Because the comment on my last entry was relevant to this project, it's the first one to be presented.
F.E.A.R is a take that game that was put on the back burner of my thoughts because it would be to God Damn LOOOOONG...
Players play citizens in this oppressive totalitarian regime and try and stay Alive and Sane and make the most out of it.
The game works is rounds called Days, and player turns called Clocks.
The game comes to an end after a set amount of Days (5-7). The player with the lowest Character Elimina-tions or the most stable (closest to 0) Loyalty track, is the winner
Each Day begins by rolling 2d6 and equaling the upturned Regime line of cards from the Regime to the numbers on the dice. If there are more cards then the dice show, discard from oldest to newest. Those Re-gime cards show Rules and Ideologies. There are two sets of Rule cards: More gamie cards (effecting actual mechanics), and there are cards that are more interactive (like don't touch the color Red while the main game die is Red).
Ideologies are the base rules and Goals of the game. Each Ideology details how much Credit (explained lat-er) each Status Rank (later) gets and what extra rules they have dependent on Status.
Then, starting with the player who has the highest Status and going clockwise, each player has his Clock.
A bit about the components before I continue: Each player has a board with 3 bars on it: Loyalty (goes from -10 to +10), Physical Harm (goes from 5 to 0) and Mental Harm (goes from 5 to 0). Players also have a status die (a customized D6) that shows five Statuses (from lowest to highest): Hated, Lowered, Average, Party Member, Inner Circle. Players also have Stuff, those are cards they buy with Credit or get from Events. Stuff also includes Jobs that gain players more Credit.
In the center of the table there is a main board with 12 "Hour Slots" from 0800 to 2000, ready to place cards in. There are also 3 decks of cards: Regime (Detailed above), Stuff (Slightly lower than the regime detail) and Events (Way down there). The Stuff deck is set aside for a shop area where several cards are face up to buy or sell.
Player turn, called a Clock, as played out in phases and focuses on the main board. First phase is setting up Curfew according to the Rules at play. Those are two black cards that are set and any Hour Slot before or after them has special rules. For example a Curfew from 1900 to 0900 will make the time slots 0800 and 2000 invalid.
Next is placing Work cards according to the Job a player has (usually between 6 to 8 cards). Then the meat comes into play. The active player (who's turn it is) rolls a D12 and each other player, starting with the player to his left, plays an Event from his hand until there are events equal to the roll. Events come in three flavors: Mint (Quick), Vanilla (Lunch Break) and Chocolate (Full). Quick events can be played at any Hour Slot; Lunch Break events may be played at any Hour Slot except those effected by curfew; Full may be played at any slot to override the event bellow (curfew and Work included).
After all events have been played, start resolving the Hour Slots. Each event can be countered by Stuff the active player has.
Empty slots can be used to: Buy more Stuff, Do nothing, play an Event from your own hand. Hour Slots with Work card earn the player Credit.
After the last slot has been resolved, each player fills his hand back to six cards and play continues.
The object of the game is to get the least amount of "Character Eliminations". A character is eliminated when one of her Bars reaches max. At this point the player resets all Bars and discards all Stuff cards; he rolls his Status die and gets a Character Eliminated Token.
A couple of things to note: When playing Events the players can and are encouraged to discuss what events they will play. Also the Active player may not play Events in his turn unless those are on empty slots.
Also, Events may affect all players by changing the Regime cards or by inflicting taxes or Bar changes for all players.
This is basically "Gang Up" the game: The point of every game where all players gang up on the one who is in the lead.
Also, the Fluxx-ish changing rules are a bit downplayed but I think there is enough concentrated chaos in the game already.
A question that might arise: Why three (four) different Bars? 1) Thematically the evil Regime can hit you, brain wash you or drive you insane; 2) to keep the active player on his toes and give him motivation to horde all the Stuff, the only thing that will save him from the events.
This is currently a clustery mass and I would love for some feedback on how to streamline it and ideas for cards. Also general comments are very welcome.
