Does this game exist?

sounds somewhat like runewars?: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/59294/runewars
there are probably several other games in that genre (twilight imperium, galactic emperor... sort of) that have some heavy conceptual overlap too, but there's certainly a lot of wiggle room there.

I played Wizard's Quest (A-H 1979) for the first time a few days ago. It has players fighting each other AND orcs that spawn randomly and attack following hardcoded rules. There is also a dragon and a wizard moving about the map that has various effects on gameplay (and that can be attacked by players).

As the subject explains, I tried to make something like this work about 20 years ago. I really liked the idea of a random "player" wreaking havok on everyone else's plans. I called him "The Humungous" in reference to Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior.

Anyway, I couldn't make it work right. That's not to say you shouldn't try it, but the problem I ran into was that it turned out to be a pain to have The Humungous complete his moves, wheather or not he was going to attack, whom he was going to attack, etc. I hated him so much that during the first play test I just asked my friends if we could eliminate the Humungous altogether. They wouldn't let me. (I think it's party because they enjoyed how much it tortured me to make his moves. Counterproductive to say the least.) My mechanic relied WAY too much on random die rolls, though. How do you plan to have your NPC's (Non-Player-Character(s)) work? You really have to find a good way to prevent them from being too much like another player at the table. I tried to emulate all the other player's descisions and it was a nightmare. Perhaps there's a much better way to make this work, but to me it was a very clear example of something that seemed very cool on paper turning into something awful when it was implemented.

Regarding your game idea in general: Does it really matter if it's been done before? Are you planning to sell this game? While I understand your reluctance to create something that already exists, I enjoy the journey so much that I think it would be valuable to you to pursue it anyway. It could be that during your prototyping, rules and mechanics creation, etc. you might find that what you end up with is very different than how you originally imagined it to be.

Bottom Line: Do it anyway! :)

I think I've got the rules to my game floating around someplace. If you wanna look at them, I could scan 'em and send 'em to you so you can see what I tried. I called it "Age of War" waaaay before Max Games created their computer game franchise.

Good luck!

-CB-

Really?

The last time I looked at 'em I bored myself so much that I put 'em back in their box! I'll see if I can dig 'em up for you!
It seems like your plague idea might work, too. Very simple....he just moves one hex at a time in a random direction and takes a tile if nobody's there...that could work.

I wonder if he gets stronger for every tile he takes...or perhaps every two tiles he takes? This would make the other players gang up against him and they'd need to cooperate with each other. At least for the time being.... Is it possible for the players to eliminate the plague? (for lack of a better word). Perhaps it could be to certain player's advantage to help the plague along in certain situations? I can see how that would be very interesting indeed.
-CB-