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Family Pirate Themed game

4 replies [Last post]
Mon, 11/30/2015 - 07:51
cjs0216
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Joined: 11/29/2015

Thanks for the add! I'm just starting my foray into Board Game design. I have been looking for a game that my kids and I can play for family game night, but have been unsuccessful due, in part, by the age range of my kids. I've tried a bunch of card games like Munchkin and while most of my kids can play it, the youngest can't. But I do enjoy some of the mechanics of that particular game. So, I've decided to try my hand at making a game that all of us can enjoy.

Talking to my kids, they all seem to want a pirate themed game...fair enough. They all also like the idea of using dice, a simple character sheet, and cards to determine weapons, armor, and the like.

The idea that I have now requires two game boards. One for traveling from Europe to the New World, with many spaces to land on and have certain actions apply (i.e. combat and stuff like that) and then a sort of dungeon board, where they actually have to fight their way to a treasure.

The problem now involves the dual game board aspect, since this is a sort of race to the treasure thing right now. Are there many other competitive board games that utilize two game boards in a similar way?

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Tue, 12/01/2015 - 04:21
#1
Midnight_Carnival
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Joined: 06/17/2015
sort of

I've been working on a pencil and paper fantasy RPG which was designed to remain simple and easy to adapt.

I'm not sure how easilly small kids would be able to play it, but as you spend time developing it they will grow up and improve their mathematic skillzzz.

I plan to release it as public domain so anyone can have fun playing it. If you are planning on playing something with your kids I can send you the pdf and you can frankenstein it into something playable and hopefully enjoyable (but then you have to send me a copy of the rules, etc) if you want to make money out of this then, well 80% of the comments I recieved on the thread about my game were about how I'd get my ass handed to me over intelectual property laws and the other 20% were about how I shouldn't make a P&P RPG at all becasue nobody would buy it or someting.

Good luck with your pirate ARRR!PG.

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Tue, 12/01/2015 - 19:54
#2
cjs0216
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Joined: 11/29/2015
I've tried to get the kids

I've tried to get the kids into PnP RPG games, but they didn't really get into the role-play aspect. However, they all enjoy, rather thoroughly, rolling dice for combat. I'm really leaning on using the d6 combat system from a PnP RPG I bought called Hero Kids. They really enjoyed the combat in that. As they get older, I can adapt the system to be a little more complicated, as in moving to some sort of d20 system.

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Tue, 12/01/2015 - 20:08
#3
questccg
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Joined: 04/16/2011
Gotta love it!

Midnight_Carnival wrote:
Good luck with your pirate ARRR!PG.

You should THANK Midnight_Carnival extensively since he has given you the best possible "gimick": ARRR!PG. LOL

If that doesn't STICK, man I don't know what will! :P

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Thu, 12/03/2015 - 19:14
#4
Zag24
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Joined: 03/02/2014
Family Games

There are two tricky parts of making a game for all ages:

1. Simple enough for the younger kids but interesting for the older ones.

2. Luck dominates skill to just the right degree. That is, if the game is all luck, it's not going to be very interesting; but if the more skillful player(s) always win, then the very young kids don't have a chance.

For the first point, you can address this somewhat by having some complexity that is interesting, but it only important that one player really understands it. Your two-part board could fill this role rather nicely. I'm assuming that the first part consists of sailing around to find the Treasure Island, and then the second part is racing and fighting to get the treasure first. In the transition from one mode to the other, the player who found the island should get some advantage -- he's a turn ahead or has some other benefit. Or even you have a more sublter gradation of advantage based on how far away from the island the players' ships were. This could be somewhat complicated to work out, but the youngest players don't actually need to understand the mechanic, just how the result affects them.

This is also a good place for luck, because it's essentially luck which player finds the right island first, though the more strategic player might have devised a better search pattern that gives him a small improved chance. I really like a two-part game like this, where the first part is mostly luck, because it gives the young player a chance to feel victorious on this section, even if the advantage it gives him is not likely to be enough to overcome skillful play on the second section.

Would you plan to have a two-sided board? I could see a big transition when the island is found -- you rank players by distance, then turn the board over and start the second phase. Your big challenge here is to provide a sense of continuity, and not just feel like these are two mostly-unrelated games. Perhaps the fruitless searches on the islands that were not the right one produced weapons, maps, etc. that are now useful in this second phase.

I do think you have a start to a game that could be interesting and original. Good luck!

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