Looking for mechanics AND theme

Financial crisis? ;-)

Néstor

I was just thinking about something akin to a financial meltdown game today, and precisely in the context of a game in which you create a system, and your only goal is to be standing when that system gets done tearing itself apart. Does anyone else know of any games right off hand that start with the premise "You can't win, only die later than the other guys"? I'm awake long after I should've been asleep, so I'm drawing a blank at the moment...

And who is going to want to play yet another boring old financial game? Oh, come on, now. You know it. I know it. Even they know it. You do want people to play your game, don't you?

What you might want to consider is a game more along the lines of...

C*A*T*A*C*L*Y*S*M

Yeah, that's right - Cataclysm! The idea comes from pre-Conan times, before the Hyborian Age. Here's a quote from Robert E. Howard:

"Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new continent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves, or sinking, formed great inland lakes and seas. Volcanoes broke forth and terrific earthquakes shook down the shining cities of the empires. Whole nations were blotted out."

You don't have to set the game on the Thurian Continent, though. The Cataclysm, itself, doesn't even necessarily have to occur during the game. It should certainly be a possibility, though. The setting could just as easily be modern day.

The terrain can physically change, or you can simply utilize effects without having changeable physical terrain. The Cataclysm could be triggered different ways, such as drawing a certain card, or a certain roll on a player's dice, or via a timer mechanism.

By the Cataclysm not being a certainty, players would need to still focus upon building and growing and living their everyday lives in the game setting. That may be empire building or picking bananas, just pretty much whatever suits your fancy. But, once and if the Cataclysm does strike, the game changes dramatically. You would want, I think, a lot of uncertainty to loom large over the game and players, at that particular point. The pace of the game might become more frantic, and turns between players grows shorter in duration. More than one deck of cards might help, a cataclysm deck and a non-cataclysm deck, at the very least. Or, the same deck, and individual cataclysm events scattered amongst one deck with other non-cataclysm event cards. Or, when the cataclysm strikes, players continue to draw from the non-cataclysm deck each turn, but they also then start drawing one card from the cataclysm deck, too. It all just depends upon what you have in mind.

If a player can play a cataclysm card that they draw against another player of their choice, then players might take delight in play, once the cataclysm strikes. It might be fun to wreak havoc on other players' carefully crafted empires/villages.

This may not be exactly what you had in mind, but perhaps it will be of some help, just the same.

In The Year Of The Dragon has definite elements of this, as does a Ragnarok-themed game I once played.

There was an interesting article on BoardGameNews by Tom Rosen about games that tear things down as they go on, which he called "survival games." He has some great examples, I recommend checking it out.

This sounds like you've hit on an idea for a global warming game maybe?

Although still a Euro building game at heart, Gloria Mundi has players buying cards that are used to generate "steps away from Rome" as the barbarian hordes march from northern Italy toward Rome. Each turn, a player must either offer tribute (money) to the horde or they destroy one of your cards in play. Eventually someone won't pay tribute and when that happens, ALL the accumulated "tearing down" spaces on the track activate; no matter what, the same number of "destructions" happens each game, it's just delaying the turn-by-turn losses into periodic bigger losses.

I have some game ideas for a semi-coop survival game, originally based on the movie Aliens, toward the end when they are trying to survive until the drop ship can pick them up. My idea was that individuals were so weak compared to the alien horde that they had to stick together to help fight them off, but at a certain point, someone can make a break for the ship to try escaping. The tension would be deciding at what point are you able to break from the group and not die to beat the others to the ship. Not sure if that's the sort of thing you were thinking of. I've also thought a zombie survival version of this where players barricade themselves into a house and eventually must retreat room by room... at what point does a player barricade himself into one of the last rooms, leaving everyone else to die.

I think one potentially interesting way to go is mentioned here by Grubby.

Another potential direction that came to my mind: the game has different stages, with the following being a possibility.
1. Opulence [players build and thrive]
2. Disaster/Cataclysm [major change, there is destruction and deterioration of systems]
3. Survival [trying to outlive the chaos].

You could even have different strategies on Phase 1: players could go for building in a way that helps living through Phase 2. But this approach leads to diminished production. Or they can go for building a Phase 1 golden age, where they receive major production/riches/etc, but their society falls apart quickly in Phase 2. The trick would make the advantages of each be different.

This theme is really cool. I had some ideas for chaos or cataclysm that occured in a "year of Chaos" in a five year cycle. THe first four years of game play, game years, players played the game and had the option to aquire things that would protect there home or castles or whatever from disasters. So you have your little house, then empty squars next to it, where tiles would be placed that offer protection from certain disasters. On the fifth year, year of chaos, disaster cards are drawn, players who are unprepared suffer the consiquences, and visa versa.

For example, I as a player who is really considering getting prepared for disasters, while my oponents are dinking around in other actions in the game, decide to purchase a food starage for a potential food shortage. I buy the food storage, and a food token with a corn cob or something on it is placed on the little grid next to my house. I have that base covered. Later, I decide to build an underground (UG) next to my house, that I can live in to be protected from a major disaster. I place a UG tile on my grid. "The Year of Charos" comes, and disaster cards are drawn. The first just happens to be "food contamination"-I'm covered. A little later another disaster card is drawn: The worst fire in recorded history, the sky is on fire the earth is scorched. Or it could be floods, or armies lay siege on your village and house. If you have that UG tile next to your house, your covered again.

An old fantasy dungeon crawl where you head into the dungeon in seach of treasure which is found in the middle of the area under a sleeping dragon.

Doom and destruction could be and are almost at every turn. If you do make it into the middle the more gold is taken the better chance the dragon wakes up.

So players could prepare with various types of equipment to enter the dungeon then use them to overcome obsticles on the way. As their equipment gets used up it becomes harder and harder to progress and at dusk if they aren't out, the dragon wakes up for its nightly prowl and would surely smell and easily chase down any intruders within its lair.

You could also add 'impending doom' by stacking a deck/chit bag. At the beginning of the game you have a 1-20 chance of pulling a tragedy. On your turn you must take one which gets replaced with a tragedy card. So eventually all the good stuff will get used up and it will just be tragedy after tragedy befalling the players. Whoever pulled the most beneficial cards would have the best chance of surviving.