Journal: Revenge of the Mummy (personal challenge!)

So, I had an idea today. Ok, so it was half an idea today, that rounded out a half an idea that I had yesterday. Here's the half an idea I had today. Yesterday's half will come in a bit.

I want to design a new game. I want to take this design and document its construction from concept to product, and then get it picked up by a publisher. And I'm going to keep a game journal about it every step of the way. Who knows, at the end it might turn into a valuable resource. Worst case scenario is that I get ridiculed and utterly destroyed on the forum, right? Well, that actually kind of sucks.

Lets hope this idea is worth it.

At this juncture I do feel the need to mention Defenders of Wessex, which you may have seen me talk about on my blog here of BGDF, or in various threads as I ask mostly aesthetic questions. That project is still going forward. But because most of the design is currently in the capable hands of the artist, and will be for a while yet, I have some free time. That means more and more of my designs will be coming to life! It also means that this project will tick by at a notably slow rate as Defenders comes back to take up my time as we march toward publication. That just means that this new project will be not developed as fast as it otherwise could be. Not that this is a problem at all.

Anyway, on to the first half of the idea I mentioned up there. That is, game content. This idea came about as I was mulling over an early prototype problem I was having with the pre-construction of Escape the Dullahan, a project which has temporarily been shelved. Something about that project jumped my train of thought over to the high adventure of the 1930s. Egypt in the 1930s in particular, during the height of archaeological frenzy...

Oh yes, I envisioned a Mummy game, which you know if you read the title. You know, vengeful undead guy all wrapped up in rags with an assortment of weird powers etc (because if he can come back from the dead, of course he can do other supernatural stuff!). This game began, in my head, borrowing mechanics from other games and coming together, albeit in a rough sort of way.

1) Borrow the board from Arkham Horror --> using that same style of board to identify locations, translate it into Egypt, with highlights like archaeological dig sites, museums, libraries, excavation camps...so many things! such rich theme!
2) Yank the investigative concept from Clue --> suddenly the players are trying to figure out exactly which mummy is coming back to life by eliminating the other "suspects"
3) Use an unknown win/loss condition that gets revealed when the mummy comes back, like the haunt in Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Also use an exploration mechanic to allow players to explore the dessert, looking for the lost tomb of the mummy.
4) Use the adventure pattern of Fortune and Glory to resolve some explorations. Also going to steal Fortune and Glory's two-tiered villain system.
5) Big fan of Mice and Mystics "Cheese Wheel" for bad guy spawning, but this one will be taken and altered to reflect the success of bad guys working the ritual to awaken the mummy. I also really like the ranking up mechanic where things get progressively worse them ore times that cheese wheel fills up.

There are other things going on in my head - a worker placement system for using allies to assist in your heroic efforts; a little bit of resource management tied into card drafting to grant special powers/items etc; character selection with about 10 unique characters already archetyped.

Oh, and I didn't mention the clincher - its all getting a steampunk twist. It will be a Revenge of the Mummy steampunk Co-operative game! And there is magic in there too, because if the mummy can, why not the rest of us?

Of course, the first issue many will see is the amount that this game aspires to do, what with the massive array of games i'm borrowing inspiration from and the wide variety of mechanics at play. Obviously task #1 is going to be to settle things down a bit, start cleaning off the useless stuff to get to the core of the game. But for right now I've got a game built of a half dozen excellent (except for Clue -- that one is really only OK) games waiting to get firm rules and a concrete prototype...