Hey all.
So, while Pompeii sits on the sidelines until I can attend the NYC play-test in early January (or until you all have some more pre-testing comments!), my mind of course wanders.
Last night I had a very vivid dream about a card-laying game about the International Space Station. It kind of played like Infernal Contraption, except everyone was working on a single machine, which of course is the ISS. Players were competing for prestige, and got it by adding components like Living Modules, Science Labs, Solar Panels, Power Generators, etc. The players in my dream seemed to enjoy it, so I wonder if it could work in the real world, too. :)
I'm interested to hear you guys' reaction to this. Could any of this work? How could I build tension when players are working together to create something? I could just make it a co-op, but it always fascinated me how much the ISS, and space exploration in general, sometimes seems like a governmental vanity project dressed up in vague terms like "advancement of science" and "international cooperation." I'd really like players to feel like they're competing to make the biggest contribution to the ISS.
Some more details:
Higher-level items would require prerequisites; you can't build a science lab until you've got space for the astronauts to live, and both require a certain level of available power. Also, low-level components can be swapped out, or augmented by, higher level ones, once the prereqs are met. There might also be a monetary cost, taken from some sort of budget, but I'm not sure how to control the money flow (dice? a fixed amount each turn? your prestige already collected?), or if it's even necessary with the prerequisites idea.
Other ideas:
- each module comes in a variety of colors, indicating its country of origin; some percentage of the prestige goes towards the color, and some directly towards the player who built it. Each player is also secretly (or not) one of these colors; thus any component you build also helps your opponents directly, besides making it easier for them to construct their own addition to the ISS. Players are thus both governments (colors), and companies (tiles laid). This creates a fun meta-game of trying to figure out which color each other player is, so as not to help them too much by playing their tiles.
- negative cards that destroy, or threaten to destroy, various components unless players are able to prevent them (somehow; see below?)
- positive cards for one-shot use of various components, like a science experiment that awards more prestige points depending on the quality of the lab facilities on the ISS, or a particularly amazing photograph based on the longest length of the structure, or a "green initiative" that awards points for using solar panels more than battery generators (that's kind of lame)...
- Perhaps these good cards are singular mission cards, dealt out at the beginning of the game and scored at the end, or perhaps there's a separate draw deck for them, so a player could choose to pursue a building-focused approach or a mission-based approach, or perhaps there's only one deck containing both components and missions, and you must adjust your strategy based on what you draw (this is probably my favorite option, and also probably easiest to make rules for and, eventually, produce).
If I really wanted to go crazy, I'd make a game like this a subset of some sort of resource-gathering game, and set in the future. Players whip around the solar system, trying to collect the necessary resources from planets and moons to pay for improvements to their, or the group's, space station. Possibly this uses some sort of "slingshot" mechanic (which I want to explore in a game somehow, but that may be for another game).
So, anyway, thoughts? Brainstorms? Or is this just Carcasspace?
Re: different colored components
Nation of origin is much cleaner, I like that. Like the Canada Arm on the US-made-and-launched space shuttle, giving prestige to both Canada and the US whenever it's used. The only reason to make it about companies vs. governments would be if the players' countries were kept secret, and the main reason for that, besides making "guess the player's country" a possibly-fun meta-game, would be to keep people from Analysis Paralysis: "If I play the green Living Quarters, I help Steve; if I play the blue Lab, I help John... John's winning but I really want better Lab facilities..." On the other hand, does making the countries secret, besides being a bit anti-thematic (really? you didn't know that Rolls-Royce power inverter was built in Britain?), add to the AP problem? Would it be less, or more, paralyzing if you knew exactly who was winning at any given moment?
Missions
I had originally thought that missions would be one-off events, specific events, especially if shuffled into a combined component/mission deck, but I like the idea of keeping a few in reserve that are scored at the end of the game, and making those award big points. This also has the benefit that holding those powerful missions decreases your effective hand size, like the "dent" cards in Snow Dogs, and thus limiting your options. I think that the only fair way to do "whoever built the most [x]" general missions would have to be to hand them out at the beginning, and that's less interesting to me.
And definitely players would have a hand. I hate the draw one / play one Carc with no hand, it makes it entirely too random.