Evil Genius - Worker placement game

I think this could be a lot of fun. I especially like the "motivate workers" idea by killing one of them.

However, I would like to see more thematic mechanics. What about some sort of "good vs. evil" mechanics? Perhaps there can be times in the game when a payer is presented with two options or scenarios, and the player has to decide which one to do - one would raise his evil meter (or points, or whatever you call it) but then the other would lower it. For example, a player draws a card that says "An old lady is being mugged by some robbers". You can either help her and get a small reward (money, other resources, but lose evil points) or kill them all (no money or resources, but extra evil points).

You could even combine this mechanic with some sort of superhero mechanic. Maybe you could have a small collect of superheros that frequent the play board every so often. When that happens, maybe the superhero "aligns" with the players who don't have many evil points (because they are more good than bad). This would have some negative consequence, like it impedes their ability to do more evil things. On the flip side, when the superhero comes into play, he will become "enemies" with any player with a lot of evil point. I'm not sure where you'd go from there though - maybe you could get a huge reward/vp points if you kill a superhero, but the only way to do so would be to make him/her your enemy, hence you need a lot of evil points...

Anyways, just a few ideas :)

I understand that your main issue is with the workers/minions, and how they are placed on the board(s). However, what is going to capture the imagination of the players will likely be the evil geniuses.'

Once you achieve your main objective, which is figuring out the way in which you want the placement of minions, how will you simultaneously achieve your secondary objective of reinforcing the theme or the mechanics.

Game mechanics are the nuts and bolts of how your game will work. Theme will be the icing on the cake. Mechanics make the game work. Theme drives the addiction.

The core essence of your game's central premise revolves around evil geniuses. Because they are evil, these geniuses are de facto villains from the start. And because they are not just ordinary villains, but villains who are geniuses in their own right, they are de facto super villains. It's what they all share in common. It is the tie that binds.

So, perhaps a review of some of Comicdom's super villains is in order. Here's a link to a handy list that you might find worth reviewing, just to get your creative juices flowing. I don't agree with it, but I do find it useful insofar as stimulating the thought process, as it relates to super villains.

http://comics.ign.com/top-100-villains/

As far as reinforcing the theme for your games goes, I believe that obsession of some sort of other is key to what drives the evil geniuses of your game. Thus, I ask you, what are each of your evil geniuses obsessed with? Is it pursuit of a singular thing, such as a death ray or a doomsday device? Is it obsession with a particular superhero that seeks to stop them? Could it be an obsession with one another? Is it all of the above, and then some?

Winning the game, no matter what the game is, nor what kind of game a particular game is, is all fine and dandy. But, the important question seems to me to be, what is it that will make your game fun? Isn't the true objective that the players become as obsessed as the evil geniuses that they play? What is going to make them want to come back for more, time and time and time, again?

If your game fails to scratch that proverbial itch, then I just don't think that the evil geniuses that you seek to create in this game laboratory of yours (Ooh....laboratory needs to be in that previous category of evil lair, secret hideout, bases, etc.) will pass muster with players. Thus, in order to drive the theme, I believe that it is imperative that you instill obsession into your game, and in heavy doses, at that. It is the touchstone upon which all else is built, the foundation upon which all else shall rest.

Granted, that's just my take on it. Your mileage may vary.

When Superman seeks to save the city of Metropolis, or the world, or the galaxy, or the universe from danger or destruction, his fans sympathize with his objective. He represents the epitome, the high mark, of humanity. Fans of super villains delight in the cleverness of their evil and wicked objects of affection. The HOW of their evil schemes is what intrigues. That's where the delightful factor comes in, I think. Just killing millions of people, in and of itself, isn't what's impressive about super villains. The "juice" of super villains, aka evil geniuses, lies in the means to the end, rather than the end, itself.

Reinforcing the theme is my primary focal point in what motivates me to post in this thread. Anything that I toss out in this thread is for your consumption or disregard, as you see fit. So, take my input and feedback with a grain of salt, and don't allow any of it to distract from whatever the game is that you seek to bring to fruition.

That said. . .

What will make the players obsess? What is it that is going to give your game the "juice?" What will keep them coming back?

I suggest to you that it will be failure, more than it will be success. Why? Because, success will give players a sense of accomplishment, whereas failure will inject them with frustration. Answer me this, Doctor Blunder - How many evil geniuses do you know of that have never experienced failure? What is it that makes these very same evil geniuses strive to succeed? What makes them want to succeed, if not failure?

How many paths to failure does your game encompass?

The Road to Hell (failure) should be wide, don't you think? The Path to Heaven (success) should be narrow, shouldn't it?

If all player positions in your game are evil genius positions, then are they competing just and only against one another? If so, then the forces of good will be governed and ruled by artificial intelligence, of some sort. If you want evil geniuses to capture obsession, as part of its overall flavor, then you might also want to incorporate diabolical intelligence to represent the forces of good. In other words, what you "need" is one or more human beings to play that role opposite the evil geniuses of the day.

