

I'm also giving a lot of thought to the theme, trying to figure out something outside the usual fantasy or sci-fi, with such things as building a voodoo village, Somali pirates or monsters hidden in plain sight a la Monsters inc.

Thinking about how everything you can buy with real money could be had with enough hard work, and how it needs to be functional but not give a massive advantage.

SimCity Social is Dying

SimCity Social, the facebook game I am currently putting the most time into will go offline June 14th.
One of the first quests I played in said game was connected to the London Olympics, so it's not quite a year.
I had played Restaurant City for much longer, before it went down (another EA/Playfish game) while some other games, such as Pet Society (coming down the same time as SCS) I played because it felt like a waste of time, while others, like Monster Galaxy have become unplayable as facebook and browsers updated.

Is all this trouble an indication of the state of social games? Will more studios be as troubled as Zynga? Will the model of ingame microtransactions change to something else?

Guess I'll be waiting to see how it folds out (including what game I'll be addicted to next) think about new financial models, and keep dreaming I'll find a job in which all-night gaming marathons are an important part of research.

Role Selection Deck Builder

In typical creative fashion, a new idea is now bouncing around my head, even though I haven't quite finished fleshing out the old ones.

Learning that my aunt is coming to visit from Canada in June, I figured this could be a chance to increase my game library by one. The problem comes from deciding which one, as well as finding one in stock, with Kickstarter projects posing some difficulties in that area.
I'm also assuming that with her limited luggage space, it will need to come in appropriate package and card games are good candidates. (If I can get a big box, I want to get my hand on Seasons.)

This lead me to think of all the card games I've played and enjoyed, as well as explore games I haven't played that could be good candidates.

As I enjoy role selection games as well as deck builders, I went on a search on Board Game Geek, and found Eminent Domain. While this seems like a fun game, it wasn't quite what I had in mind for this combo, which is why I am currently bouncing ideas in my head on how I would do it, which is mainly about having a bigger emphasis on the deck building aspect.

I also realize my 4X game idea had deck building.

Syrupy Soldiers

Came up with some preliminary unit types and distribution for 4 players for my Candy Land reconstruction game, in a handy visual aid.



Naturally this would need some play testing for balancing, but the basic idea is this:
Whenever an equal number of forces meet, they are both removed. When one side is stronger than the other, only the loser removes his pieces, giving the winner a chance to advance on his next turn.

King Kandy's Knights are equal to 2 foot soldiers, but follow all normal rules of movement otherwise.
Most units will have to stop at a space where there are other units, even if the player picked up a card that would move him beyond these soldiers. Princess Lolly's spies may ignore this rule.
Gloop doesn't have special units, instead relying on superior numbers of footmen.
Lord Licorice's Legionnaires can push units back at one unit per legionnaire, breaking enemy formations, i.e. a legionnaire moving into a space with 2 footmen can make one of them move into the space behind it, leaving one in the space it is occupying. If it also came with a footman, the Licorice player would win.