Hello, all.
I've had this idea for a cool feature/mechanic, but I haven't been able to wrap it around a solid board game idea. I'm hoping maybe somewhere else here can help me out, or at least get some inspiration of their own from this.
I call this idea the Bonfire. Imagine a Fantasy setting, with a roaring magical bonfire in the center of the board. Players each have the ability to raise or lower the level of the fire, but it affects all players equally. That is, if the Bonfire is at level 1, then each player has certain actions available to choose from, but at level 2, the options are different. Think of it as a resource pool that is shared by all players.
I can think of a million variations on this idea, and have adapted it as many times in my mind, but it's only a gimmicky thing, and doesn't make a game on its own.
One idea I had was to make sort of a racing game, where players chose from different races of people who each could summon various racing familiars that had different abilities (the Roc can cross mountainous spaces quickly, but has trouble over sandstormy deserts, the Giant Rattlesnake can cross deserts with ease but sink in the sea, etc.), and players would alter the level of the Bonfire to achieve the greatest comparative advantage over their opponents.
I also thought maybe adapting the idea to a weather pattern system instead of a bonfire might make a neat game, with players summoning only one type of monster, but also being able to summon different types of storms to hinder or help their opponents' movement as they snatched up treasures across the board. This one too seems somewhat lacking, tho it's a similar principle.
Any thoughts on how to finish the Bonfire idea?
-Peter-
What if the bonfire were a power source (could be mechanical, electric, whatever in nature). The power source is in the center of a board. Around the board is one (or more?) track that the players are on. They start in front of themselves and have to negotiate the various turns, inclines and declines of the track. The thing is, they all have the same amount of power going into the vehicle at all times, since they draw their power from the source in the center.
Each turn, players would play a series of moves in which they have three choices: Accelerate, Decelerate or Coast. Accelerate is a vote to turn up the juice. Decelerate turns it down - it's like brakes. Coast has no direct influence on the speed of everyone. The track's turns and obstacles would have different numbers on them showing how fast you can safely go. If you're going too fast when you reach that point, you risk Bad Things Happening (TM). Expanding this somewhat, you could jam on the brakes and slow down more, but you're causing some damage to your vehicle - the usual wear-out type things in racing games: brakes, tires, possibly the engine could get burned out.
A variant of this could be bumper cars (where the motor is the metal cage thing that all the cars are hooked to). In this version, you not only have speed influence, but also turning. This would probably be best on a hex grid. That sounds kindof fun, actually.