I was feeling a bit stuck on my Shifting Dungeon design for awhile with trying to decide if this game should be cooperative or competitive, what the actual goal should be, etc. but I hit upon a theme idea that will hopefully help push things further. This story behind this theme is that this is a wizard's dungeon and he uses it to store and protect artifacts. This wizard has four apprentices (the players) and it is time to choose one who will be his successor. To do so he sends each of his apprentices into the dungeon with the task of retrieving a specific artifact. The first apprentice who is able to aquire the artifact and leave the dungeon will be the new successor. This task will be challanging because there are numerous traps and special *seals* must be arranged around a *concealment* chamber in order for the artifact to be revealed. The dungeon is filled with magical traps meant to deal with intruders but there are also areas where an apprentice can charge his wand with a specific magic that will protect themself from different types of traps. With this story I'm thinking the final title of this could be 'Wizard's Dungeon'.
This story helps with a couple of aspects. First of all it explains how the characters can move the blocks (tiles) that fills the dungeon since these apprentices have the magical ability to shift them around. Secondly it gives a competitve goal which should give each player a sense of urgency.
One the new mechanics I'm leaning toward is having to arrange tiles with specific symbols (seals) around a three sided chamber tile which would in effect cause the artifact to appear. I'm thinking there would be twelve tiles with unique symbols on them on the board. Each player could get an artifact card (which they keep secret) that specifies which symbols need to be arranged around a chamber tile before they can consider their artifact revealed in that chamber. Once they step into that chamber they can consider the artifact to have been aquired.
Another mechanic is having *charging* tiles that let players charge up with a specific magic type (red, blue, green, yellow) which can be used for different things. One thing is protect from the trap tiles which randomly fire a burst of magic (determined by a die roll) which can only be protected by a magic charge of the same color when the player is in the direct line of fire. Another possible mechanic I'm thinking of is that a player can *lock* a plain block tile with a magic charge. This would probably only last until that players next turn but can also be dispelled by another charge of magic of the same color or possibly two charges of another color. These magic charges can be represented by disks or tokens and whenever they are used they go back to the pool (on the tile in the instance of locking a tile).
One of the things to figure out yet is how the turn structure will work. Probably action points but I'm wondering if there should be a way a player can increase their action points. Also, should the artifacts being gathered give the players any special abilities.
