I had an about making a game where players need to climb a tower with 100 floor. In order to make the clibing fast to make the game playable in a reasonable amount of time, I thought that a game system like snake and ladders could do the thing. But the problem is that there is no strategy in this game, so I was thinking of ways to make the game more strategic.
The board would be pretty simple, it's a retangular grid of square where each line represent a floor. On each floor, one of the square has a stair which allows you to reach the next floor. Floors wrap around with each other, so when you reach one side you respawn on the other side.
Now my strategic decision regarding movement would be that you could decide to move either left or right and then roll the dice. There would be obstacles and encounter on the way, this is why some path might be easier that others to folow.
In order to reduce dice rolls for skill checks during obstacles and encounter, I thought that when you move, you roll 2 dice of different colors which each match a stat. Some obstacle would require that one of your die + character stat bonus is higher than X to pass, else you must stop there. Character stats could also be expressed as cards player choses to play.
I also thought of adding various puzzle on the maps, where some switch trigger stuff like opening door and moving stuff. This could be an option if I want to make it a cooperative game.
What do you think?
One of the reason why I wanted people to choose a direction before rolling the dice is to prevent the situation where players calculate all the possible spaces they could land on and then move. That takes unnecessary time and it makes sure the player never fall on bad spaces unless all results are bad space.
So chosing a direction first, forces the player to evaluate the risks without having a clear idea of where he is going to land.