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Producer

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Wed, 12/29/2010 - 22:41
JoshuaOst
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So I've come up with a basic idea for a board game and I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out with the mechanics of it. I'm very new to abstract eurogames (I've only played Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, and Settlers of Catan) but I would like this to be something like those games (I'm thinking more on the lines of Puerto Rico).

The basic idea of the game is that every player is a film producer. The goal of the game is to gain influence and cash and the person with the most at the end wins. I'm thinking the game will end once all players have made a certain amount of films.
So to make a film one must acquire a screenplay. Screenplays are divided into three types of movies:
1. Low-Budget Slasher film (marketable but gains little influence)
2. Indie Art Film (not marketable but gains lots of influence)
3. Blockbuster (both marketable and gains influence)

Also to make a film one must acquire a crew consisting of a director, actors, and art department (I'm a film student and there are a lot more crew positions to make a movie but I'm thinking keep it simple. Maybe add cinematography too but I'm not that sure yet).

Each type of film requires a certain kind of crew. For example, slasher films don't require a great director or actors but must be heavy in art department. Indie Art Films require a Good director, decent actors, but doesn't need great art department. Blockbusters require well-known actors, a decent director, and heavy art department.

I'm thinking about dividing each type of crew member by quality. For example A,B,C,D level actors, directors, and art department.

Sorry if this is all kind of jumbled but I just started working on the idea today. I have no idea how the game should start or what kind of mechanics should be implemented. Maybe if I follow the basics of Puerto Rico I could divide the crew into roles which players pick on each turn instead of primarily being the producer. There are so many things that are involved in the filmmaking process that it's kind of hard to strip it down to the basics and make it more of an abstract type of game. Please help if you can, I've never made a board game before.

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Wed, 12/29/2010 - 22:46
#1
JoshuaOst
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If anyone could point me to

If anyone could point me to information on game mechanics and how to develop them within a game that would be great.

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Thu, 12/30/2010 - 00:08
#2
sedjtroll
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Welcome to BGDF!

JoshuaOst wrote:
If anyone could point me to information on game mechanics and how to develop them within a game that would be great.

There are many threads in this site about various game mechanics, you might need to decide how you'd like the game to work, mechanically, before anyone can answer this question for you. For example, I don't know how accurate-to-life it is to say that producers essentially bid for good screenplays and actors, but maybe you could have auctions for the various parts of your movies...

In fact, if you take a look at Reiner Knizia's Traumfabrik (republished more recently and in America as Hollywood Blockbuster, and is apparently coming out again as Dream Factory) - it's an auction game about putting together directors, actors, sound crews and special effects crews for movies! Sounds similar to what you are trying to do, at least in theme. It would be worth trying that game as research, and also it's a clever game. One of the clever bits is that there's a set amount of money in the game. When a player wins an auction, his bid is split between the other players. No money ever leaves or enters the system.

So to sum up, you should check out Dream Factory, and then you should decide how you'd like your game to play out before we can really help with how to develop the mechanics to do so.

Also, please don't be discouraged because a similar game exists! It's worth making a game that will end up similar to something else anyway, just for the experience, and also - if you go another route (not auctions), then you could easily have an entirely different game with a Hollywood theme!

Here's something I wouldn't mind seeing in such a game - some way of handling a "flop" or "bomb." Recently I've been reading up on how a movie I rather like - Cutthroat Island - holds (or at least held) the Guinness Book Of World Records title for Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time. It tanked the production company, Geena Davis' career, the career of the director, and in fact the marketability of Pirate movies throughout Hollywood for almost a decade (until Pirates of the Caribbean came out). Despite all that, the score was highly praised. I don't know how, but it would be cool if things like that worked their way into the game.

