The Great Totem (Native American hunting and war)

The Native Americans were very territorial. I think there needs to be some sort of area control mechanism. This would be where combat could get more strategic. I say each shelter (Wooden, clay cave?) have something they store. Wooden would house your unused meeples, clay your weapons/tools, and cave your resources. Managing what goes where and deciding what to protect would be super cool. I think for each system - resources, meeples, and weapons/tools - there needs to be a unique quality to them. Meeples = action bonuses, resources = building and trading, weapons/tools = combat and addition actions. This way when people attempt to mess with your shelters, they will have to decide "what is most useful to them and what is least helpful to me that I can destroy/attack". This would create a wonderful tension.

Not sure your direction though, but this is where I would go :) Also, if you plan to have 20 different tribes, this game will have to have some complexity.

P.S. I don't think 2 hour family games exist. But, who knows, you might open up a new market :D

Just from seeing your ideas here, this is not a family game. The way this is going the mechanics will most likely resemble a Euro game for casual and intermediate players. For this to be a "family game" the amount of resources and the intricate relationships between the tribes and the special abilities and the time you have to invest into the game and the theme mind you, must be streamlined extensively. It is very important to gauge your audience before going too deep into the design process, because of right now, you are heading away from family friendly zone. Family means adults AND children. It must cater to all of them. Managing 6 - 7 resources will be almost impossible for 7 - 10 year old to enjoy while also being attentive to other things.

So before we go any further: what is your target audience SPECIFICALLY?

For elegance sake, I would say one action, maybe two, per turn. This causes healthy tension similar to Chess. Scavenge, Build, Harmonize, Retaliate, Worship.

Scavenge: Move and gather resources

Build: Use cards in hand and resources to build tools, weapons and structures.

Harmonize: Draw cards, gain additional meeples, trade etc. (upkeep type action)

Retaliate: If someone intrudes on your territory, offers a carved image, over populating an area, or storing too many resources, you can attack, raid, or intimidate (RPS???).

Worship: Offer up a carved image to gain victory points, gain special totems (on each terrain tile there might be a totem symbol, if you hold the most in that type you gain bonuses there??).

Just some thoughts on turn structure. It creates this "should I harmonize to get cards? But he is really pressuring me in the west, maybe I should retaliate." type decision which is super fun.

For me, integrating mechanics to a theme is very stimulating. When you find a mechanic that represents the principles and themes you are trying to portray it makes the game that much easier to fall in love with.

Take my current design for example: The Final Reformation. It takes place in the near future during the end-times and you are task with ministering to the populations through the power of Christ's name by providing resources, wisdom, relationships, and protection. The main mechanic that drives this is....... matching. I have tactics in my hand that have certain strengths in some of the above areas and I must attempt to minister effectively by matching them with the populations of the world. Feel free to check out my journal page for inspiration.

Anyway, find the core values and themes (Harmony vs. Chaos, Unity vs. Selfishness) and build off of those. It would be neat to play off of unity vs. selfishness. Even though the natives were very connected to nature and the land, some took this too far as to take all they could. That is not just a white man's struggle; all are innately selfish. Play around with it. I know that when players are connected to more than just good mechanics, it causes them to fall in love with your game.

Yeah that's cool, you can do a lot with that. Even your cards can mess with this too.

What are you planning for the cards and deck creation? Are you deck building? Tribe specific deck? A combo of the two? Pre-game deck customization? etc. I was thinking that there could be decks for hunting, attacking, raiding, trading, moving, building etc. that you could invest in (deck building mechanic) and start to build your deck. Not sure how that would work though. This would be random. Speaking of your "tribes learning technologies from other tribes" you could have a cool mechanic where cards from the different decks would be apart of one of four spirit guides (Judgment, Peace, Prosperity, and Wisdom). Every card will have a symbol for one of these spirit guides. What will happen is when you execute an action you will draw a card from that action deck and place an influence token next to the deck on the spirit guide track that is shown on the card (everywhere there is a deck there will be a subsequent spirit guide track). This way people won't know what card you have, but they can change their strategy or prepare based on what type of card it is. If another tribe comes along and draws a card from there, they will do the same. BUT if they draw a card with a spirit guide influence already there, they get a bonus (draw +1 card, plus one technology, +1 resource etc.)

This could drive your game. Maybe. You also mentioned about "forcing" players to interact. If you invest too much into one area, you could be helping other players. This "encourages" (the word "forces" implies manipulation and nobody likes this lol) them to try other actions. Their technology track will also sway them to different actions etc.

Depending on what you do, if you incorporate something like this to drive your game, you're going to have yourself really strong synergy between your different systems/mechanics. What do you think?

I honestly don't think its necessary. Even for hunting.

For example: you are on a woodland terrain tile, you decide to use the hunt action. You draw from the hunt deck and draw a deer. On the card there could be three choices, each requiring a certain amount of chaos or unity to perform. You could draw a beer even, but the requirements might be extremely high so in order to subdue it, you'd have to increase/decrease in areas. This way its not "I randomly killed a bear... woohoo." but instead "I actually killed this thing because of my actions.... awesome!!!" You earn the kill and that is exciting.

I think this could be solved by every card having a some sort of value/symbol system. No idea how, but I love cards that can be used 1 - 3 different ways. One of the reasons I really dislike Magic: The Gathering.
Maybe have every card valued at one, two, or three. When you battle you secretly place a card and choose a battle stance (Charge, Defend, Flank). If you win the RPS (Flank beats Defend; Defend beats Charge; Charge beats Flank) you can get a +1 or -1 to your value. Depending what stance and whether you were above or bellow your opponent determines what happens.

