Shared Pieces Game Design Competition ideas

My first impression, which may be a simplification of the final product, would be to have 1 unit which moves around a board to different scoring areas. The piece is moved by each player in turn, via some method... how does this sound?:

There is a deck of Movement cards, each with a direction arrow. The arrow points in one of 8 directions. This deck is shuffled and placed face down next to a checkerboard. The top three cards are turned face up to create a pool of cards to draw from.

Another deck of Goal cards is shuffled and, say, 4 cards are dealt out to each player. These cards are kept face up in front of the player. The goal cards are labelled with a coordinate which corresponds to a space on the board, like in chess the ranks and files are denoted 1-8 and A-H. The 4 squares in the center of the board (D4, D5, E4, and E5) do not appear on goal cards, so there are 60 total cards in the Goal deck.

The object of the game is to collect your Goal cards by moving the monolithic playing piece (which has a definited facing) to a square which corresponds to a Goal card in front of you. On your turn you select one of the three face-up cards from the Draw Pool and apply it's movement to the Monolith. The card will translate, and possibly rotate the piece, and any direction on the card is relative to the facing of the piece at the beginning of the turn.

After the move is complete, a new Movement card is revealed to replace the one used, so there are always 3 cards in the Draw Pool. If the move places the Monolith on a square corresponding to a face up Goal card, the player with that card in front of them "scores" the card. Set it aside in a score pile and replace it with a new Goal card.

Ooo... for even more strategy, the top Goal card can be face up at all times, which could guide some decisions about which goal to score (or not to score) and when.

The game could last either until a certain number of goals are scored, a certain number of turns have been played (maybe until the Movement cards run out), or until all the goals have been scored. The winner would be the player with the most goals scored.

This game could be played by any number of players. A quick playtest could tell weather 4 goal cards at a time are too many or too few. It would also be very easy to make the Movement cards more complex (like moving more than 1 space in a direction, or moving like a Knight in chess for example), and to make some goal cards worth more than others (maybe the ones near the corners are worht more then the ones on the edge, which are worth more than the ones near the middle of the board. This may not be as fair, as it may come down to who draws more valuable Goal cards though...

Finally, to get even MORE complex, there could be a deck of Action cards which do things like "reshuffle and replace the face up goal cards", "discard a goal card from each players score pile", or "Reshuffle and replace the Draw Pool"... maybe move the Monolith around as well. These cards could be playable one per turn, on your turn... maybe you get new ones when you use one, or maybe when the Monolith lands on a certain space on the board.

Wow... I just sort of made all that up, but I think it actually sounds pretty good!

- Seth

I dunno if this would flyu for the contest, but every "average gamer" SHOULD own a copy of Roborally, so maybe I'll use Robo rally's movement cards for the movement.

Like it says on the cards, they move the Monolith 1, 2, or 3 spaces foreward. The "Rotate Left" card would move the Monolith foreward 1 then left 1 (and change facing to Left relative to where it began)- Rotate Right would work similarly. "U Turn" could be either a "move 1 in any direction" or maybe a "Rotate 180 degrees. Play again." (I'd hate to have a card NOT move you)

In this way there aren't cool cards that move you like a knight, but it's all manageable.

The main question is, does the game sound good enough to even try to proxy it up using average household things (maybe decks of cards and lookup tables for example)?

- Seth

A board made of cards is not a board, it's an arrangement of cards. If the cards are commonplace, like Playing cards, then you should be fine. When they talk about a 'board of squares' they mean an actual, physical board like a checkerboard. To tell you the truth, I have no idea where the 'average gamer' would have a "typical" hex or equilateral triangle board.

Another idea for an interesting variant of a board would be a dartboard... does that count as a commonplace item?

- Seth