I have this game idea envisioned, and thought it would be cool to have a Catan style competitive trading/worker placement game at first, but in the end of the game something bad would happen and all the players would need to work together to survive it, something akin Arkham Horror's awakening.
My main concern in this is how the players would feel the game changing that much, how would they react having their position compromised?
What could be the best way to keep the players feeling right in this situation? Everybody wins! (but I'm the real winner since I "won" the first phase of the game), the winner is the winner unless no one makes it (they fail the last phase), or something different entirely?
How can I make the losing players of the first phase to be interested in the last phase?
I really would like the game to have this "it writes its own story" by having all sorts of weird and wonderful things happening, but still would like to have a strict game rules behind it.
By no means does this system make or break the game, I could have it go either co-op or competitive, but having both really intrigues me.
--- Additional info about the game follows (of which I'd be thankful to get feedback of course)
The theme of the game is that a bunch of ancient human tribes rush to settle a big island where some tribal god has been born, trying to live besides each other, fightin', reproducin', tradin' and meeple placin'.
The main thing about the game would be this mixing of the races (tribes) by each player having a big pouch of meeples from which you'd randomly take and place them. And forcing you to take the other colored meeples from the board, as rules would dictate, in to your own pouch to perhaps come up when you'd make your crucial worker placement.
This would not make it so that the meeple worked for the enemy, but to have it so that your race is mixing with another.
The different races would have a different racial quirks and skills you'd want to mix with others to gain the upper hand and some you would not want. And mutations through both, racial variety and inbreeding would be a thing to look out for.
I was thinking of having only a few long turns in the game, and each turn would be heavily influenced by the leader of the tribe and his racial mixture. Each turn would mean a new leader is born and chosen, and his genetic mixture would be made up from the content of your meeple pouch.
So the co-op style last phase would start when you go through those few long turns, and it would be to survive the wrath of the god waking in the middle of the island (taking inspiration heavily from the Arkham Horror).
In my mind the gods wrath would sink the production places on the board, leaving only few of each kind, so that the tribe who has the best hunters would need to inhabit forests, and the best farmers the fertile soil places, etc.
And since this thing is at the conceptual level, I tend to want to have more that is feasible. So a traitor mechanic would be cool to have too! By having each player to make sacrifices for the god each turn as much or as little as they like, which would dictate the final outcome in some way.
The thing is that I feel that I've never played any games that have traitor mechanics, so I just can't wrap my head around how would it affect the real problem that is the topic.
I haven't give the ending that much tought since, like I said, I'd like this to be more of an "story game" where the tribe of cannibals actually made it through by having the best farmers.
Any advice on the topic or the game itself would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