I totally understand. Instead of "spirit guides" you could call them "principles". It is a little inconsistent because creating "totems" seems to elude to spiritual identities as well. I'm assuming they are offering these things as tribute to "nature" or the "higher gods"? If you want to avoid "spiritual" themes, amending the victory condition is be a good idea. It could be creating their ancestral crest or creating a symbol for their next chief, something of that sort.

It will just be something to keep track of what has been drawn there.

Example

(Hunt Deck)
[Judgment => (place a cube here if you draw a Judgement card) ]
[Peace => (place a cube here if you draw a Peace card) ]
[Wisdom => (place a cube here if you draw a Wisdom card) ]
[Prosperity => (place a cube here if you draw a Prosperity card) ]

If you draw from the deck and you draw a card type that has already been drawn you get a bonus.

There's quite a lot going on in this game (but you already knew I was going to say that, right?). I agree with ditching the dice idea; it gives you less components and more focus on the core mechanics.

Most deck building games have the available cards in the center face up, allowing you to purchase whatever you want at the end of the turn. Of course you can change that mechanic by having a limited selection to buy each turn, or whatnot. Personally I'm not a fan of "buy whatever you want" because it can slow the game down as players pore over every card to figure out the best combo. So for the sake of speed of play, I'd try to limit the selection somehow.

After reading through this thread, I've been thinking about options to consolidate your core mechanics further.

For example, the resources you have discussed include:
- Workers
- Materials (wood, stone, fur, etc)
- Chaos/Harmony/Coup tracks
- Cards in hand
- Animals (bear, owl, etc)
- Totem segments
- Area control

That's a lot of elements to fit into a single game. Could some of these elements be combined, or could one set of components cover multiple elements? The cards, as already mentioned, can be multi-purpose.

The victory condition is the key driver of behavior in the game, so let's start there.

Let's say the victory condition is to complete a totem, which mechanically involves playing a series of 5 specific animal cards in sequence.

Further, let's say that these animal cards must be played from your hand, and once played on the totem they are now "out of the game". If the animal cards can be played for some other (beneficial) purpose, then this creates the tension between playing the card to get stronger vs playing the card to make progress towards victory. Progress towards victory weakens your deck by removing good cards from it. This is (in my opinion) a desirable outcome because it adds tension.

The next step would be to figure out how to get animal cards into your deck, and what else they can be used for once you have them. You've written extensively about hunting, so let's go with that. When you successfully hunt an animal, you add that animal to your deck.

So how do you hunt an animal? You've written about the chaos/harmony/coup tracks, so what if these were also expressed through cards in your deck rather than being a separate thing? The Bear might require "3 Chaos", so you have to discard cards worth 3 Chaos from your hand to successfully hunt the bear.

So how do you get Chaos/Harmony/Coup cards into your deck? I'm not sure, but it should probably involve one or more of the other elements you want (worker placement, raiding, building, etc) rather than being another new element. Or perhaps each card can be played either as an action or as its element (Chaos/Harmony/Coup).

And what else can the animals be used for besides building the totem? Again I'm not sure, but it should involve the other existing elements. Perhaps it's based on the animal, such as Bear gives +1 War, Snake gives +1 Raid, etc. Perhaps you can play animal cards during your opponent's turn to oppose their actions or make things more difficult for them. Perhaps you can play (discard) animals in order to buy other powerful cards (e.g. discard Snake to buy Poison Arrows).

Combined with my earlier expressed preference for limiting the number of "buy" options in deck building games, let's say the basic turn sequence is as follows:
- Play cards from your hand to take actions (played cards go into your discards)
- Flip 4 cards in any combination from the decks in the center
- Discard from your hand to pay the purchase cost for as many of these as you want
- Add the bought cards to your discard pile
- Discard any remaining cards in your hand
- Draw your hand up to full (reshuffle your discards into your deck if your deck is empty)

This gives you some choice over your fate (you could flip lots of Build cards if that is what you want to focus on), but also some randomness and minimises analysis paralysis. It also creates a choice between playing cards as counters during your opponents' turns (this is why the draw phase is at the end of your turn, not the start), vs using them to take actions, vs saving them to buy better cards at the end of the turn.

I'm not sure how the terrain types / worker placement / area control fits into the game I've described above, and perhaps they don't fit at all. If I was going to include those elements, I would need to figure out how they contribute to the victory condition. Maybe having Workers in certain terrains is one of pre-requisites for buying certain cards. Or maybe the placement of workers determines which decks I flip cards from at the end of the turn. But I'd be cautious about whether this is just adding complexity without actually improving the game.

All of the above is not to say that your game should necessarily be that way, or that it would even be a good game as I expressed it, I'm just giving an example of the thought process to start from the victory condition through to selecting the other elements you want in the game.

Every element of the game should be to achieve the victory condition (in this case, play animals on the totem), make progress towards the victory condition (in this case, get animals into your deck, build, trade), or prevent/delay your opponents' progress (war, raiding). Don't try to force elements in that don't fit; use it as an opportunity to cull the elements you don't need.

If you change the victory condition, then all of the elements need to be re-evaluated. For example, if the victory condition was "have a majority of workers on 5 hexes", then the focus of the game changes to getting more workers, placing workers on the board, and (re)moving opponents' workers. Workers become the key resource, and animals become a minor element (or maybe they don't exist at all). It's an entirely different game. That's how the victory condition defines the rest of your game.

All the best,
kos