I'm out of Ideas!

Hey Stainer,

Sounds like you have a fun game in the works. I'm guessing you're about to get more input than you ever intended...

Here are some ideas for board spaces:
1) Bushwacked! -- lose 1 gold.
2) Cave-in -- lose 1d6 gold.
3) Underground river -- move forward or back up to 3 spaces.
4) Abandonded shaft -- move to some other space on the board (may not be appropriate, depending on your design, but could work like "Chutes and Ladders", etc).
5) Motherlode -- gain 2 gold.
6) Assayer's office -- roll a die: on a 1-3, lose 3 gold; on a 3-6, gain 3 gold.

Here are some ideas for cards:
1) Mule -- Carry +20 gold, but each turn, roll a die. On a 1, you can't move.
2) Shovel -- discard to cancel 1 cave-in.
3) Dynamite -- roll a die. On a 1-3, you suffer a cave-in. On a 4-6, all other players suffer a cave-in.
4) Pickaxe -- play on any Motherlode square to mine 1 extra gold.
5) Claim Jumper -- steal 3 gold from any player.
6) Tarnation! -- steal 1 card from another player.

Those are just some quick ideas for a "Miner 49er" type theme. If you are doing something more modern, some of the names might not work well.

Keep us posted on the game!

Mark

Space - Gas Leak! You pass out from the fumes and lose a turn.

and of course...

Item - Canary. If you stumble upon a Gas Leak space, the Canary warns you....by dropping dead. Discard the Canary and back up a space, but at least you don't lose a turn!

Space - Bats! A flurry of the winged rodents surges around you momentarily. You're not hurt, but you drop one piece of equipment from the fright. Discard 1 item.

Spaces:

Pitfall - fall through a hole in the floor. Miss a turn
Mining Cart - zip forward a die roll of spaces
Prospector's Skeleton - Select 1 item card at random from the deck
Darkness - Dark spaces cost 2 moves to walk through unless you have a light source.
Rockfall - a bit of the ceiling drops on your head and makes you dizzy. On your next turn, walk BACKWARDS along the path instead of forwards

Items:
Torch - Gets you through 1 Darkness space at normal speed, then sputters out
Lantern - Gets you through 3 darkness spaces, then sputters out
Mining Helmet - helps with rockfalls.

There's a ton of cool stuff you could do with this theme... is the player path established, with all players following the same route, or are there intersections with freedom of choice?

~Josh

~Josh
Based on the answer to this question, I think having various offshoot mining shafts from the main route would be a cool idea. Maybe you can have specific spaces on the main route that when a player lands on the space they can attempt to *discover* this new side shaft, thus unlocking more mine for the players to explore. Maybe when the player exactly land on this space, the player could roll a die to unlock the new shaft (or maybe the deck of cards could include specifc card, that a player could use in this situation).

Card/Space Ideas:
Gold Rush - Gain 1 gold and take another turn.

Find Hidden Vein - Gain X times gold this turn (or something like that).

PYRITE (or Fool's Gold) - Could be used as a space forcing a player to lose some gold, or as a card to lower an opponents gold total by deeming some of what they have found fake.

Other Random Thoughts
Not sure how you are handling gold, but it supposedly comes in different proportions, so maybe a card to reduce another players gold value found during their next turn. Obviously this assumes your gold has varying value associated to it.

Not that I think anyone is using terminolog wrong, but here is a simple mining term page http://wells.entirety.ca/terms.htm. As I read it, I did not realize that nugget tends to mean

NUGGET - A water-worn piece of precious metal, usually implying some size.

Which made me realize, that nugget might be an inappropriate term in a mine specific theme, but ok if the theme involved panning for gold in a stream/river/etc.

Okay. How about a real mining adventure? Instead of moving around the board, Monopoly-style, create a random board. The elements of the board are as follows:
1. Desert and River - this is the actual board. No hexes or grids.
2. Town tile - must start in the center of board. Additional town tiles can only be played adjacent to an existing Town tile and upon open desert.. Obviously, the River restricts the placement of Town tiles and, therefore, development will be on one side.
3. Mine Shaft tile - each tile has a number representing depth. A stack of cards equal to the depth is placed atop each Mine Shaft tile.
4. Assay Office tile - There are two of these, but only one can be built in town.
The tile must be placed on an open Town tile.
5. General Store tile - There is only one of these. It can be built once the town reaches a size of 3 tiles.
6. Claim Registration chips - 4 of each color.
7. Other tiles that you think will flesh out the town.

The general idea is to stake a claim or two - either along the river (low probability of success) or in the desert (high probability). then, gather supplies from the general store, hike out to the desert or river and work your claim. You have to travel to the Assayer's Office periodically, to "cash in".

You could set the adventure in one of several historical periods: the early days, when getting gold from the river was easy; the middle phase, when teams worked claims together to maximize their chances of finding gold; the industrialized phase, where mines are exploited and the only thing the river is good for is transportation!

The depth of the mines provides an opportunity to reward players who are willing to explore. You could have cards that state how much gold you have found, or cards that say something like "you have just completed drilling another 25 feet - no gold here!" etc.

blah-blah-blah

Mitch

Mitch

Ooo--I like it! Feels like an upside-down Tikal! When will you have the prototype ready? :-)

K.