Board Game Designers Forum

I see now that I got too far ahead of myself, I tried to develop too many things at one time. While untimely I think they were all good ideas; in the end that's all they were, ideas. It's ok though, it was a good learning experience and I'm not giving up. I'm just going to go back to my basic mechanics and really flesh that out and then work my way up. I'm also going to stop fighting it, I've got a mideval theme in mind so I might as well go with it haha

so during some down time at work I had a theme idea pop into my head. It would be something resembling players fighting for political control ( like the position of Pope perhaps). I actually think it work really well with the mechanics, with some changes of course, and would also require some other ideas i've been thinking about, but it really could work

IDK, just a thought

So as for the actual game itself. I have several core element that I'm 90% certain will be apart of the game and then I have several other features that are subject to change. The basic idea is that players add news cards to their deck, not simply just by buying them, but by taking certain actions and earning them. To accomplish this there are a couple of different options a player has each turn, they can do "adventuring", "expansion, "research", or simply hire out armies (all names are subject to change, as I am just using generic terms).

Adventuring: the way I have it set up now is that there is a separate deck that has all the different possible "adventures" that players can take, they have a list of requirements for completing them, and the rewards for doing so. So three of these such cards would be flipped face-up at the beginning of the game and those would be the available adventure, which would get replenished once on is complete. In summary it would function similarly to the dungeon in Thunderstone. The biggest purpose of having this mechanic is that it would be a way for players to add powerful item and maybe even spell cards to there deck, these would be unique and provide a way for players to have different cards then their opponents, an idea I find rather refreshing to the genre. I've also toyed with the idea that there could be "legendary heroes" recruited to your army in such a way as well.

Expansion: I've come to realize that this will more then likely be the central focus of the game. What it is, is the premiere way in which players gain victory points (the object of the game and how one wins, I realize that I have not made this clear until now). How it works is that during game set-up players will take a number of "kingdom cards" (let's call them for now) equal to 2 x the number of players + 2. So in a 3 player game there would be 6. These cards would be laid out in the playing area and they are the available areas into which players can expand their domain to.
The way this work is that players during there turn,will lay a "claim marker" on the Kingdom card" there would like to gain. On there next turn they can meet the cards requirements and claim it and all its benefits. However, if at any point between laying your marker and your proceeding turn, another player also tries to claim the card a battle would ensue now I haven't fully fleshed out that will work, but you get the general idea.. Regardless, when you gain the card it is then placed face up in front of you in your play area, and as long as you have it grants you any income and resource it might provide (should be self-explanatory, but maybe not), they also grant victory points, and finally defensive bonuses during combat.

Research: This a mechanic I'm having the most trouble with as far as how it should function. But for now I'm think I could just have players but research cards on there turns, and then once they have enough they can use them to earn different "technologies/sciences". regardless of exactly how they earn them tho, the "tech and sciences" cards will be cards that are actually there to provide an over-arching bonus to your whole deck rather then over an isolated effect at one time. For example there could be a tech. card like "longbow" which give all of your ranged units an extra bonus in combat, I'm spitballing here so as to get my point across. another example might be "irrigation" which you would play to give one or more of your Kingdom cards a plus 1 to their income. So as you can see there functionality is different then cards gained through adventuring.

as for hiring armies: this is obviously pretty straight forward. There's a pool of cards that all players can buy from. as for what these cards are going to be exactly? I'm not quite sure, I mean players obviously need a way to gain just the standard type of cards, but would this detract from the other elements of the game, I'm really not quite sure. I'm also exploring the idea of having a separate randomized set of more powerful "mercenary" cards we'll call them. these would again be one of a kind (as in only one of that kind could be acquired by one player in a game) and would again be more powerful then your standards, think generals leading the basic units. However, I'm not sure how to handle how players would go about getting them, I'm thinking maybe bidding, or certain cards would only go to a player under certain conditions (i.e. "the winning player" or "player with least kingdom cards"). any suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated

and finally combat: Players can forego the above options for a round and choose instead to attack another player. now I'm open to all kinds of suggestions, but what I have thought of is that when an player chooses to attack another player, combat is initiated immediately and that player becomes the "attacker" and the other player the "defender". when this happens players will count up the amount of "power" that they have with their kingdom cards (this is another quantifier that the KC's give you that I forgot to mention earlier). "power" is basically a players hitpoints for this round of combat. After player's powers have been added up the attacker chooses the cards he wants to attack with and must then pay their combat cost. Now before I go any further I should mention another thing the players can choose to do after they've taken actions for their turn and that is they can lay down "army" cards on their Kingdom cards. what these will do is offer defense for you when you are attacked w/o having to play that cards defense cost during combat, so you would pay the cost, lay it down in defense, and have a card immediatly there to defend in the case of an attack. now back to what I was saying, the attacker declares his attacking cards and pays the combat cost, and the defender loses "power" equal to the number of STR the attacker has in excess to the defenders DEF (values are on the cards obviously). it is then the defenders turn to attack, and it works in much the same fashion, combat continues until one player runs out of power or until the attacker decides to end it. Now I already know that this isn't perfect and needs revising, but I haven't had a chance to playtest anything so there is that, and I'm also kind of just giving the quick and dirty and not exactly everything as it makes sense in my head if you know what I mean

anywho those are the basic mechanics as I have them now. there's still a lot more that I'm thinking about for this but these are the core ideas

thanks for any comments and helps, and don't be afraid to be brutal, I can take it