Hello,
I got this idea while thinking about expandable dice games. This is a spin-off - see my last post in the original thread if you are interested in customizable dice games:
anyway, i got this idea about a peaceful, expandable dice game where every player tries to build the biggest city. it would be a semi-cooperative play, as players can work together (at least for a limited time) to achieve their goal. there is no theme or background setting yet, there is also no complete concept - this is just an idea open to discussion (although this game was inspired to some degree by the Sim City computer games):
1. players select a number of city-dice from their collections and place them in their dice-bags. then the players each draw a starting hand from their dice bags. each dice represents one building. players also start the game with a fixed amount of money tokens. the goal of the game is to acquire a fixed number of "city points".
2. during their turns, players bring new dice into play by paying money and meeting the requirements. they also gain taxes and have to satisfy the "needs" of their citizens (dice). most dice brought into play grant you "city points", so the player who builds the biggest city in the shortest time, wins the game.
3. needs/satisfaction (sorry for the bad wording): the key of the game. most dice feature either "needs" or "satisfaction" icons. once during your turn, you have to roll all your buildings (dice) in play and process the results. each "need" is negated by a "satisfaction" icon. so for each need you roll, you also have to roll one satisfaction result - put all dice you "satisfied" in a seperate pile.
possible needs are: "work", "shopping", "relaxing" etc. and their counterparts would be "jobs", "sale" and "hobby". some dice only feature "need" icons, while others provide "satisfaction" icons, some also feature mixed icons.
Example: A "Small Apartment" (Residence Type, Color Green) dice features a lot of need symbols. A mix of work, shopping and relax icons. If you roll it and score a "work" result. You must roll a "job" result with another die. On the other hand, the "Small Factory" (Industrial Type, Color Yellow) dice shows a lot of "job" results, together with some "pollution", "crime" and "explosion" symbols on it. If you roll a "job" result with that die, its able to negate the "work" symbol of the apartment die.
4. of course you have to resolve all special icons and icons that where not negated, like "fire", "crime", "pollution" and so on.
5. at the end of your turn, you gain income in form of taxes. you gain 1 money token for every Residence type die in your seperated pile (the pile where dice go, wich you where able to satisfy this turn).
6. One more thing im thinking about is dividing your city into "zones" to seperate dice into piles. each pile represents one enclosed city disctrict, and fires, pollution or crime don't spread to the other districts. this allows a little bit more strategy of how bringing dice into play (wich dice and where to place them).
Thats it for now. Its all a bit vague - i know. But this is just an idea i got when thinking about dice games in general. I tought this idea is just too good to let it go. and buildings are easy to represent with icons on die faces, bigger buildings could be represented with bigger dice. it sounds all nice and reasonable to me. all it lacks is the right concept and a bit more of strategy, as it is far too random right now. finally: its a non-combat game - what a delight!
any thoughts are appreciated!
Thank you for your feedback, but i rather go with a simple set of icons. But there will be a identity (or face) side on every die that shows the front of the building it represents (just as you described in your post).
Right now, the main problem is that the players dont have very much to do besides rolling and bringing new dice into play (thats a common problem with dice based games). Stuff i was thinking about:
* divide the gameboard into city districts and allow players to build different kinds of buildings in the districts. this also seperates traffic, pollution and crime.
* instead of rolling all dice per turn, there could be a set of rules that allows the player to roll only dice of a certain type. this would allow players to avoid rolling pollution heavy dice or traffic heavy dice. the thing is how to accomplish the selection process.
thats all for now - please keep posting if you have any ideas!