So, Ive been thinking what are the possiblities of creating a game out of a calendar. This would be a standard "flip book" type, where the bottom page would be your regular dates and stuff, while the top half would be a game board. The pieces would be standard stuff from around the house (poker chips, dice, playing cards).
My first idea was 12 simple games, each month being a different game. But now I'm thinking of doing something a bit further, using the whole calendar, and things trigger you moving from month to month somehow (think of the LotR board game with it's different boards) or maybe something like the flip books in Cities and Knight expansion for Settlers (assuming some perforations in the pages so in 'game-mode' different parts of different months can be visible). I'm also thinking that maybe every player has his own calendar, ala Puerto Rico or Princes of Florence.
So, the challenge is to brainstorm a game idea around these mechanics:
The requirements of a calendar with some secondary operations possible (die cutting of holes, perforations, etc) and Simple household components.
GO!
An interesting idea, but I'm not sure how you're planning to execute it.
At first I thought you meant a calendar where there was a game printed on it every month. That would be interesting, except, who would want to constantly take down their calendar to play the game printed on it?
Although a calendar with rules variants to an existing game could be a nice little suppliment. "Oh we're playing by December rules" Or "Sunday rules", or whatnot.
That's more of a side note to a game, than a game in it's own right.
A game with a calendar as a component would require some pretty hard thinking to make fun and interesting. I mean, twelve months is kind of a lot to have players keep track of. And even if it wasn't, are player writing on their calendars? Or are they placing counters on the dates? And if so, then how do they keep track of the counters in diffferent months, or how do you reuse the calendar after the game?
A game that lasts for 2-3 months though might work. That way there'd be only 2-3 "month phases" to the game which brings down the focus to a more manageable level with only 2-3 "pages" to the calendar. Or even a psudo calendar that represents seasons as opposed to actual months.
The summer season calendar could have a board for summer rules, while winter would be winter rules. The game changes as virtual time passes, and you can have a secondary game board that changes with it.
I'm interested to see where this goes.