Off the top of my head, films could have a Production Cost or Budget or whatever, the number of millions of dollars spent making it. Each piece of the movie could contribute to a random (die roll?) Box Office Gross - and arrange it such that if the roll is low (or the variance is high based on the pieces of the movie chosen) then the movie will flop. It would be cool if a player could insulate themselves against that, either by spending less money in the first place, or by getting certain types of things that are more reliable (like causing the Gross roll to be 5d6 instead of 1d20 and 1d10)

Also fun might be to have something like in The Producers, where the whole point is to make a spectacular flop :)

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Sat, 01/01/2011 - 16:43
#3
JoshuaOst
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So I figured out the basics

So I figured out the basics of how this game should work. At the beginning of the game each player gets 5 different screenplays and get produce up to 3 at a time. Each player is given a board that is split up into three sections. The first section is pre-production where a crew is assembled and a budget is given to each movie. The second is Production which is a seven tile timeline. A production piece moves one space for each turn and a dice is rolled to determine if the player gets a good production card, nothing, or a bad production card. Depending on what kind of budget the movie has will determine what numbers will give you a type of production card.
Example:
A dice roll of 4-9 will get a good production card and 1-2/11-12 will get you a bad production card for high budget films
A dice roll of 6-8 will get a good production card and 1-3/10-12 will get you a bad production card for medium budget films
A dice roll of 7 will get you a good production car and 1-4/10-12 will get you a bad production card for low budget films

Production cards can speed up/slow down your production give you excitement/marketing points which help to sell the film to a distribution company as well as other things that I'm not too sure about yet.

The last phase is post-production where you will decide between a director's cut or a studio cut. Each has it's benefits, director's cut will give you influence studio cut will give you more marketability. I'm thinking the amount of influence you get will only be worth something at the end of the game when awards are given out which will produce cash for you. The most amount of cash a player has at the end of the game will determine the winner. But influence can also allow you to get certain actors and other crew where money can't. There is also the idea of contracts where you can sign an actor so only you can use that actor unless you negotiate with other producers for a certain amount of money. Otherwise actors/directors/art department are all free agents and can work on multiple films at a time. I'm thinking this could negatively effect productions or I'm thinking just to throw out the idea all together because it's too complicated.

Turns work in a number of ways. In pre-production a player can take on up to three screenplays and assign crew for each all in one turn. The negative side of producing more than one movie at a time is you will be working on a lower budget for each unless you have a lot of cash. At the beginning of the game though it's kind of a risk because you're working on limited funds. I'm thinking you could also use turns to raise money from backers in pre-production but this will slow you down. After pre-production, production takes 7 turns unless it's sped up by good production cards. Post-production is like pre-production, you can decide between a director's cut or a studio cut and sell it to a distributor all in one turn but you're probably going to want to submit it to film festivals and raise advertising (two entirely different ideas I haven't figured out yet so I'm wondering if I should even bother with them.) Depending on how much excitement you raise and your influence will determine what distribution company you sell to. I would like the player to be able to make money from a film after selling it to a distribution company but I'm not sure how this would work either. How a film does after you sell it should also affect the awards you can win at the end of the game.

As you can see all these ideas are kind of jumbled and I can't figure out how one mechanic should work without adding a whole bunch of other mechanics to the game. I'm trying to make this as simple as possible but it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

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Sun, 01/02/2011 - 15:54
#4
sedjtroll
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JoshuaOst wrote:As you can

JoshuaOst wrote:
As you can see all these ideas are kind of jumbled and I can't figure out how one mechanic should work without adding a whole bunch of other mechanics to the game. I'm trying to make this as simple as possible but it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

It never does! That's good though - start with "too much" - then iteratively remove parts that aren't good, aren't working, or aren't worth it until you end up with something you're happy with. :)

You can abstract some of that by, for example, having a value for each movie (each part you add may contribute to it - maybe those good and bad production thingies) and that represents how well the movie does after you sell it. Maybe to keep it interesting it's just a relative measure, and at the end of the game you look at all the movies people have sold, and order them based on that value - award bonus points in that order to represent movies that went over best/worst after they came out.

Sounds like you have some good ideas there - I hope you continue to work on it, get a prototype together, and when you think you've got a good first rules draft I hope you post it here for discussion!

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