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Many ideas

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Spidey110
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Hi everyone, I've posted only a few times already so now I want to put some of my ideas out there, I hope some of you find them interesting enough to comment on :)

BOULANGERIE
A game where players compete to be the most popular bakery in the town. They achieve this by expanding, hiring employees with certain bakery skills and buying specialised equipment to make the goods which ultimately go onto their display for sale to the public. The types of goods which are most valuable are dictated by the tastes of the local population and on how easy they are to obtain. A core concept will be the effect of weather on the quality of the flour. Too much frost/rain or too dry weather will affect the crop, and this impacts the price the bakers must pay for their flour. The weather is determined by rolling dice during each harvest.

PARTICLE PHYSICS THEMED GAME
Players represent research teams conducting experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Each of the four main detectors can be used to collect the data from different types of experiment, represented by card decks. Each experiment requires a certain level of energy (represented by different types of dice from d4 to d20) and a success criteria representing the different levels of certainty (up to 5 sigma). Lots of ways to interact - bidding for player order, experiments chosen by drafting or 'I split, you choose', recruiting the best scientists, obtaining funding. The scientific community will also conduct experiments, limiting access to some detectors and to the computing grid, shutting down the accelerator for upgrades, helium leaks, etc.

WATLING STREET
Inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard, players represent workers at an archaeological dig racing to uncover as much of the hoard as possible before news of the find reaches the public - and the greedy night-hawkers who will try to steal some gold.

LIMITLESS
Inspired by the movie and the TV show, players compete to catch criminals whilst evading the plots of Senator Morra and Mr Sands. Players have different roles based in that universe, and one is secretly working for one of the villains. That player has access to NZT, but can the other players figure that out and catch the player before he/she triggers the win condition. I'd like to use a Mancala mechanic to plan the actions available to players in this game.

OTHERS
- A trench digging WW1 non-conflict game
- Time travel using a timeline represented by cards that can be substituted by the time travellers
- Endangered species reintroduction theme

Anyway, those are the projects that excite me the most at the moment and I welcome your comments on the ideas.

Chris.

ssm
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1. From what I have seen a

1. From what I have seen a bakery or management game needs to have an art style that really captures people's attention. The ones I have seen (prototypes) that seemed to be liked the best had a style that gave the idea that there was a lot of rushing around going on in the play area. Like the workers were harried.
2. I like it & think that any discovery made should yield some 'public' results that may tie into other experiments. So, I may choose 4 experiments, but for one of those I may only have to run 1 experiment since other player's experiments gave me the data I needed.
3. I like it but think you may want to swap out gold for artifacts. If they steal artifacts that could mean that the players earn less money since there are fewer finds, and can also set up an expansion/part 2 of hunting down artifacts.
I love trench warfare. In order for me to make a game based on it (whether combat or not) I feel I would need to really, really learn how it all actually works so I could give realistic winning conditions (configurations that worked best, distances of no mans land, if air travel is used- how to fake the size/shape of trench to throw off opponent, etc).

questccg
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Several concurrent ideas

I find that having a "catalog" of games you might be "designing" to be beneficial -- especially with "getting stuck" with design issues for any given game you are working on.

While some people prefer to go to "other" activities, I find it good to review the various "game ideas" that I have in my list of designs.

So while I only work on one or two designs ... I review a list of over 10 designs on a monthly basis. Especially when one of the designs I work on has gotten me stuck with one aspect or component of that game.

Doing that review -- helps me see if anything *new* might spring up and be more worthwhile investigating than the design I am currently working on.

For example, just recently I had planned to work on "Quest Adventure Cards(tm) - Version 2.0"... I've been stuck on the "concept" phase because I don't see how the game will play. And then a couple days later, I did my review of games -- and "SpellMasters" caught my attention. I don't know what it was, but I felt like this design had the most realistic possibilities to "develop" the concept further.

I went from a few "dis-joint" ideas, to actually designing "Lore" cards and figuring out how the "core" plays together... Granted the concept is still not finished, I definitely got to flesh out a bunch of details...

And that's like your many IDEAS -- people looking for GAMES and that means a rulebook, a hook, something playable...

So while I think having all those ideas is GREAT, focusing on one or two at various times makes the design process more proliferate.

Good luck(?!) with your game ideas, I'm sure you'll be able to churn out one or more games out of them.

Cheers.

pelle
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ssm wrote: I love trench

ssm wrote:

I love trench warfare. In order for me to make a game based on it (whether combat or not) I feel I would need to really, really learn how it all actually works so I could give realistic winning conditions (configurations that worked best, distances of no mans land, if air travel is used- how to fake the size/shape of trench to throw off opponent, etc).

I made a game based on trench warfare and if OP is in need of inspiration for trench building I can compile a list of links to online documents and books. There were some very detailed instructions manuals printed during the war that most likely covers everything you ever want to know about digging your own trenches. :)

pelle
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questccg wrote:I find that

questccg wrote:
I find that having a "catalog" of games you might be "designing" to be beneficial -- especially with "getting stuck" with design issues for any given game you are working on.

I have a big document (in org-mode) where I try to add (sporadically) my game projects that seem worth pursuing. Both boardgames and digital games (probably close to 50% of each).They are in status IDEA, WIP, ONHOLD, DONE. And I tag them by types and make sure to attach links to where I keep all files or URLs to where I have posted them online etc. Also of course notes and ideas and subsections with different design prototypes, until a game project gets serious enough that it gets its own documents somewhere else.

Currently at 19 completed games in the list of a total of 145. Not on track to having a chance to ever complete even half of them to be honest.

krone9
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I feel better now - we only

I feel better now - we only have 18 ideas on the go!

Spidey110
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Thank you all for the

Thank you all for the comments and encouragement :)

SSM, yes I had wondered about how to capture the feel of a bakery theme and it's something I might have to think about for a bit. I work closely with that industry so I may have a certain view that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality.

Questccg, Pelle, sounds like some good advice there, thank you. All of my notes are currently scribbles in a book, and a couple of pages of more substantial mechanical stuff for boulangerie, including a general idea of how the board might look. I just need to spend a few hours getting everything in to a more accessible form.

Pelle, yes I'd be interested in a few links about trench warfare please. How far did you take your design?

For the particle physics theme, I think the next stage is to study a bit more detail about how things are organised at CERN. Their guide to the LHC is useful and an interesting read besides, but I want to dig down and see if it can make sense for the endgame to be triggered by a 5-sigma discovery.

pelle
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Spidey110 wrote: Pelle, yes

Spidey110 wrote:

Pelle, yes I'd be interested in a few links about trench warfare please. How far did you take your design?

It was taken all the way to being published. :)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42881/trenches-valor

But that is a very abstract little game.

I have worked on more complex trench warfare games, but none that has been completed or published. Can post a little list later. There are some fascinating contemporary documents (free downloads) that I think are fun to read even if I can't come up with a reason to make any use of them for anything.

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