Need some help

90% of comic books in USA are about superheroes.
In Japan, comic books cover a large diversity.

They have some about cooking, tennis, and fishing.

Some are for hardcore fishing people only, but others
are to let the non hard core people interested.

If you start talking about lures, poles and weight like a classroom
put most people to sleep.

Lures should reflect strategy, how do I outsmart this fish?
Can I make a new secret lure that will help me win the tournament?

Poles are like swords, the quest for the magical fishing pole,
the best of the best, bamboo made by a master fisherman or
some hi-tech company?

the fish, are you fishing for a regular any old fish, or
the imfamous sword fish? The tricky mud dwelling cat fish?
Or the dragon of the sea... a shark!!!

characters, who is fishing, some fat dude on a boat?
how about a former captain an old man on the sea-a master,
or a young local tournament champion who was trained to be
a prodigy like Tiger Woods, and yet another challenger, a
military guy who is very tuned in with nature due to his
special forces training, he can fish as good as most people
just using a string & hook off his multi use combat knife,
survival fishing style.

So the game should be like 4 player tournament.
use of various poles and lures. possibly portrayed by cards,
possible use of board with monster... I mean various fish
running around, from common easy ones, to hard ones,
prized catches and even legendary ones,
The One eyed Grouper, even the sharks swim away from this guy,
he lost his eye when the last fisherman champ almost caught him,
the champ never lost a catch until he met this monster grouper,
he was never as dominant in the tournaments after this incident.
give personality to the fish :)

hope this helps
-dete

Hello Leadingedge,

Although I have never been interested in fishing, I think you have a very good theme to base your game on, as it has never been done before (I do not know any fishing board games), and has a lot of potential in term of mechanics and strategy.

If you want to use a board, it could represents different zones of a lake. Each of these zones would have more chances of catching a specific type of fish, but also increase the difficulty of catching one. You could have deeper areas, a marsh like area, sections near the border shadowed by trees, or areas with obstacles.

Another way of handling this could be to have a number of fish revealed in the center of the playing area, and then, players secretly choose one of the fish, and a combination of lure/rod. Then those who have selected the equipment with a higher chance of catching the fish wins the selected fish.

Finally, if you stick with cards, you could make it a CCG (Collectible Card Game!). Just like the collectible hockey cards, you would have rare and common cards, distributed randomly in a package, but they have the advantage of being "playable" cards. Some poles or lures could be more effective in certain situations, thus increasing rareness of the card. Your video could come with a starter of that game, or a pre-made playable deck of cards.

Jeb

I suggest you look at some other similarly-themed obscure games such as the PGA's golf dice game - it has dice, a bunch of cards with names and stats of real golfers and a booklet with simple stats, including the "map" of each hole for Pebble Beach (the one I have anyway). Simple but in-depth at the same time.

I think if you could put together something like that, you might be on the right track. Sorry I can't give you a better example or advice but it reminds me very much of your situation, putting together a good, solid, simple game with a fairly mainstream theme though without any real mainstream pioneers in the game side.

I know nothing about fishing, but this is what came to me in the shower this morning while thinking about what others have posted here.

Its a card game that could be played solo.

The player has three stats: Tackle, Lure and Skill. Each stat is represented by one die from the choice of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12. The more sides the dice has the better the skill.

There is a small deck of location cards. These show the same three types of fish with varying target numbers against each. The target number is what the player has to roll equal to or better to land that type of fish at that location. Some locations are better than other for certain types of fish.

There is large deck of fish cards. These have the three types of fish with weights/sizes against each. They might also have a target number modifier for the really large and small fish of a particualr type.

Lastly there are competition cards. These cards show the type of fish the competition is for, prize money and weight limits for first, second and third.

Setup
Shuffle the location deck and put five location face down on the table.
Shuffle the fish deck and competition decks.
Get the dice to represent your Tackle, Lure and Skill.

Play
The game runs across three fishing competitions of ten actions.

Draw the top competition card. This will show you the fish you are trying to catch, bag limit, prize money and weight to get each prize (for solo play)

The player then goes to a location by turning a location card face up.

The player then has ten actions for the competition. Actions can be used to either cast or goto another location.

Casting
Draw the top card of the fish deck. If it has any target number modifiers add them to the target number for the fish for that location. Roll the dice. Get the target number or over you get the fish (keep the card). Fish that get away are discarded.

After the player has caught the bag limit for the competition each new fish they catch can replace a smaller fish in their bag. They cannot hold more than their bag limit in fish for the competition.

At the end of the competition they add up the weight of the fish in their bag and check with the other player, or the competition card in solo play, to see where they came in the competition.

There might be capacity between competitions to upgrade equipment with prize money. Spending a whole day at one location, then going back to the same location in a later competition could allow you to upgrade your Skill by one level due to familiarity.

For the game design, I would say that you should stick with something simple and funny to keep the interest of everybody. You should not get too much in details on the equipment you can use and you should not use an hex map where you move your boat with rod casting arc (^_^).

The best idea I could think, which looks like another post, is through a card game non collectible with a common deck for all players. There would be a series of fish on the table with different stats. Players can place equipment face down on the table. When he is ready to catch a fish, he show his equipment and catch the fish. So you cannot predict what fish each player want to catch. When you catch your fish, you reveal your equipment, so you have to change your equipment to hide again to become less predictable.

For this kind of game, I think that I would go with a deterministic model instead of rolling dices. I would use some number for the leveland some fish type that requires some type of equipment to be catched. So the type and the level would be important.

You can certainly use a database to keep track of registered customers. Most web hosting companies can set up MySQL or a similar database for you, and any Web programmer should be able to set up a simple registration form in Perl, PHP, or Java for you.

As an alternative (requiring no programming at all), you could ask your customers to send you email in order to register, and just keep track of them manually in a spreadsheet or a plain text file. Of course, this is more work for you.

You can also write a simple program or spreadsheet function to choose a registered customer at random as the contest winner. Or you could print out all the names, cut them into separate bits of paper, and pick one from a hat, which, believe it or not, is actually more truly random than having the computer do it. Or you could roll dice.

Note that depending on how much the prize is worth and whether you restrict the contest to people who purchase your game, there may be legal or tax requirements... see http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,311824,00.html or http://library.findlaw.com/2004/Sep/21/133578.html