Odd question, I realize. I’ve been kicking around a few ideas for a few card, board, and roleplaying games for a while now. I’d love to actually commit one to paper and maybe get something published (if only online).
Unfortunately, I have no real gaming friends anymore and don’t really have the time or temperament playtesting would require.
Just curious if anybody here would be interested in dabbling in game design with me, if only just to bounce a few ideas off the wall.
I love talking about game design - I have friends who work professionally in it, and have playtested in-development games on a number of occasions, which always turns into a discussion of “what are you trying to do here” and “which mechanics would work best to achieve the outcomes” and so on.
So I’m in. Do you intend to do this here on the SDMB, or someplace more private?
I’m usually game for a little theorycrafting. I’ve been meddling with game design in various non-professional capacities for years. (I’m supposed to be working on a revision of the treasure/economy document for a LARP right now, in fact, but I started getting a loophole-induced headache.) I’m pretty good at both fluff and crunch.
My tabletop group is rather flaky about scheduling, but we’ve got a lot of experience among us. I might be able to talk them into some one-off playtest scenarios, if the premise is interesting enough. We don’t get together that often, though, and we’ve got a Pathfinder campaign and my nascent Eclipse Phase campaign; it will be hard to put those aside when we get a chance to play.
Oh, good point. My every-other-Friday group is usually D&D, but we break out the boardgames when we don’t have a quorum.
I think the real work would best be done elsewhere, simply because this isn’t the best forum for sharing files and revisions, etc. Maybe keeping a WIP thread going here would work.
Depends a bit on the type of game we’d be approaching. Obviously, a full-on RPG is a huge investment of time and I don’t want to start something I’ve zero faith in finishing.
I have a few cards games in early idea stages, a minis combat game with rules about 20-30% written (most of the remainder is specifics), and a few light RPG concepts with a little bit of work to them.
Not a lot for boardgames, although I’m not opposed to working on one.
I would hesitate before exposing a minis game to my group. They can be a bit…picky. If you want to simulate a battle between the Hyksos and a Shang Dynasty Chinese army, they have rules specific to those forces on hand. They can really tear a tactical game apart, if that’s the kind of feedback you want. (Not me, though–I suck at that kind of game.)
As to RPGs–we’re probably at a saturation point on RPG systems. Everything from D&D 4.0’s tabletop MMO to the FATE system’s combat-is-roleplaying is pretty much covered. If you’re looking at light RPGs, it’s probably best to pick a mechanic that’s close to what you have in mind and tweak it.
The best way to get started is probably to throw some concepts out and see what catches on.
I will be interested too. Count me in!
From my experience though, a design by committee game seldom works. Someone needs to have the end in mind first.
I tend to focus on the conceptual level rather than number crunching or playtesting, but if you want, I’ll have a look and tell you about anything that sticks out.
I’m definitely up for some discussion.
Game 1
A tile laying game where you represet companies trying to best utilize the resources of Mars or a Mars like planet. I was think tiles like “greenhouse” that input water and produce oxyxgen and food, or “solar panel” which output energy. A realistic game probably has too many resources to keep track of (water, oxygen, food, energy, possibly ore.)
Game 2
Companies are looking for the next 7 Wonders (plays a lot of players, fairly quickly). Instead of drafting, I was thinking simultaneous action selection (ala Race for the Galaxy), but that you DON’T get your actions back immediately and perhaps the action you don’t choose after 4 or 5 rounds would have a secondary benefit (ala Cuba).
So any feedback would be appreciated.
Brian
Yeah, I’ve no interest in trying to develop a new RPG system, plenty out there. I am, however, rather fond of enclosed roleplaying games that blend their rules into the gameplay. Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, and Polaris are among my favorites: the experience of playing these games is completely unique and couldn’t be replicated by tweaking any existing system.
That said, it’s probably the genre I’m least interested in dabbling in because I have literally zero ability to playtest any at the moment.
Yeah, design by committee would be a flop. I think the ideal process would be brainstorming as a group, principle writing by one or two folks, and then revising and testing by more.
I would be interested in participating.
I’ve often toyed with the idea of a dungeon crawler or RPG lite board game where the players interact more, so you don’t get the “multi-player solitaire” issue of, say, Talisman or Runebound.
I like the tile laying on Mars theme.
One way I could contribute is by simulating the pieces and mechanics via spreadsheets.
It looks like we’re leaning toward card and/or tile games. Time to narrow the focus?
Would this be a cooperative game? I’ve developed a new appreciation of “players versus the game” mechanics since I’ve been playing Arkham Horror. For a setting, why not make it sort of a pulp sci-fi thing, where you can have different scenarios (and where the science gets handwaved in favor of concept)?
Simultaneous action sounds like an interesting mechanic. I haven’t played Race for the Galaxy; how does it work? Do you have action cards, and everyone flips theirs simultaneously, then resolves the actions?
Balance, yeah Race for the Galaxy works by having each player choosing a role card, and they will reveal the card immediately. If you play a role card to say, draw cards, other players will get to draw cards too. But since you are the one who play the role, you get to draw more.
Why not as we suggest ideas we refer to them by their number and/or a description (to avoid too much quoting). For the Mars game, I have the idea of a competitive/cooperative play where you have to build common amenities for the benefit of the whole community but your opponent can make use of them to generate VP or income.
For example, say perhaps a water recycling unit is for the community (maybe we can have a charity track and use it to break tie, determine initiative etc. So the meanest person gets to go last, though he owns lot of stuff). However, since the unit is shared, I could connect my own factory to it to make use of the unit to generate income for me, which may let me build larger things for the community.
As for card games, I think the Deck Building genre is over-saturated. Eminent Domain is a pretty good what, where the deck building is used to supplement other aspects of the game. We can have a multiple currency system where the cost of the cards depend on their position on a board (e.g Alhambra or Mocao), or what the player can take depends on the role they pick.
Or we take a leaf from the Game of Throne board game, you can only take back your action cards when you have finished them all.
For the Mars game , I was thinking of of a cooperative element - every player (company) contributes in building a space elevator.
But I wasn’t thinking of a cooperative game per se. Eache player would get Victory Points depending on how much they contributed towards thr Space Elevator
There would be other ways to get VP, but I haven’t thooght that through very much. Since you play competing companies, money/profit would be one VP measure
Yes, I considered setting it on a SF world so I could eliminate the need for generating Oxygen
Brian