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Assassination game

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Kalmari Krapula
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Joined: 11/19/2010

Hello,
today I'm searching some games which are all about or use assassination in them and what kind of mechanic they use. If you know any pleasa tell me. I think Ninjato is something like this, but I haven't tried it.

My goal is to make a game about assassination, played by cards, being little bit abstract problem-solving-game. The scenery will be at medieval Japan, some Italian city during Renaissance or some modern day big city. What kind of mechanics would you use?

larienna
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Joined: 07/28/2008
I have worked on a ninja game

I have worked on a ninja game once and one of the problem is how do you control the targets. If a player control the targets, then your character need to move secretly.

The solution I found at that time is to have an higher level or more adbstract game that does not deal with the details of the assasination too much.

red hare
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Joined: 11/09/2009
i remember a ninja game

check out this earlier post about a ninja/ assassin game similar to what you're talking about. The post was about some of the problems with creating 3D terrain. You might find some of the comments helpful

http://www.bgdf.com/node/3558

good luck!
red hare

Kalmari Krapula
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Joined: 11/19/2010
Idea

Thank you for the related topic, it was interesting altough it wasn't excatly what I'm thinking of. My game would be more like a puzzle-game, with some elimination mechanics and money/victory points, played with cards.

Last night, just before falling asleep I came up with this idea of mysterious market place, where information is sold and bought from different kind of mysterious characters. Because in the working phase the scenery of the game is in Renaissance Venice (ooh, how original! I know.) and the working title is now "Murder in Venice" (yes, I'm so imaginative) some of these characters have kind of form already:
* A harlequin, whose information is partly true, partly false (two cards, another one is real information and another is false)
* Silver merchant, who is taking payments only in silver coins (which could be semi-worthless piece of money, but also semi-rare, so you might have to buy it for more expensive price from somewhere or someone)
* A Loanshark, whose information is getting more and more expensive every turn/every time someone buys it
* A doctor, - nothing yet -
* Some others..

Also I came up with an idea of seven mysterious men, who are identical figures in black robes with these Venetian masks in different colours. Every player has a target, which is one of those mysterious men, but player won't know which one. So he have to buy information from the marketplace and sell his own information, to find out his target and murder him before others murder their targets.

Also I'm thinking of merging Clue's envelope into these mysterious men. Every envelope would represent one of the men and contain some info about him. Then every turn some of the info would be placed to market to be sold.

How about this?

red hare
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Joined: 11/09/2009
different

Hi Kalmari, that would be remarkably different. I think if the game mechanic is solving a puzzle and some how obtaining clues, I think you have something different and interesting.

I really like the idea of buying/ selling clues... very cool!

drktron
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Joined: 07/18/2010
Kalmari Krapula wrote:Last

Kalmari Krapula wrote:

Last night, just before falling asleep I came up with this idea of mysterious market place, where information is sold and bought from different kind of mysterious characters. Because in the working phase the scenery of the game is in Renaissance Venice (ooh, how original! I know.) and the working title is now "Murder in Venice" (yes, I'm so imaginative) some of these characters have kind of form already:
* A harlequin, whose information is partly true, partly false (two cards, another one is real information and another is false)
* Silver merchant, who is taking payments only in silver coins (which could be semi-worthless piece of money, but also semi-rare, so you might have to buy it for more expensive price from somewhere or someone)
* A Loanshark, whose information is getting more and more expensive every turn/every time someone buys it
* A doctor, - nothing yet -
* Some others..

Also I came up with an idea of seven mysterious men, who are identical figures in black robes with these Venetian masks in different colours. Every player has a target, which is one of those mysterious men, but player won't know which one. So he have to buy information from the marketplace and sell his own information, to find out his target and murder him before others murder their targets.

Also I'm thinking of merging Clue's envelope into these mysterious men. Every envelope would represent one of the men and contain some info about him. Then every turn some of the info would be placed to market to be sold.

How about this?

