In most games, Meeples do exactly what you ask them to do. In my current design, they have a mind of their own and can be quite chaotic.
I have a mechanism for worker production that involves an element of randomness to support the game theme of evil chaos. Players start with 1 worker, and then gain/lose workers during play. The number of Workers never goes higher than 11. Each worker gets either 2 moves, 1 move and 1 work, or 1 work action. It is still mostly based on skill, because negative random effects are balanced with opposite and equal positive effects. It’s the mechanic that I’m not sure about. Here are my thoughts on the approach:
1) Use a d20 during each move action, and a d10 during a work action. Upper and lower numbers determine extremes of effect from losing/gaining a worker to doing double effect/no effect, etc.
PRO: Player retains move/work strategy and risk management decisions, while having to compensate for workers who don’t always do what they’re told. I like this option best, but some folks seem to avoid any game with dice, especially d20’s.
2) Draw 2 cards from an Action deck for each worker, and use them in either order. This doesn’t seem to work very well because you might draw effects that don’t support your strategy at all, such as 2 moves when all you wanted was to stay put and work. Too random.
3) Draw enough cards all at once to cover 2 per worker, and consume your choice of any 2 actions per worker resolution. I think this option reduces the level of danger because you can assign any bad effects to the least useful worker, and the best effects to the one best positioned to benefit. This is higher skill and lower randomness, but I’m not sure it makes sense (it isn’t chaos if you can choose when and where the bad stuff happens.) Besides, with my theme, it is important that traveling from place to place is significantly dangerous.
4) Use 2 action decks to replace the dice; 1 deck for moving and 1 for working. Unfortunately, I already have 4 card decks that drive abilities, goals, and cooperation between players (Skill, Conspiracy, Mischief, and Luck decks), in addition to a stack of random location tiles that players use to modify the board. Adding 2 more decks of cards seems like going overboard on cards and tiles. (And yes, I have played Firefly, with its 14 decks of cards. ;-) It know it’s been done before.)
Basically, the dice seem to be the most effective solution, in my opinion. Does anyone have a better suggestion? Am I overly concerned about using dice? Is it really that bad to use d20s and d10s?
I want this to be sort of a gateway-level game, not hard-core. I don't want to scare folks away who grew up on Monopoly and don't (yet) know any better.
Your thoughts?
JohnMichaelThomas, I'm warming to your idea, as well as Soulfinger's discussion of dice.
With the max of 11 workers, you could end up with 22 die rolls, plus some bonus rerolls--every turn. I would like that just fine, but felt like it wasn't an optimum mechanic.
Limiting it to a single card (actually 1-11 cards) sounds like a better solution. Plus, as you said, I can throw in some unique actions. Basically I want the game to have a chaotic feel to it, but not wildly random. As a designer, I want the chaos to be roughly zero-sum, so that in the course of a game players will experience a reasonable share of both good and bad events, but retain a sense of control and forward movement.
Thanks!