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Reality show the card game

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Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:51
saluk
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At the beginning of the game, players are secretly dealt out several character cards. Each player has several. These are the characters that the player is rooting for. Then they are put into the middle, shuffled, and dealt on the table so everyone can see them. Each turn, players play action cards that affect several of the characters. An alliance card, for instance, can form an alliance between 3 characters. A join alliance card can add one character to an existing alliance. An insult card can make one character insult another. There can be challenges where winning characters get immunity or some bonus or losing characters can lose prestige. At a certain point there is a vote, with each character voting against the other character they like the least. The character with the most votes is removed.

If a player loses all of their characters they stop watching the show - i.e. they are eliminated.

The player rooting for whichever character is left at the end is the winner, or if all of the other player's have been eliminated, the player that is left is the winner.

Since no one knows who other people are controlling, there is some subterfuge going on. The game is about manipulating the state so that when there is a vote as many of your characters as possible are left in the game. The game also should generate an interesting story, as you see the characters team up and build some kind of case for why they like some people and don't like others.

Because there is player elimination, gameplay should be short: sub 60 minutes.

Anyone have good ideas for what the action cards (the meat of the game) would be? What kinds of actions would be interesting/thematic?

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Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:53
#1
saluk
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Conceptually, iI guess it is

Conceptually, iI guess it is pretty similar to Guillotine, except for the attachment of players to characters.

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Tue, 10/11/2016 - 01:45
#2
radioactivemouse
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contest?

There has to be some wort of goal the players are shooting for. Whether it's "a million dollars" or "the love of your life" or "a new car", there has to be some kind of contest on a "weekly" (really more like turns) and winners can influence the audience's rating. Playing trick or action cards (i.e. sabotaging another player) can also give ratings, but ruin your reputation and possibly get yourself kicked off the "island" or whatever place you're at.

My point is to have some kind of contest and overall goal. Have the "reality" part of the game be the actions a player can play during their turn while they do a contest (which can be random games from a contest deck).

That's what I see.

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Mon, 10/17/2016 - 16:02
#3
saluk
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I like this idea. So

I like this idea. So different challenges can appear and then you play on each characters strength. There could be team events, like on top chef, where it may help make an alliance stronger, but if you get stuck with someone whose not good at that event you may lose the challenge. And yeah, you play cards from your hand to affect the outcome of the challenge. Challenges can have a winner that gets some kind of bonus for later, and a loser who may be on the chopping block. I think the hard thing is to determine if it is a "pure" reality game (survivor, bachelor) where the contestants do the voting, or if it is mediated with judging. I think each style would produce a very different game.

Judging may be easier to implement - you can have the judges who are looking for specific values, challenges that alter or demonstrate those values, and then modifiers that players play to win the trick.

Keeping track of relationships between characters may be tricker in a pure game. Going away from my first idea and making it more werewolf style might be the best in that case - but I don't personally like those kind of games much :)

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Tue, 10/18/2016 - 20:25
#4
Midnight_Carnival
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interesting

I find your subject and approach to be interesting and quite original. I suggest you develop this further as I think it has the potential to become a major commercial success.

Unfortunately I would be unlikely to ever play your game simply because as a matter of personal taste I do not enjoy such reality tv shows, it is also for that reason that I doubt I could contribute any useful ideas for the action cards. However I would like to encourage you since, as viewer ratings prove, I am in the minority in this regard.

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Thu, 10/20/2016 - 18:11
#5
saluk
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I find it interesting that

I find it interesting that you would not play the game because you do not enjoy reality tv. I also do not enjoy reality tv - it just randomly gave me a possible idea for the mechanics. I've seen enough shows to know how they work (I used to watch Survivor when it was new), but quickly grew tired of the transparent way they are casted, written, and edited to heighten the drama.

I definitely see this potential game as being somewhat satirical. I.E - if you like this genre you can understand it, but if you don't like this genre, you can laugh at it. So if I were to make it I would want to make sure someone like you would be able to enjoy it as well.

