I have some ideas for a game that I've been kicking around for awhile and I know it's missing some key pieces to pull it together. I thought I'd post it here and see what comes of it. I know it's a rather large post but any help would be greatly appreciated.
The reader's digest version of the game:
Players are archaeologists trying to get an artifact from a temple (think indiana jones). They have to take actions exploring, translating writing, clearing debris, and other archaeologisty things. The twist is that some bad guys are coming to try and steal the artifact from the archaeologists and one of the archaeologists is actually a thief in disguise. The thief tries to sabotage the actions of the good guys in order to help the bad guys get to the temple. Failed actions and some other events let the bad guys get one space closer to the temple. The game ends when either the archaeologists retrieve the artifact and escape, or the bad guys reach the temple. The archaeologists win in the first scenario, the thief wins in the second.
Some mechanics:
Players keep a hand of cards with basic icons printed on them representing searching, climbing, digging, study, translation, etc. A card will have multiple icons printed on it (i.e. three dig icons and one climbing) Each action taken involves drawing an event card and paying the icon cost (i.e. player takes an exploration action and draws a card that says "collapsed hallway" and will have a cost of five digging or whatever. The player then plays cards with enough digging icons on them to pay the cost or they fail the action.
Some actions require a group effort. When an action like this is undertaken, each player passes a card face down to the player that began the action in order to help with the cost of the card. They may pass whichever card they choose (this is one way that the thief can subvert the actions of the group)
Each completed action card helps to lessen the final gauntlet in the treasure room (again, think indiana jones). Each glyph translated helps to read warnings later, each hallway explored helps with the escape route, each trap disarmed, etc. etc.
The final treasure room needs to be first discovered using exploration. The way I envision exploration is by starting with one tile that has three paths to travel. Each exploration action adds a tile to the pathways. Tiles are randomly drawn and can be dead ends or have other branching paths etc. Each path tile will have icons on them that will show that there is a glyph to be translated or a possible trap to disarm etc. I haven't decided if the treasure room will be a random tile or automatically discovered after a certain amount of actions.
The Thief:
I have an idea for determining the thief that would allow everyone to discover who the thief is as the game progresses. The thief wouldn't even know that they were the thief until they begin to discover it later (not sure how that might fit thematically but I like the concept). Everyone gets a few "identity cards" with a unique symbol on them and those are placed face down in front of the players. There are corresponding symbol tokens that are placed face down in a square pattern and one of them is removed. The person with the card matching the removed token is the thief.
Those tokens are revealed through actions as the game progresses and players begin to find out if they are "safe" or not. The cards in front of the players are revealed through game actions and there are also actions that would allow for a player to view another player's face down card. Those players with symbols matching the remaining face down tokens don't know if they are the thief or not yet. Eventually, all tokens are revealed so that the thief can know for sure that they are the thief and begin working in earnest. Naturally, some players will have seen the correct face down card and have a good idea of who the thief is so they can try to work against the thief.
The hope is that in the early game, players will have an uneasy alliance because they don't know which victory condition they are seeking. As the game progresses, some players will begin to suspect others of being the thief and some players will begin to suspect themselves. Actions will begin to fail as a few players try to sabotage actions every now and then because they might turn out to be the thief later.
Problems:
1. I want the game to be more about the thief mechanic than anything else but I can't figure out enough things for a thief to do that would hurt the team. A corollary to this is that there needs to be more tension in the game, more finger pointing, more actions that players can take against each other. Maybe a way to accuse the thief or something.
2. I don't know what to do if the thief is totally discovered. In a perfect scenario, no one would know for sure but it is possible that a majority of the people would know for sure. Clearly in real life they would just ditch the guy or incapacitate him. They would stop allowing him to "help" the team at the least.
3. Anything else that you might see as a potential problem or a cool idea that pops into your head is welcome here.
a majority of the "mechanics" in my game are more like concepts than anything else. I have an idea of what I want but no concrete way to do it yet. As a result, I can be very flexible with the core game play.
I had envisioned a sort of shadows over camelot type of game but more focused on the traitor aspect instead of only having the possibility of the traitor appearing. Perhaps having too many things going on is why i can't seem to get it to gel into a playable game.
As to the less background comment, whenever I've seen someone ask a specific question about a game mechanic, the first thing people ask for is more background on the game. I thought I'd include more info than needed just in case someone finds it helpful when forming a response.