Oh, and you need a timer. You don't necessarily need a timer for every evil genius, nor for any given evil quest, but in at least some instances, a timer may prove useful in increasing the frustration factor. How? By driving players right up the wall. Are the good guys up against the clock to stop Doctor Blunder (Sorry to apprehend your forum moniker, but it work well as a super villain, I think)? Or is Doctor Blunder ever up against the clock in assembling his doomsday device? A timer holds much potential, I think, for injecting a real sense of urgency into players. Ever play Hot Potato?

The Countdown Clock, the same thing in different name or form, could be determined via means other than an actual timer. A roll of dice by players could determine how long a given game is, or how long a given sequence of the game is.

As far as assembling a doomsday device is concerned, you have the option of "assembling" the play of the game in stages. I know relatively little about either the mechanics or the board, so I don't know what all that you might or might not envision as being possible or applicable within the overall framework of your game.

It strikes me that a game that revolves around evil geniuses plying their trade is well suited for "Gotcha!" moments.

I mean, after all, if you've got several of these diabolical bastards striving to beat one another to the punch, would they really be above sabotaging one another? And what better way to do that than by sabotaging the other guy's secret lair?

Or, better yet, just taking it over intact!

Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. What could possibly be more frustrating than losing one's base to the up-and-coming upstart? Well, being mind controlled by them, perhaps, but you're after something a tad more simple, aren't you?

Modular bases. Maybe a square, surrounded by squares, surrounded by yet a third layer of squares. All nice and tidy, and no base sprawl. You didn't want base sprawl, right? That costs extra. Nice modular design. The great evil thinkers of our time will simply have to adapt to the surroundings that we foist upon them. Very nice of them to cooperate, wouldn't you agree?

Now, on to something else.

Yeah, about that hold world thing, let's talk about something else, first.

Erase your mind, and consider this - Media headlines!

What better way to frustrate pursuits of doomsday devices and galactic control than by side-tracking players with becoming obsessed with what the media is reporting? Besides, I always wanted to come up for a use for those over-sized index cards, when doing a mock-up for a board game.

Now, what to put on them is another thing, altogether. I am just trying to reinforce the theme, here, not sort out the details of game mechanics.

And why is retaliation based upon too many workers in a given area? Just curious, that's all.

OK.

Hey there Blunder.

I have worked on an Evil Genius game for quite some time now. I just checked and the first document I saved in which I collected some initial thoughts and brainstorming ideas is from back in 2009. That makes it the oldest game in my list, actually it is the very first one and marks the beginning of me becoming a hobby designer, and it is the game I have put the most work into. It is currently in its fifth prototype stage, meaning I build four prototypes, tested them and throw them away since I was never truly satisfied with the result. Right now it has the working title Evil Empire since I began to distance myself from the video game. I just ran into too many problems converting the video game to cardboard. The solution came when I realized that for me it would be better if I use the video game purely as an inspirational source rather than a template.

I am happy to share my thoughts and some of my work with you and maybe some of my ideas will help you in designing your game.

You might also be interested in this blog:

http://www.bgdf.com/node/780

As a matter of fact, it was this blog that brought me here when I was searching the internet for Evil Genius based boardgames.

I like it. I went a similar way and decided on different ways of achieving victory, mainly inspired by Chaos from the Old World. And just like in CftOW there is a way for the game to beat the players (translate: the agencies win).

Since I have an Evil "Empire" one of my victory conditions is Influence, which is still a fancier word for Victory Points. Mostly Influence comes from an area control mechanic. Basically my game is a mix of area control and worker placement. It represents the later parts in the video game when you capture the five diplomats and use their informations to place a spy in the five governments.
A player may gain influence by comitting Acts of Infamy in specific regions or they may buy it with money. Along with the obvious doomsday device this offers the players different strategies they may pursue. One player might concentrate on science, another one on terrorizing the world.

I still have Notoriety but I use it in a different way which I will explain later.

Yes, i would have loved that too and it was part of my game in versions 1 to 3. I finally dismissed the idea for V4.0 since I still had the problem that my game was too extensive and I had to make cuts (a single playthrough of V3.2 took more than 4 hours!). I would love to see if you can come up with an idea on how to integrate specialists. Even after I restricted myself to only Level 1 minions ( guards, valets and technicians) I couldn't make it work. I hope you can do better.

Let's talk about Heat. One of my major problems with my version of this game was missing player interaction. I finally solved it (only in the latest version) when I came up with the idea of using Heat as a ressource. At some point I made it just like you: linking the appearance, strength and numbers of secret agents to the notoriety level of a player. And it worked pretty well. I used a deck of secret agent cards and at the end of each round a number of cards (depending on the number of players) would be drawn. Each card shows a table like this:

Notoriety:

0 - 10: none
11 - 20: bad
21 - 30: average
etc.