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Tue, 11/08/2016 - 04:09
#6
saluk
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It develops an inch further.

It develops an inch further. All of my designs seem to inch along and then stop as I inevitably get stuck.

Skills - There are base skills, like intellegence, charisma etc. There are more specialized skills, like home economics, construction or super taster. Each contestant has a set of starting skills, both base and specialized.

Challenge cards - Each turn a challenge comes up. Some challenges will split the contestants up into teams first, some are individual. The challenge will rank the contestants/teams according to a certain attributes.

Example: The *Team Cooking* challenge will split contestants randomly into teams of two, and rank them according to which team collectively has the highest 'home economics' skill. Every 1 'creativity' and 1 'intelligence' also add to the 'home economics' value for this challenge. The winning team gets a judge bonus, the losing team gets a judge detractor.

Skill/Action cards - during a turn, players play skill cards on contestants. (I'm still unsure if each player is controlling a single contestant or multiples, and if this knowledge is public or secret). Skill cards are something in that contestants past that demonstrates a set of skills and modifies those values permanently. Action cards may affect multiple contestants, and alter skill values generally for the current turn only(though they may have some additional effect as well).

Example: The skill card *Won a Pie Eating Contest* subtracts from intelligence but adds to creativity, fortitude, and home economics. In the above example of the cooking challenge, when paired with a contestant who also has at least 2 intelligence, that contestant is now worth 2 points for that challenge. It's helpful but also somewhat hobbled. In another challenge about, say, eating insects, it might be more useful.

Points: So my contestant won the challenge and got 1 judge bonus. What does that mean? There are three kinds of elimination that will sometimes come up instead of a challenge. Judge elimination, Council elimination, and Audience elimination. As they win challenges (and sometimes as a result of skill or action cards) contestants will curry favor with judges, with each other, and with the audience. A contestant being annoying may make the audience like them more, but will probably anger the other contestants. Typically, the elimination will then vote out the contestant who is lowest on one of these axis.

So it doesn't model one reality show, but all of them at once. You try to affect the values to be beneficial for the challenge that will come up next. A bit of push your luck. There may be some take that as you make some contestants behave badly to lose some points. Hopefully your contestant(s) are not eliminated. There is a lot of room to have interesting thematic cards as you build the contestants backstory through the skill cards. (Maybe I should call them background instead?)

It should be a fairly fast paced, very simple card game. Too short? Too simple?

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Tue, 11/08/2016 - 13:11
#7
kwasher
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The further you got into it,

The further you got into it, the more I liked it. Maybe 1 secret "guest" character and the others exposed (per player)? How do I remember my characters? (... I have a short memory)

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Wed, 11/09/2016 - 19:13
#8
saluk
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kwasher wrote:The further you

kwasher wrote:
The further you got into it, the more I liked it. Maybe 1 secret "guest" character and the others exposed (per player)? How do I remember my characters? (... I have a short memory)

Remembering your characters is simple, the characters are color coded and you will have a color card. (The colors help in other ways, such as in making it simple to randomize putting the characters into pairs or teams).

Sadly I've run into the problem I always seem to run into. I have a lot to learn about building interesting decisions into my games. Right now there are none. Always play the card that gives you the most points for the challenge. Since the backstories persist, there's no real reason to hold onto a good card for a later challenge. The game plays itself like Uno, although watching the silly backstories come out and what happens is kind of funny. Even if the characters are secret, there isn't a lot of reason to avoid letting the other players know which characters are yours. You still want to play your best cards on them so they can win the challenge.

I know that adding the temporary bonuses as well as more negative backstories that can be used to add junk to other characters will change things a little; along with building the friendships and enemy relationships between players. But I'm not sure that will offset the drab backstory mechanic, as much as I like it and had fun coming up with some of the cards.

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