Narrowing the Playing Field

Been giving a lot of thought as to the all important basic actions one could perform in my game (which I think I'll start calling Starguments, after a funny exchange on facebook)
What I came up with, which also affects the game board, is a politics action for exerting control over the galactic house and the various planets, a navigation action for reaching and connecting these planets and a trade action for collecting bonuses from said connections.

Each player would start with a home planet of his color and a connection to the planet where the government is seated.
The full board will be build from modular components selected by the players according to their actions in the initial tutorial phase, as well as choose their unique alien race with it's specific powers (and goals?)
Tutorial actions will also allow for deck customization by replacing basic cards with randomly drawn powered up version, if the player so chooses.

Snake Oil

My roll and move game has a snake oil salesmen theme to it.

The basic premise involves moving around a track and choosing the action that would be most beneficial for you while being careful not to help your opponents even more.

After rolling and moving your pawn, you may choose an action, perhaps from a limited set according to location, and receive a bonus for it, which your opponents can then follow (to help eliminate down time, one of the problems of classic roll and move.)

These actions may include collecting ingredients, brewing concoctions, improving potions and equipment for a variety of bonuses and combos, and selling your product for gold and reputation.

A Roll and Move Exercise

It's been while since I've posted, hasn't it?

It's not that I haven't thought about game design, although maybe I did think about it less.
My cardinal sins card game still comes up in my thoughts, with some variations on how it would play - sometimes it has a board, other times it's pure card based; Different ideas on what each card might do, etc.

I haven't been listening to the Ludology podcast over the past few months, yet as soon as I do, the ideas start flowing back.

This time it was a question directed towards the hosts - Ryan Sturm and Geoff Engelstein about whether any game mechanics are going to disappear in the future, or fall out of vogue .
Roll and move was mentioned as an unpopular mechanic amongst the hobbyists, and yet still prevailing amongst the general populace who expect it and haven't been exposed to better things.
So I've been thinking to myself how roll and move could be improved upon. The main problem is that it doesn't give any choice and the game ends up playing you rather than you it. You have no real control over which space you fall on in Monopoly or Talisman, while you can at least split the dice results in a game of backgammon.

What if we used this random element to determine our possibilities, the way the dice roll in Catan determines what resources are handed out (or whether the robber strikes again) regardless of who rolled the dice?

Roll the dice, move your pawn around the track, and from where you land have certain choices available to you, such as selecting a role you can play this turn? Would that work? I'll play such scenarios in my mind and look for more interesting ideas. Who knows maybe I'll combine it with earlier ideas in interesting ways, maybe even to an idea I could take to play testing.

Just another game idea

Go to game night, play a few games, preferably ones I haven't played before, and get inspired.

Walk on beach and hone the ideas.

The one floating on top right now is a dice rolling and manipulation game with an online dating theme.

In a nut shell, you would start by selecting a character card to give you an initial set of dice to roll.

Then you would go on "dates" with other character randomly pulled from a deck, and try to match as many of your dice rolls. Each failure will get you closer to your goal of being the first to match all dice results with your 'date' or getting enough cats to be a crazy cat lady.

It's a fairly simple idea, maybe I should focus on something like that and really push to bring one of these ideas to completion.