Each player would then compare his current level of notoriety with this and determine if a group of agents (I had sabouteurs, thieves, commandos,... ) would pay him a visit and how experienced they were. As I said that worked pretty well and I still believe that it is a good idea to use notoriety but this kind of approach didn't allow for any player interactions which I desperately want in my games.

But when I (re-)introduced Heat and made it a ressource I suddenly got my interaction. Every time a player commits an Act of Infamy he receives Notoriety and Heat.
Heat can be used by your opponents for all kinds of nasty things including sending secret agents to your base.

That offered another opportunity because after I decided to use Influence instead of Notoriety as Victory Points, I had to decide what to do with notoriety. And I made it into another ressource. For example players have "Evil Genius" cards and they pay them with Notoriety instead of money. Of course, that isn't the only use for notoriety: e.g. you may exchange it for Influence (threaten government officials).

That means that a player may commit more Acts of Infamy to gain Notoriety. The more Notoriety he has the more he can achieve or the faster he can achieve his goals. But on the other hand he also receives more Heat and his opponents will definitively use that against him.
A player that tries to stay under the radar, for example he tries to develop his doomsday machine as secretly as possible, doesn't have to put up with the annoying effects of Heat as much but his development will most likely be slower.

You said:

So maybe you could consider notorietyand/or heat as secondary ressources too.

Unfortunately I can't really help you with the worker placement. I never played Manhatten Project and since you don't want it to be a rethemed version of that game it doesn't make much sense for me to revisit video reviews of that game.
But as GrimFinger already said it will be this mechanic what will make the game fun or fail. You better give this a second thought and don't think too much about theme or how research is done. If you want to make it a worker placement game than this needs to be your first point of focus. You can always come back to those other parts and develop them later. In a worker placement game it is not so important how and when secret agents show up. The worker placement mechanic is important. Start there.

As for the theme: The Theme works pretty much on its own. Evil genius the video game is a parody of the classic secret agent movies but maybe a little more sincere than Austin Powers. As long as you don't want to change that setting (and I strongly advice you don't since that is a big part of what makes the game so fun) I don't believe you have to worry about theme.

An interesting thread, which made me look back through my files to an old 80% design of mine and dust it off for a look see. I don’t think there is any denying that the Evil Genius theme is a draw for lots of designers and players. Even as I write there is a game on Kickstarter with this theme called Evil Intent – which is doing very well in terms of reaching its goal.

If you will forgive me, I won’t go into the movement/ worker placement mechanics in my own design. I try to come up with different mechanics for games and the ones in this one are very different from the ones I’ve seen before – so I’m keeping them in the evil workshop for now.

However, I will say that they revolve around the minions more than their masters. An Evil Genius doesn’t just acquire his and her minions, they have to be cultivated and given ‘in the field experience’ to raise their effectiveness. So my design focuses a lot on the build up and the interplay that results while it’s happening. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it wasn’t destroyed in a day – artful destruction takes a little time and planning.

I will reveal my cast list though. The different minions have a common association with one of 6 Genii, but they start out as individuals with no marked affiliation. Minions who find themselves working for their associated Genius receive a bonus and this bonus increases as more slots are filled with other minions sharing that bond. If an evil Genius accumulates all the minions associated with them the bonuses accumulate nicely, but it’s very hard to do and even harder to keep hold of them if you do.

In relation to the theme I have 6 Evil Genii, each one having dominion over an area of unsavory dastardliness – present within our world. Instead of using heroic characters, or known characters, I just made them up. The good guys in the design work for N.I.C.E. – which is the National Institute of Criminal Eradication.

So without further ado, here is my cast list of moral degenerates (Genius – Minions)

Dr Nyco Teanium – Smokey Lunghi, Maligant Tumor, Noxious Smeale, Rancid Staines
Violentia Pane – Femur Fetale, Mitus Popsicle, Lunar Tyko, Rigor Mortis
Uranius Gloom – Exhume Valdez, Vieri Toxic, Paul Utense, Petra Li’Um
Stimulus Bane – Caffeena Trix, Prue Zacko, Mac Beefy, Ali Cahoul
Avaricious Gold – Werther Risk, Vanity Blaze, Habeus Corpus, Ethica Void
Mister Oblivion – Amelia Nitrate, Xavier Stazzi, Coco Kaine, Poppy Distell

And the N.I.C.E. guys

Prof A. Lactic (Archemedes) – Aunty Oxidance, Dr Banquo, Baby Face, Sai O Nora, Dorothy Veil, Tempus Wake, Virginia Hope, Victor Vitale

A lot of them are plays on words :)

Using existing characters would cost a fortune in licensing, unless the game was picked up by a publisher with existing links. So making up your own villains is probably the way to go. And it will also give the theme of your game its own particular brand of quirkiness.

Cool!, Have not read the rules, but the artworks looks funny.