Hello-I'm new here, and new to game design. I'm hoping this will be fun.
I have a thought for an extension to war games similar to Risk. It's been a thought for a long time, and I've just thought of a mechanic which might work. I'm torn between developing the idea in full form for a specific game, or leaving it extremely basic, which could allow it to apply to multiple games.
The idea is that the war being fought in the war game is actually a proxy war between two superpowers (in the case of Risk, imagine two alien races), who don't want to directly dirty their hands but are happy to encourage the locals to fight it out. Players are the Minor Powers who are looking out for their own interests, partly by serving the superpowers. By ingratiating themselves with the superpower (who actually wins the war), they can position themselves to hold power as the victor's preferred governor after the conflict. Given that power is fickle, they can't be sure about how much they have ingratiated themselves until they need a favor.
The winning superpower is determined by standard victory conditions, but treating all of its allied Minor Powers as if they were one player. The winning Minor Power is the one who has best ingratiated themselves to the winning superpower.
Components for the extension are two decks of Favor cards, say Red and Blue, with each deck indicating favor with one of the two superpowers. The front of the Favor cards are numbered 1-10. (As I'm thinking about it right now, these would have to be large decks of cards.)
A Minor Power is said to be allied with a superpower if they have any Favor cards for that superpower, and may only be allied with (have Favor cards for) one superpower at a time.
Acquiring Favor
When a Minor Power begins a combat, they can indicate if they are fighting (for that specific combat) on the side of one of the superpowers (say Red). This is permitted as long as:
- The Minor Power is not allied with the opposing (Blue) superpower
- The Minor Power is not fighting against another Minor Power allied with the same (Red) superpower.
When a Minor Power is fighting on the side of a superpower, they receive one Favor card for every unit lost (by either side). The Favor cards are given to them face-down, and remain face-down. The value of the card remains unknown to all players.
Spending Favor
When a Minor Power receives new combat units, they may spend their Favor cards to get help from their allied superpower. They may appeal to the superpower for X extra units. This will cost 10X Favor points. The Favor points are spent by turning up one card at a time until 10X points are reached. If more than 10X appears, the extra points are lost. If the player runs out of cards (or decides to stop flipping cards) before 10X is reached, all the face-up Favor points are spent without receiving any units.
For example:
- if the Minor Power requests 3 additional units, they may turn up the cards: 4, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9 for 37 points. They spend that 37 points and receive 3 extra units.
- if the Minor power had requested 4 additional units, and turned up the same cards, they would lose the 37 points and receive no units.
At the end of the game
Every Minor Power allied with the winning superpower reveals and counts their Favor points. The one with the most Favor points becomes governor and wins the game.
Random thoughts
- It seems probably that their should be a mechanic to deliberately switch sides. I was thinking that a Minor Power could trade all their Red cards (without looking at their value) for Blue cards, receiving X/2 Blue cards for X Red cards.
- Trying to keep it generic limits many options, and so I don't know if it's a good idea. There are a lot of possible favors one could ask for from a superpower (money, spying, etc.) which would be dependent on the base game.
- Similarly, there could be some Favor cards which are something special (bad or good) other than points, but if that was going to be especially interesting, it might need to be related to the base game.
Thanks for the thoughts. I'll try to think them through carefully. You do have the gist of it. As for the bandwagon, I'm not sure. That's possible, but there's a countervailing force also.
You're right that there's no value in being allied with the losing superpower. However, since it's a zero-sum game, there's likewise no value in being allied with the winning superpower but being low-ranked in Favor to that superpower.
If it's at all possible to switch sides (and I definitely want it to be possible, the only question is how awkward to make it), then imagine that the Red superpower is approaching victory. The Minor Powers who are number 2 and 3 in the Red alliance may be best served by trying to bring down the number 1 in the alliance (thereby possibly freeing up the Blue alliance to make gains), or may be better served by switching allegiance entirely to the Blue side. Even if the switch wouldn't put them at the top rank of the Blue side, maybe they would buy some time by making the switch.
I don't have a good feel for this balance-avoiding too much bandwagon, but also avoiding an eternal game of allegiance-switching. One of my rationales for keeping the value of the favor cards unknown is that it might mitigate the "well, she's 3 points ahead of me in Favor, I better switch sides now" effect.
Something which could encourage switching to the losing superpower, and also stay with the overall feel would be to make the "exchange rate" for switching dependent on the current ranking of the superpowers. The losing superpower could be more grateful (grant more Favor) for a switch than the winning superpower.