On the way to work, there are a few stop lights I travel through regularly. Some I almost always pass through green, and some are a bit of a gamble. Coming closer and closer to the green light you say to yourself "will I make it.... will I make it?". The feeling you get from hitting a green light at JUST the right time is nice, but finding yourself passing under a red light also gives you a unique rush. I wanted to simulate this somehow.
Stop Light Mechanic
(this mechanic is not theme sensitive, I am using the "stop light" analogy to make sense of it).
Essentially it is a push your luck mechanic. On your turn you will roll a die, execute any actions on your existing cards, and then draw a card. You may do this any number of times until something stops you. When you roll the die, you will see if you've passed through a "green light", "yellow light", or "red light". At anytime (or when you roll a one) you can choose to (if you roll a one you HAVE to) "stop at the light" and the turn goes to the next player. Also, after when you roll the die, you will gain a token of the color you rolled.
The different colors you will see on the cards you draw. Each card will have three different actions on them: a good action (green), an okay action (yellow), and a bad action (red). Each of these actions will have a value next to them. When you draw a card, you will place it in front of you. When you check to see if any actions execute you will start with your oldest card draw in front of you, checking first the red value, the yellow, and then the green. If none of them execute (you don't have enough tokens of the corresponding colors) you move to the next oldest card. If one of them executes, the card is discarded and the action is performed.
I think this could be a great driving force to a game. I plan to implement this into my next design. The actions would have to be simple and maybe even shown by a symbol. Other, more advanced cards could be acquired (a long with other dice with more colors :O). Could be very cool. And the thing is, the game doesn't even have to be a "movement" game. I can essentially pick whatever I want!
What do you guys think? Has this been seen before? Do you have ideas for a theme? Any additional mechanics that could improve this? Give me your thoughts.
![Syndicate content](/misc/feed.png "Comments for \""Stop Light" Mechanic\""){kind=small}
Very helpful. This expands the idea nicely. So you're saying it could be Build (green), Move (yellow), Attack (red) etc.? Or something like that. Very cool! I'm thinking though, this mechanic by itself cost a lot of brain power. You have to manage each option along with your tokens. Managing this and a whole other part of a game would be difficult. But I want flexibility like this to make some unique combinations!