The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences - A co-operative Steampunk game

Hi all. Firstly, let me say its been a long time since I ventured onto these forums - nigh on 4 years and its been an eventful 4 years of rebuilding after a major earthquake and other fairly life changing stuff, but finally, finally I am back tinkering with board game design. Now, enough of that, you'll be asking "Cas - The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences? Steampunk? tell me more!"

Well, hopefully that's what you are saying.

Now this idea I've had germinating for around a year or so and finally I've been able to start to get some ideas down. What I needed to do was to share it and get feedback and input on some design aspects that I am struggling with and BGDF was the first place I though of - before BGG I know. I just hoped this fantastic community was around.

So, here we go.

Players are taking the role of Agents in the Minstry of Peculiar Occurrences whose goal is to take on those weird assignments that others can't. It is a co-operative game where players must work together in order to win.

At the start of the game, players choose a Peculiar Occurrence to complete. Each Peculiar Occurrence requires a number of secrets to be discovered, or a certain event to occur, in order to stop it from happening. To find a secret, players need to investigate regions of the city. Each city area has a number of investigations that can take place there. The Palace District for instance will only ever have 1 investigation has it is heavily patrolled to protect the royal family. Whereas Whitechapel (tentative name - see below) can have up to 4 or 5 investigations – a place dank and devoid of light.

Each Peculiar Occurrence outlines the total number of investigations and secrets that need to be completed and the time limit

INVESTIGATIONS

To investigate. Players draw a card off the investigation deck and read it. There are two kinds of Investigations.

Weird Stuff (needs a better, cooler name) and Secrets
Weird stuff are cards that are, usually, negative events that affect players such as spawning a minion in a region, maybe causing the passing of time, strange things occurring that could affect players, or even gain a new talent or skill, who knows what else.

Secrets are vital discoveries. As each secret is uncovered and foiled, it takes the investigators one step closer to preventing the Peculiar Occurrence from happening. Each Occurrence has its own Secrets which are seeded into the Investigation deck. Secrets often have a number of things that need to be completed, such as going to x and doing y.

So a complete example:
A Dark England?
Vampires on the streets are agitated, more so than normal and with good cause. The Agency has uncovered a plot from a new vampire hive who are intending to turn Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, into a Vampire and create a new Dark England. The Agents must find and kill the Vampire Queen before she reaches Her Royal Majesty.

Goal – Find the Vampire Queen and kill her before dawn (7am). The clock starts at dusk (7pm).

Number of investigations: 12 – 8 Peculiar Occurrences + 4 secrets
Secrets.

Locate and Destroy the Vampire Hive
· Destroying the Hive means the Vampire Queen has a lesser number of minions during the final battle.

Cull Vampires
· Vampires are terrorising a district or two. Place an infestation marker or two random locations. Each time an investigation spawns minions, these locations also spawn minions. Players can spend time to destroy an infestation marker as they stop it from spreading.

Gather protective charms
· Players must go to x place and gather protective charms and place them on the Palace Tile. Once there, thralls cannot enter or be spawned the Palace district and the Vampire Queen is vulnerable to normal weapons, rather than Vampire specific requirements.

Find Mina Harker
· Finding Mina places the Queen on the Map, prior to her activation. Players know where she is and can attempt to kill her, before it is too late. Of course, without the right equipment, Players may fall foul of the vampire plaque themselves.

BUILDING THE MAP
Players lay out tiles to build the city. Now here I am unsure whether to base this on a Victorian London or a unique city on my own creation. There are 7 locations in the game. They are not meant to be a true representation of Victorian London, if I go that route, just famous parts. Each area will have its own, unique number of possible Investigation sites, separate sub-locations and thus separate actions available to it.

Now where I am really stuck is how the players should interact with the board. I was thinking that each player is a unique agent of the Ministry, with unique skills. Now how I implement that is where I am falling down.

Do I look at a system like Pandemic where each agent has one unique skill that they can activate each turn?

Do I have a system where Agents are built using cards based on their role and traits that means that each character has a unique setup every time you play. So for example you could have an Agent whose role is Alchemist who has skills around alchemy which could be useful, his trait is Daring. Daring might give a skill where taking risks might give a reward - an extra reroll when outnumbered for instance. Just thinking out loud here.

Then on top of this, its how those cards are used - are they one use only cards, do they require dice to power, a bit of random factors into the gameplay. Granted at this stage, its still budding and more ideas will be coming as I nail things down and move closer to a play test format, but any ideas and thoughts would be much appreciated.