I like this idea. If you're tired of the Renaissance Venice theme you could switch it to a seedy sci-fi alien underworld marketplace. Maybe the mysterious men are shape-shifters.
Just a thought. Good luck with your game.

reid_testers2
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Joined: 04/12/2011
Quick Question

I'm assuming the players would be the assassins. Are the other players ALSO the targets for assassination? Or are the assassination targets not the players but other characters in the game?

Kalmari Krapula
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Joined: 11/19/2010
long answer

Thank you all for your interest in this paricular game.

I'm figuring out the first version of the game and rules.

- In this version there are Nine Mysterious Men (later called NMM), marked with different colours.

- Game's core is in information, which is sold and bought from Marketplace or directly from another player. Information means a Info-card, which is some kind of clue and the picture of the person to whom it is related to. These to cards are packed in a envelope, to make information as secret.

- There are also three kind of money in the game, with different Victory Point (VP) values. Copper Coins (CC), valued 1 VP; Silver Coins (SC), valued 3 VP's and Gold Coins (GC) valued 7 VP's. Money cannot be switched in the bank during play, but player might decide what kind of coins he is paying or receiving as payment for information.

- At the Marketplace there are five Informants - Harlequin, Silver Merchant, Loanshark, Courtesan and Doctor - and everyone of them have different way to buy and sell information.

* Doctor have only four pieces of information and he won't buy any information - this means, after all four infos have been bought, doctor have no part in hte game.
* Courtesan is selling her information cheaply, but player who bought the information have to give one information to her for free. You can't sell info to her.
* Loanshark is buying and selling information. Every time you buy info from him, the price will increase, making next buying more expensive. If you sell your info to him, you will get slightly less money than his current buying-price is.
* Silver merchant is weird guy, because he is not so much after money than the loanshark is. The thing is he accepts only SC as payment for info and if player sell info to him, the payment is in CC or GC.
* Harlequin is craftiest one, because you can buy info from him cheaply, but you must add envelope one extra info-card, before taking a look what is inside.

- Players know identity of two NMM, themselves and their employers. Now the idea in the game is to find out which one of the last seven NMM hides the target. When player thinks he know the target he can perform a hit. This is when game ends.
If player killed right mark, he will receive a GC bonus and player with most VPs is winner. If player killed wrong marked he lost automatically, even though he might have the most VPs. Also if killed mark is controlled by one of the players or is someones employer, that player loses automatically.

matthulgan
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Joined: 10/07/2008
I also like the idea of buying clues

Also- I think Renaissance Venice fits the idea perfectly. I'm a sucker for masked lurking in a game (see Intrigo).

Badger
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Joined: 03/27/2011
Players as assassination targets?

You've got a very intriguing game concept going here! One point of play that occurs to me, a la "The Great Dalmuti": all players should be encouraged to play wearing masks, be it simple domino masks or elaborate carnival masks! :-D

I'm concerned, though. If players are potential assassination targets, when an assassination occurs, is the assassinated player out of the game? What if they were NOT the official assassination target? How do players protect *themselves* from assassination?

If you're going to identify the official target through a mechanic rather like that in "Clue", I'd urge you to not have other players be assassination targets. Also, if a player assassinates the WRONG target, maybe they can still keep playing, but any action they take afterward is more expensive, or runs a greater risk, because they're on the run from the law, or from the revenge of the family of the target assassinated, or something like that. Maybe a player who assassinated the wrong target has to miss their next two turns because they're hiding (giving other players a dstinct advantage).

Kalmari Krapula
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Joined: 11/19/2010
Masks and stuff.. :D

Yes, it would be great to have 5 people playing this game with carnival masks. :D There is no problem (at least in this first version of game) with players also being targets of assassination, because the game will end as soon as somebody commits FIRST and ONLY assassination.

After that players count their money/Victory Points, and the one with most cash wins.
So assassination only triggers the end of game. It won't define winner, even though it gives notable VP-bonus to successful hitman.

I'm not yet sure about the winning condition, because it will turn game into trading game, where you can deside when to finish the game if you have right information. I will test it, but also the condition that killer is winner,

And yes, I'm planning to involve the variation of Clue-mechanic in order to solve the target.

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