castlepunk themed RPG board game: Turbodark

Hi there, I'm David. I make game art and I try to design games. Today I want to tell you about my new game idea.

This is supposed to be a light game for 2-4 players about recruiting misfit adventure seekers and sending them to various quests in an exagerrated dark age fantasy setting full of cultist priests, fanatic crusaders, rogue warlocks, renegade knights, savage elves, sentient golems and stuff like that.

After playtesting an early prototype of a dungeon crawler game I noticed that the most interesting thing was not fighting monsters but creating a party from randomly drawn pool of semi compatible races and professions, cramming them into a party and seing what happens. So this time I want to make a game focused around that and simplifying the dungeoneering aspect of the game.

The game would consist of the following elements:

- the game board with connected locations and two trackers: for time and points
- Race and profession cards that will form heroes in a way similar to that from "smallworld"
- quest cards and location cards that will have to be combined also. Quests consist of task cards.
- task cards that show what skills are required to pass complete them.
- action tokens in place of dice that will be drawn for the quest phase.
- 3 player pawns per player. One for the map and the rest for tracking time and points.
- special cards that can be used to influence the game

The basic game loop should look like this:
- All players start in the same location. each player has a pawn on a the start of a time tracker and on the 10th place of point tracker
- Player draws some race cards and combines them with randomly drawn profession cards.
- Players bid for the heroes they find most valuable and they pay with points.
- Next the player draws some quest cards and combines them with location card. Those quests stay until somebody completes it or fails it.
- Player may travel to a different location. He moves his pawn there and then moves his time tracking pawn forward based on the distance and the difficulty of the path.
- If there is a quest in his current location he may want to engage. Depending on the result, the quest can take more or less time and grant you bigger or lesser rewards.
- Ending the quest marks the end of turn for the player. Next player in line is the player last on the timeline, just like in "Thebes" for example.

Game ends when all players reach the end of the timeline. Then the player with the highest score wins.

how heroes work:
- Each hero is a combination of a random race and profession card.
- Heroes allow the player to draw action tokens during quests. The number of these tokens is determined both by the race and profession. Furthermore every profession has different ways of handling the action tokens. generally, every race and every profession has some favourite actions, so if they draw action tokens of other types, they will mulligan them.
- action tokens are drawn from the token sack.
- list of action tokens:
force
wits
rush
caution
magic
loot

how quests work:
- Quest cards have a number of tasks. When player gets to the quest location, he draws that many task cards.
- tasks require a number of specific actions to pass them.
- Player draws the ammount of action tokens according to his heroes action capacity. Then he may mulligan certain tokens according to his party traits.
- After that player must assign actions to the tasks to complete them. For every incomplete task player will suffer certain penalty.
- Upon finishig the quest, player gets a reward and has to pay his heroes their share... If the heroes made it to the end.
- Player can also disband heroes from his party and recruit new ones. The bigger the party the more actions can be drawn per quest and more difficult quests can be accomplished. But his party is also more expensive, as they have to be paid after every quest.

This is the basic idea. Now I have to make a prototype and test how it plays out. I will introduce other ideas after some initial playtesting. I will also share my thoughts.

Some more details about the game and the rules:
- players can bid for heroes but not for quests. Heroes work for the highets bidder, quests are given to those who get to them first (and are willing to take it).
- If more than one player wish to embark on the same quest, they can race for it. They place their pawns in the same location and whoever gets there first, i.e. is behind the other one on the timeline, will get the quest. If they arrive at the same time, they will have to flip a coin.
- different locations give different odds for drawing certain kinds of races or professions. And also quest types. If a player draws those cards and they are not native to the location, player will mulligan them. Same thing with quests.
- Hero cards can be drawn only when location has a tavern.
- quest cards can be drawn when location has a guild.
- quest crads have to be drawn along with the location cards that will indicate where this quest can be resolved.

I think that wil be all for now. I will write an update after some initial playtesting.