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Making an action depending on actions from other players who may not play the game

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mpiechotka
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Joined: 11/09/2015

I'm creating my first board game (just for fun) so I'm sorry if I'm making a trivial mistake.

Each player has a colour and in general is expected to play their own but there is a mechanism, at a cost, to draw from other decks. One type of card in game allows completing it - removing all markers - which gets VP and other benefits to owner of card. There is a mechanism to remove markers from other players cards. Some cards require that to play them other players need to already complete a certain number of such cards giving in turn bonus VP/abilities. This is suppose to force players to balance between cooperation and competition.

However I'm not sure what to do if number of players is not a factor of colours - for example there is only 5 players and 6 colours - what to do if player draw a card which require the 6th colour?

let-off studios
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Joined: 02/07/2011
Substitutions

Is it possible for players to use two (or three or whatever balances out) of any other colour to stand in for the colour they don't have access to? That might work.

theKAIS3R
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Joined: 11/04/2015
How many players are you

How many players are you designing the game for? Will you require a specific number of players to play, or are you looking at something that supports a varied number of players, like say 2-6?

Perhaps add a note in the game set-up to remove any colors not used by players? That could eliminate the chance of someone drawing a color not in play.

mpiechotka
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Joined: 11/09/2015
theKAIS3R wrote:How many

theKAIS3R wrote:
How many players are you designing the game for? Will you require a specific number of players to play, or are you looking at something that supports a varied number of players, like say 2-6?

Perhaps add a note in the game set-up to remove any colors not used by players? That could eliminate the chance of someone drawing a color not in play.

My current design would work with 5/6 players (depending on which scheme). Not getting too deep into mechanics - each player has it's own deck of their own colour but is allowed to draw 1 card from other player pool instead of 2 from his own. Each card can have no or some dependency on other players.

Initially I though about having 5 colours where cards from A would depend on B and D, B on C and E, C on D and A, D on E and B and E on A and D but I had troubles fitting 2 or 4 players. Later I thought about using 6 players and making if there are 2 or 3 players they can be responsible for multiple colours (either play or just assume they are the same) but that won't work for 4 or 5. I briefly thought about all to all but that has problem with theme so I think now about let-off studios' proposition and making this as game and rules separation option.

X3M
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Joined: 10/28/2013
What if a player draws

What if a player draws his/her own colour?

I think it is better not to draw a colour. But a position of the players instead.

Count clockwise the number of players.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
There you have all 5 other possible players.

When you have less then 6 players, you simply continue counting. But you exclude when returning to yourself.

gilamonster
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Joined: 08/21/2015
I can think of two

I can think of two alternative ways of getting this effect, and both require that each player have "draw a card of colour x" for each other color. Either you strip the decks - ie. take out these cards for non-used colours, or you keep the extra colour decks in play as dummy hands (perhaps other players all get an equal chance to play using this deck, which could result in interesting tactical possibilities, depending on how your game works.) Personally I would strip the decks - it is simpler (I've used this method in one of my own games with multiple decks for lower-than maximum numbers of players, though for different reasons)

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