Build the Rules fighting game

The suggestion came from home that I should make the tiles hexagonal and perhaps the board also hexagonal with the players starting in each corner. It sounds a bit like that Settlers of Cattan to me, and I'm not sure I want a board, I was thinking of playing it on the tiles placed, but the hexagonal element might make it more interesting.

The other idea I came up with was to base everything in the game on the 5 Chinese elements: fire, earth, metal, water, wood so that the basic tiles would be one of these, all the conditions you can place on the tile would represent one of the elements. The heroes would each have an elemental alignment and each item or spell which they can acquire would be an element. For example: bow, staff and healing magic = wood. Sword, armor = metal. Gun, fire magic = fire. And the characters might be differently effected for example a wood hero could use something fire aspected but only if he/she suffered damage while using it, while another element might lower defense, etc...

The tiles would work (more or less) as follows:

Earth:
+earth = mountain
+metal = dungeon
+water = swamp
+wood = forest
+fire = town

Metal:
+metal = desert
+water = sewer
+wood = fortress
+fire = factory
+earth = arena

Water:
+water = ocean
+wood = floating city
+fire = volcanic island
+earth = island
+metal = under sea city

Wood:
+wood = ????
+fire = ash wastes
+earth = temple
+metal = ????
+water = ????

Fire:
+fire = inferno
+earth = lava flow
+metal = ????
+water = geyser
+wood = ????

Anyway, I suspect I'd need to be a lv. 40 Feng Shui master to work out all the details of this and it's ambitious to say the least, not to mention how I may annoy practitioners of Chinese traditional medicine... but I thought it would be more interesting than western elements.
You can imagine how the basic rules for each tile would be different: so for example a town (earth+fire) might ban all weapons and heroes might automatically recover health while there, you may need to use metal and test for intelligence to gain energy. An arena (metal+earth) would be totally different. Any heroes can fight and the winner gains a lot of energy, death may not be possible unless specific criteria are met, but the losing hero in a combat would be reduced to 1hp and the winner may loot any items.

I'd welcome any feedback on my ideas.

I wasn't exactly trying to 'combine them', more like add a condition to the tile, so an earth tile with a fire condition would be a town, the earth element dominates and all earth tiles will work in 1 basic way but the fire condition makes it follow the town rules as opposed to the mountian, forest, etc rules.

I won't pretend to understand what I read, I was just fishing for useful stuff I could improve my game with, but I didn't get the elements 'fighting', rather what I took from it was that rather than canceling eachother out, the elements meet to create new things and it forms a cycle, so if one element effects another it moves the cycle along. Like using fire on earth and getting metal (refining process). Going the other way leads to competition, disharmony and destruction. Although, using earth on fire giving you wood doesn't sound bad to me at all - like I said, I won't pretend to understand it.

I ignored such things in my game because I wanted to make one which was fun to play, not one which would bring about balance between yin and yang forces. ;)

My whole idea was that it was a tile placing and then upgrading game so that there wouldn't be a board, even a random one until players construct it. The idea of a randomly generated board also doesn't hold much apeal to me (not because I don't like random stuff) because I want the playing field to represent an environment but also a system constructed by the players, the object is to adapt to the system constructed by the other players and use it against them. So the notion of uneven distrubution could work if we are talking about a set contianing say 11 water base tiles and only 4 metal base tiles - I'm not sure if I want to implement that, but I'll consider it.

As I said before, I am not trying to combine elements, rather seeing each element as not only an element (the base tile) but also a force - metal is associated with the west and with dryness, it manifests in the body in the lungs, a metal force applied to an already not so life sustaing metal environment gives you a place of minerals in which no life can grow = desert. I haven't applied the same logic to all my combinations (or applications of conditions) - for the purposes of my game I have metal base tiles as artificial environments which you can go into but you probalby can't live in. Getting energy from metal would require intelligence normall because you have to operate the mechanism of the metal environment (exception being the arena were combat is the 'mechanism')

I'm thinking of adding the possiblity of further tile conditions but don't want it to become too complex. In terms of the items and spells you can use to upgrade your heroes, a pistol for example might be 5 fire, 5 metal - while a magic sword could be 3 water - 6 metal, etc... A water hero might suffer a penalty to attack while using the metal and fire pistol because the water force would act on the fire element making it less effective but would suffer no penalty from using the sword because its metal is not effected by the water. However if a water hero tried to cast a wood, an earth or a metal spell there might be effects which using a wood, and earth or a metal weapon wouldn't cause.

I also wish other people would take an itnerest!
Thanks for your feedback and don't be affraid to suggest new/alterntative tile and condition combinations, I may not use them all but I'd be greatful to you.

They show that people are thinking about what they have to say!

Your tile suggestions were great, the purple pentagons were interesting and slightly trippy 8D, I'll show them to my brother who wanted a good pentagonal tessalation for some game.

As for the overall idea of the game, it's a simple one: build a pathway for your hero to get to the prime enemy square ("castle") and take it over.

Heroes are selected from a pile of them, there are no "always stronger" heroes, some are better at combat, some better at magic, some use items better. The hero has an elemental alignment. You can 'upgrade' your hero by drawing cards from a deck - the cards represent itmes which your hero can use or spell your hero can learn but each card has an elemental alignment. The 'upgrades' add conditions to the way the hero operates on the board (I kind of went into this before)
In a similar way, players can place a tile which also has an elemental alignment. The base tile has its own rules for drawing energy, combat on the tile and how to capture it from the other player. You can then optionally draw cards and add them to the base tile, these improve the tile making it harder for the enemy to capture, easier for a hero with the elemental alignment of one of yours to draw energy from or dangerous for a hero with the elemental alignment of one of your enemies to cross. The conditions you apply to the base tile also have an elemental alignment.
A player's tiles are meant to function together as a system, the player will have these tiles to defend, these tiles to draw energy for more 'upgrades' and these tiles to heal heroes as well as this tile which acts as maybe a 'shop', 'bank' or 'stash'.

I like the idea of hexagonal tiles because it allows for more indirect routes into the enemy territory, I think square or pentagonal tiles could work too though. As for the board, I'm not sure if one is even needed, the main idea of the game is to give players the freedom to create the environment of the territory in which they own tiles, or at least the illusion that they are doing so.

For this reason I'd rather go with 5 types of tile, representing the 5 elements, I don't know how players would indicate that they own the tile or how they would indicate which 'upgrades' they have placed on the tile, seperate tiles for each new condition could become clumsy but to keep it simple only 5 types with however many of each.

I'm not sure that addresses points you have raised, you have some good ideas. If you want to 'steal' my theme and create your own game, you have my blessing*, otherwise I really apreciate all the feedback I'm getting.

* so long as you don't copyright it to the extent where I can't develop something based on my inital ideas later on.

Heh-heh, nah, I don't want to give players true freedom,just the illusion that they are building "their own magical land" rather than assembling it out of parts I made for them.
I'm going to try a very simple version with only 3 types of element and square tiles, but not right now.

As for the oblivion fields, I'd rather not, that is what some of the elements are for. For example, fire tile with fire condition applied to it gives you an inferno, no heroes except for those with a very strong fire alignment would be able to cross it without suffering heavy damage. Drawing energy would be impossible for any non fire aligned heroes, all wood and metal items would be destroyed unless they had a very high fire alignment as well, etc...
Likewise ocean for water.
In fact most of the elements with the same element condition applied to them would give you a very hostile environment.