Hello there! I'm new to BGDF, and very new to game design, but I've been playing games for a while and always thought it would be cool to design one. I never put in the time before, because I never had an idea to go off of.
Well, the other day, I had a sudden brain surge! My idea is for a sort of light card game based around Evel Knievel-esque dardevils. The point of the game is to put on the best performance of the daredevils (players) by scoring the most points. The player who scores the highest in a given Show(round) wins the round, and whoever wins the most Shows is the victor!
So, to do this, players will draw a hand of cards (I'm not sure how many yet, see below) from a common deck. These cards will feature stunts the daredevils will be performing (i.e. backflipping off a jump, jumping a bus). Each card would have an associated point worth, based on it's difficulty to complete (I'll get to what I mean by this in a minute). Players will be able to play multiple cards at once to create more exciting stunts for more points, by, say instead of doing a backflip, they do a backflip... over a jumbo jet... while blindfolded!
So, as I mentioned above, there is a difficulty involved with pulling off these stunts, but what that difficulty is, I need help deciding. One of my main ideas was to have a die roll associated with each trick, with the die roll needed to pass increasing based on the number of points. Adding more cards to the stunt would increase the die roll the player needs to pass. If the player doesn't pass the roll, they crashed and messed up their stunt, so they don't score. This would then create a "push your luck" element, where players have to decide how grandiose to go with their stunts, trying to make it big without falling on their face. I had 2 different ways i thought of implementing this:
1) Use normal dice, and have a die number corresponding to each card scaling with the points it's worth, and then a second die value on each card for what they add to that die roll if they are used as a supplementary card in the stunt.
2) Use custom dice with "crash" and "success" symbols on them, but have several, color-coded versions that scale in difficulty (similar to what Zombie Dice has). Then instead of a number value, high-point trick cards use a die with less "success" symbols on it, and cards used to supplement tricks would simply add their die to the trick, with a certain number of the dice having to be a success for the trick to be pulled off.
Another variable I thought of was what I call the "Audience Cards". The audience deck would be a second deck, representing the audience's mood, and what they want to see. One of these cards would be flipped over every round, and provide some alteration to points scoring. For example, maybe the audience really wants to see front flips one round, so front flip-based stunts are worth twice as much.
Some other issues I know need addressing that I haven't worked out yet are:
1) hand size (which will be decided in playtesting, I'm sure)
2) whether players redraw up to full hands or are limited to a number of redraws after each round
3) should players play simultaneously choose their stunts or take turns with a rotating "first" player
As you can see, I have a lot of kinks to work out in this. I am still in the early planning stages, and I just want to get a rough set of the rules out before I do some rough mock-up and start my playtesting. So please, if you have any suggestions on the things I mentioned, any other mechanics or ideas I could utilize in the game, or any other type of help or input (good or bad) please speak up!
Thanks SO much!
- Josh Feldman
Thanks for the input! Yeah, I have been leaning towards the player rotation myself, the more I think about it. How about the dice mechanic? I have been leaning towards the custom dice version, as it would be easier to teach/explain, plus I love custom dice :)