I'm putting the final bits on version 0.1 of Song of the Dwarf Lords now, and wanted to put the idea up here for feedback.
The plot to the game is that the players are dwarven lords with one goal in life -- to gain enough honor within the dwarven community to have a song written in their honor.
During the game, two major activities take place: the contest of honor and the acquisition of land regions. (The land regions become available because the local dwarven communities want the oversight of a powerful dwarf lord.)
Each turn begins with one land card being dealt face-up from the deck. (The land cards correspond to hex regions on a map board.) Each card produces a certain amount of gold and honor each turn. (Most lands produce 3-5 gold and no honor; lands that are adjacent to elves or goblins produce more gold but cost honor, while lands that are adjacent to orcs have an upkeep cost in gold but gain you honor.)
Then players hold the Contest of Gifts. The players offer gifts of gold in auction format. Bids go clockwise (the player who makes the first bid rotates with each auction); after your initial offer (which may be anything) on your turn you may either increase your bid so that it at least matches another, higher bid or you may pass. Once you have passed, your bid is locked in place.
Once all the gifts are locked, the player who gave the most receives 7 honor, followed by 4, 2, 1 and 0. Moreover, whoever gave the most gets first choice of the lands to be taken. Then the gifts are received with the largest gift going to the player who currently has the lowest honor, etc.
(The hope is that this will prevent any runaway leader issues, since the person who accumulates the most honor will be getting the least gold for future actions while the person with the least will receive the most.)
Gold can also be used to hire and maintain soldiers; soldiers can in turn be used to "acquire" land that has not yet come up for control. Thus, it should be possible for a player to attempt a "low gift" strategy whereby he tries to make money in the contest and use that money to build up an army with which to expand his holdings. This is also the only way that human-controlled lands can be gained. (I'm also considering the possibility of conquering regions controlled by Orcs if your army is big enough.) At the end of the game each land controlled is worth one additional honor. (The game ends when all dwarven lands are controlled.)
My hope is that the game will allow multiple strategies and have a significant level of player interaction yet be playable within an hour.
My basic concerns at this point (gotta love the concerns you have before you even playtest once!) are:
1. Time. There are 55 land regions, so a five-player game would have 11 Contests if there were no annexing of land. I'm guessing that annexing land might bring this down to 8 or 9. Even if players collect their money/honor and handle their armies pretty quickly, I don't know if a game with 8-9 auctions can be finished in an hour. And, of course, a smaller group of players would have more Contests. (An earlier version of this game handled the Contest with a blind bid, but that had its own problems so in the redesign I wanted to try an open bid.)
2. Keeping one strategy from being dominant. The nice thing about auction games is that they tend to self-correct imbalances -- i.e. if it's more attractive to acquire honor in the Contest than to try to accumulate money, people will gift more to get the honor and the rewards of gifting less will go up. However, there's no such control over the military route.
Questions and comments are more than welcome.
Hugs,
Chad
Yes. At the moment I've got the highest bid being taken as an offering to the gods and the priests making a gift of two gold. (Thus the highest gift is replaced with two gold. I don't know if this is necessary, but I don't want gold just to accumulate and at the moment the only signficant drain on gold is soldier hiring/upkeep.)
At the moment, no. I definitely considered this but it has some potential problems with it, since geography does matter. If there are too many lands in the game I can just reduce the overall number. Of course, 55 is a nice number of cards to have (from a production perspective), but if I wanted to cut the lands down to, say, 40, I could use the other 15 cards to do something else like Quests, which were in the original version.
Ask and ye shall receive! :) After players acquire the lands that come up naturally each turn, they have the opportunity to annex lands as well. In order to annex a land you must control at least two adjacent lands and the total of your soldier units plus adjacent controlled lands must be at least six. (Annex isn't really the right word -- in terms of the story, you're persuading the local dwarves that you're a good leader, rather than muscling them.) Human and dwarvish lands can be annexed.
A player wishing to annex a land must also pay 2 gold. A second land that turn costs an additional 4, then 8, 16, etc. Also, the players take turns indicating which land(s) they play to annex and pay when they do so, and if more than one tries to annex the same land it remains independent. Thus, if you try to take three lands on your turn (spending 14 gold) I might then try to annex one of them that same turn (spending just 2 gold) to stop you from taking one of them.
The land hexes aren't separate tiles -- just hex-shapes on the playing board. The main board is a map of the dwarven lands, with surrounding human, orc, goblin and elvish lands. The map is divided into hexes, and each card represents one hex. It is entirely possible that later on I'll abandon hexes and go for a more "natural" mix of shapes for regions.
That would be a different (but quite interesting) spin on the game. My thought was to have a static map rather than make this a tile placement game. (I love tile placement games, but would really worry about the game length if that were added in as a factor.)
Hopefully I've done a better job of explaining the physical layout this time than last. Fixed map, divided into regional hexes, with the dwarf hexes represented by cards. Of course, now my mind is wandering around thinking about the consequences of a game in which you bid for productive resources as well as the right to place non-productive resources that could enhance your productive resources! :)
From a story perspective, however, I think I like the way I've got it. The idea that the dwarf who makes the largest gift in the Contest (thus displaying the greatest wealth) would get first choice of which region to gain control over feels intuitive to me -- he's shown he's rich/powerful so the dwarves of that region are psyched to have him in charge. Having the largest gift enable you to decide where the elves lived seems less coherent somehow. (My brain is still wandering with it, but I'm thinking of it for a different storyline/game.)
Hugs,
Chad