The game is called Smores. Collect the cards needed to make and eat a gooey, wonderfully chocolaty Smore. The first person to build a fire, collect their ingredients, and enjoy their Smore wins. Your opponents are trying to accomplish the same goal and may try to interfere with your plans.
2-6 players
The game has cards of the following types:
Firewood
Poison Ivy
Matches
Wet Matches
Fire
Rain
Graham Crackers
Broken Crackers
Roasting Stick
Short Stick
Marshmellows
Burnt Marshmellows
Chocolate
Hot Sun
Eat It
Dropped It
(8 cards of each type, 112 cards total; Each card has one that interferes with it (e.g., firewood and poison ivy))
Objective:
A player wins by being the first to lay down one card of each type in the following sequence: Firewood, Matches, Fire, Roasting Stick, Marshmellows, Chocolate, and Eat it.
Game Play:
-Shuffle the deck.
-Each player draws 7 cards. Players look at their cards, but do not show them to other player.
-Play starts with the youngest player.
-On a turn, a player draws a card from the top of the deck or from the top of the discard pile. The player may do one of the following:
--Build their sequence by laying down one or more cards in the correct order. Cards are laid down face up in front of the player.
--Interfere with another players sequence by playing an obstacle on top of their sequence. For example, you could play a “Poison Ivy” card on top of an opponent's “Firewood” card.
Note: You may only interfere with an opponent's sequence during the same round that they laid down the most recent part of the sequence. Further, your interference must match the sequence they laid down. For example, if your opponent laid down Firewood and Matches, you could only interfere with them by laying down Poison Ivy and Wet Matches.
--If you interfere with another player's sequence, all of the cards that were part of the interference are shuffled and put face up on top of the discard pile.
--Discard one card face up onto the discard pile.
-Play moves clockwise to the next player.
-If the deck runs out before there is a winner, the discard pile is resfuffled.
-A player wins when they have completed their sequence and eaten their Smore.
Comments & Questions:
-Basic game play enables players to have several strategies: They could build their sequence in the open, one card at a time. This opens them to more interference. They could build all or part their sequence in their hand and lay it out at one time. This is less prone to interference. Alternatively, a player could focus on a disruptive strategy and try to undo others' progress.
-One of the things I like about this concept is that the “story” can easily be changed while not really changing the mechanics of the game. For example, you could have a game of saints and sinners where the saints are trying to build something and sinners are interfering. Alternatively, you could play the game with abstract sequences.
-Would an element of sharing and trading be useful? For example, is there a way that players could share a fire or other resources? Could they trade resources?
-Is there a way to “steal” resources from an opponent?
-Is there a way you could win strictly by interfering with other players?
Thoughts/ideas/feedback welcomed!
Thanks to all of you for the constructive comments. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. It is very cool to have help in thinking about this.
A few thoughts about some of the comments:
1st round wins: Great point about a bad mechanic! I like the solution of imposing a constraint that you have to lay down a complete set at one time. I was also thinking that you might constrain players to have fewer cards in their hand than are required to win. For example, if there have to be 7 cards in a sequence, you constrain players to have only 5 in their hand at a time.
Team play and trading: I'd like teams to be flexible and dynamic. For example, in this round, I would use your fire to roast my marshmallow. Maybe it costs me a card or two (of a specific type?) to do this. This definitely requires some more thought because it introduces some new actions.
Target audience: I'm envisioning a family-style game with older kids (e.g.,parents, tweens, young teens). It needs to be a relatively quick play, maybe 10-15minutes maximum. Given this age range, I'd also like to build up the ability to win by doing something negative. In the current design, you can be an obstacle, but you can't win by being an obstacle. To me, this suggests that there has to be some common baseline that players are either trying to build up or tear down. Maybe that's a different game...
Playtesting with regular playing cards: Thanks for mentioning that. That's a quick, cheap, easy-to-do idea.
Hoarding/Stealing/Reactions: The idea that you could steal a resource with a special card could work well. With a sufficient number of "steal"cards, it adds to the dynamic of being an obstacle. I also like the idea of being able to react out of turn. That might drive up the pace of the game.