Pirates of Cannibal Island (working title)

Yeah I think some sort of centralised group Wound mechanic looks like the way to go. I don't want to add any other componenets to the game apart from cards (one of the design limitations I set myself, as well as wanting to have a purely card play game...) so I will have to work out some way to incorporate the Wound cards.

Maybe a fun random thing to do would be to work out how many Wounds the Pirates have already recieved, work out how much more they can take, then put this number of random Wound Cards into a seperate stack. Then whenever a Pirate takes a Wound, they draw a random one from this stack. When they are all gone, all the Pirates lose at once...

For Example, if there were two pirates - Pirate A with a Health Rating of 4, who has already taken 1 Wound from the Pirate Fight, and Pirate B with a Health Rating of 6, who has taken 2 Wounds from the Pirate Fight. Pirate A can take another (4-1) 3 Wounds and Pirate B can take another (6-2) 4 Wounds. So at the start of the Cannibal War there are (3+4) 7 random Wound Cards put into a stack, indicating how many Wounds the Pirates can take before they all die and the Cannibal Player wins...

Each Wound Card indicates a different type of Wound, so if they were random, then it would represent the random chaotic attacks the Cannibals are making against the Pirates...

Yeah this is fully intentional ;) Makes it a bit quirkier and crazy - 'to know ones enemy one must become their enemy' etc etc...

Well if I can work out a 'Wound Pool' for the Cannibal War phase, then I will make it that no one is out of the game until the Wound Pool is depleted. A Pirate can just keep getting wounded until the whole stack has run out, then they all die at once, something like that. That way no single Player will get killed off and out of the game. Everyone is in it until the end.

Hmm, very true. How about I make it that the Last Player to be attacked is the First Player in the next turn. That way it could go -

Round 1: A Attacks B. B attacks C, C attacks A and A attacks D (D has nobody to attack, but becomes the First Player).
Round 2: D attacks C, C attacks A. A Attacks D and D attacks B (B has nobody to attack, but becomes the First Player).
Round 3: B Attacks A, A attacks C, C attacks B and B attacks D (D has nobody to attack, but becomes the First Player, etc...).

Does that work? That sounds more interesting to me as well, as Players have to think about who they are going to attack for multiple reasons, and try not to let a Plyer have two attacks in one round, or be the First Player in the next round (or both). I also like having the turn order chaneg around a lot, rather than the First Player just be the player to the right of the last First Player etc etc...

One of the main things about the game is that it should be quick and chaotic. I want to make interesting combinations, add a lot of flavour into the game, but also have a sense of urgency in the game somehow too... But at the same time I want to have tactics in there, Players need to play to their strengths and not just play cards willy nilly.

I quite like this theme/idea, especially if the Pirates had no idea whenthe Cannibals would turn up. Each player would be scrambling around fighting off other players, building up their defenses, scrounging for items etc etc, then suddenly the Cannibals attack...

...but it feels like quite a different game to what I am looking to create, which is more of a 'all for one, one-on-one' general melee type game, which then turns around and becomes a 'one against the rest' collaborative game. I am interested in the idea of a game changing its focus like this, and part of my intention with this design is to see if this type of thing will work in a game. My other intention for this game is to see if it is possible to create a game where one player gets eliminated, and then 'swtiches sides' and competes against the rest of the players as a group.

Without these aspects, or restrictions, that I have set myself, I feel the game would just turn into a generic melee card game, which I wouldn't want to make.

Plus I like the idea of the Pirates eating the body parts of a dead crewmate ;) aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr...

...Though I will keep the idea of each Player controlling a group of shiprewcked Pirates for a later game, feels like it would fit well as an 'island exploration' boardgame.

Ok, the game concepts and outlines I have for this are -

- Each Player represents a single Pirate Shipwrecked on an island
- All Players fight each other until one is killed
- The Player who is killed changes roles and fights (as the Cannibals) against the rest of the surviving Pirates, who act in collaboration as a group.
- There are two winning conditions -
- The Cannibal Player wins if he can defeat all the surviving Pirates (thus getting his revenge for them killing him in his Pirate incarnation)
- The Surviving Pirate win, as a group, if they are able to defeat the Cannibal Player. Individual glory within the surviving Pirates can be discussed amongst themselves.
- I want to explore the concept of an eliminated Player rejoining the game in a new role, and all this entails - revenge, should they be able to 'win' if they have already been killed, how fun it would be for them, if it would be More fun to be the Player who was killed, etc.
- I want the game to be quick, and the theme to drip from the gameplay.
- It should be fun and not taken too seriously.

The restrictions are -

- Each Player represents a single 'Character'
- The game is played with cards only, no other materials should be needed
- Game play should be 45minutes max
- All Players must fight against all other players
- One Player Must get Killed
- The Killed Player must rejoin the game in a viable position to win the game.
- The gameplay should be felxible enough for various approaches to the game, i.e a free-for-all, or ganging up against one Player.
- The game should drip theme...
- Gameplay should not be predictable, but Players should be able to play tactically.
- The basic 'Way' the game is played should be the same, or similar throughout the whole game, both with the pirates fighting eachother, and the pirates fighting the cannibals.

Important to Keep -

- The above restrictions
- The Body Parts (aaaaarrrrr...)
- The individualised Characters
- The Pirates/Cannibal theme
- The Vicious Fighting
- Ability for characters to gain various items/actions

Can be Changed -

- Any of the card mechanics.
- The 'Three Phases' could be different, but I think it works best for the above restrictions/outline etc.
- Basically any of the actual 'gameplay'. The Theme/Outline/Restrictions as above are fairly stable, but I still want to develop smooth play mechanics that bring out the theme/gameplay effectively, playable and enjoyable. The play mechanics I have outlined already feel like a good starting point to me, and I have yet to do any basic cardplay playtesting, but I reckon I can work out some smooth card mechanics to incorporate that will fulfill the above outlines.

As I have not played too many card-based* games (apart from boardgames which include cards, i.e. War Of The Ring) for a long time, I am not too clued up with the subtleties current in the best games out there. And so advice/suggestions on cardplay mechanics would be a great help!

Thanks Johan, I know my original posting/notes are pretty scrambled, and posted a bit too early in the design, but its all starting to become a lot clearer!

*I lie, recently picked up a copy of Deluxe Illuminati, which is fun, but feels a bit mathematical, too many numbers...