resource mechanics

I agree, before I can recommend any particular method of resource gathering, I'd want to know what the theme of the game is. What resources are being gathered?

As for different methods, many examples have been mentioned. The bottom line though is what type of resource gathering do you need?

* Is there a random factor, like digging for ore in a mine, where sometimes you find the resource, sometimes you just get rocks?
* Are you growing vegetables, where you know what resource and how many you'll get based on what seeds you planted, and the quality you'll get based on the work put into it?
(That's not a bad idea - a time delay, you plant seeds now in order to get the resource later - so you have to plan ahead for what you'll need!)
* Do you want a static income, where all players get the same resources at certain time intervals and it's up to them to use the resources as efficiently as possible?
* Should the amount of resource gathered depend on the effort spent gathering it, like in Starcraft or Warcraft where you get more resources faster if you assign more units to gathering them?

- Seth

I find that theme usually dictates the mechanics somewhat (or vice versa).

There's also the possibility of bidding for resources.
There's also games that have variable resources depending on events, etc.
Trading is always fun and increases interaction

Absolutely, aqcuiring resources is half the game. Using them to fulfill your victory condition is the other half.

Then some possible resource generators are:
* Marketing/Advertising (you spend money to win passengers)
* Bidding (players try to have the lowest prices on their seats, and a fixed number of passenges goes to the lowest 'bidder' and so on up the chain)
* Time-Based Positional (players fight for a limited number of take-off times... red eyes have fewer passengers for example)
* Event based (flip a card at the start of the round... Holidays boost passengers available, disasters decrease them)
* Comfort based (flyers might like you best because you have the most leg room, but then you can fit fewer passengers on the plane... your food might be best, but your super-kitchen takes up space that could be used for a few more rows of seats)

Wow, that's pretty random and favours lucky rollers over good game players. If there's one thing that I personally don't like, it's games that impose a randomness on something that should be equitable between players. I'm a firm believer (in board games anyway) that luck = planning + opportunity.

Also, re: resources, everything you buy that can be used towards attaining the end goal is then a resource. Such as human resources, property, etc. It may all stem from money, but there may be more than money at the crux of the game.

Anyway, to the airline game:

If money is the end game determinant (i.e. whoever has the most money is the winner), it has to be somehow "created" from the game mechanic. i.e. that every action that a player takes should, in theory and in the passing of time, result in more money coming back to the player (e.g. an action taken this turn may pay dividends in 2 turns, for example). Some complexity arises when the end game determinant is also spent during the course of the game, but as long as the player has ways to recoup this, that's fine.

From the model of competing airlines, you're trying to generate revenue for your company by attracting as many customers to your airline as opposed to others.

One mechanic is limiting the size of the pool of prospective passengers by time of year. If you look at flight scheduling, you'd probably find that there are seasonal highs and lows. So, Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, being huge holidays for flying in North America.

The difference in flyers could be in class (first, business, economy) or length of flights (longer = better). Also, different airlines may not all fly to the same destinations, so buying rights to different routes may be crucial in getting some of the higher fares. And buying more planes, hiring staff, etc. would be important too (although you can avoid micromanagement of staff unless that's the goal of your game).

You can't fly everywhere in the world, and you can't fly more passengers than you can fit in your planes.

In a game like this, there may not be any such thing as resource collection in the purest sense of the word as you're not collecting wood and metal to build the signs and planes. You're trying to spend moeny wisely to appeal to as many customers as possible.

So dealing out a set amount to each player at the beginning of the game and collecting money for each passenger you attract to be spent on even more upgrades to your airline seems to be the simplest way of doing it. To further simplify (and get rid of crummy paper money), you could have points given out at the start (say 10 or 15) and then each upgrade costs a certain number of points and each passenger brings in a certain number of points, all charted on an around-the-board score track...highest wins at the end.

Also at the beginning, each player could be given a plane or three with "beginner level" routes - each plane they have could have a different amount of space for first class / business / economy passengers. As the game progresses, they could buy more planes for different routes / more space / better staff / faster / nicer / etc.

For each active route, you may want to have the active player roll a die and then (from a bag or something) bring out that number of passengers for that turn who want to fly to that place. I envision the board having little quays that you line meeples up on ;D with different colours to represent the class of seat they want.

The actual contesting for passengers should be determined by player's actions and spending for better planes, more ads, etc.

If they're the only airline flying a certain route, they will most likely get all the passengers for that route. You'd need to make it competitive in that the winner ain't always the winner - that the first person to get enough money to buy another route doesn't always runaway with the game.

Perhaps you need to manage how much advertisement, etc. you're doing PER ROUTE (which makes sense IRL).

anyway, that's something to take you a bit away from a perhaps unncessesary mechanical worry and get into the game itself.

Depends, totally, however, on what you're trying to manage.

^^^ Ah, now that definitely changes things!

If each player were to change the allotment of the SAME amounts/dice to his own goals, that would allow for the a desirable amount of randomness from round to round AND control within a round such that no one player has a huge advantage over the other for rolling well.

Everyone is dealing with the same 3 dice.

Nice fix.

Not if you have a choice over which die you use for which effect. Unless all the dice show the same number, the dilemma will be in allocating them correctly - especially if the higher number actions are "better" :-)

Another nice twist to the "3 dice mechanic" (as it will now be referred to) would be getting blank dice and making a non-normal weighting (so, say a 3 3 4 4 5 5 or something on each die) in order to maintain some semblance of game balance.

If all 1s or all 6s were rolled, that may break the game somewhat and cause analysis paralysis while each player tries to weigh all the pros and cons of the 3 dice.

If you can control the dice somewhat, yet inject an ounce or two of randomness, you might make for a better game. Enough difference to make people have to make some hard (but not brain busting) decisions and enough normality (the avg number to make the game playable comes up more often than not on a per die basis) to make the game fun to play still.

While being able to deem which die with normal 1-6 distribution is a goodly amount of control over a situation, a fix could elevate the mechanic to something more subtle yet eminently more playable on the surface. A 1-6 distribution may just make you have to plan that much harder. It just seems that it could be hurky-jerky at times, while the 334455 distribution (for example) would make for a "smoother ride", so to speak.

I've been looking at building a game around this mechanic, and one possible fix for the normality and action-availability problem is to make it the 6-dice mechanic. This doesn't work in all games, but it happens to work nicely in something I've been considering, and it means that most rounds 4-5 actions will be available.

(mine is split into resources A,B,C,D, VPs, and an Action - I like the idea of a die being for VPs but it's a bit hard to balance)

Another possible (I haven't really thought much on this one) change is this: at the beginning of your turn you have the option to reroll one die. At the end of your turn you have the option to reroll one die.

- Seth

I would think that the number chosen for action isn't necessarily a specific action on a table, but the number of actions you can take in the round.

A la Supremacy, where you can do 5 of the 7 actions in the turn (IIRC), etc.

No need to be too literal. It makes sense that, if you're spending more of your time (pips on the dice) to generate resources or VPs, you're naturally spending less time on other things (explicit actions).

But if your theme supports it, you can certainly be more literal. The action dice system in War of the Ring requires the Shadow player to spend some number of his dice on the Hunt for the Ring rather than on war. It may seem artificial to force a player's choices in this way, but it mirrors the intent of Sauron who was less interested in winning the war than in getting his bloody ring back!!! (*snort* *snort* *pant* *pant* okay deep breath, focus, that's it, yes, better pay some attention to the war now...) :-)