In the spirit of my previous post this is the first in what will be a series of posts about boardgames ideas that I have. Hopefully they will be useful to others and more hopefully I’ll use them to actually try and create one of the ideas!
People Power
What did the Romans ever do for us?
Every empire/civilization style boardgame I have played never seem to capture the internal struggle of running an empire. You basically run everything by fiat. You care not what your subjects think and you can’t really secretly force your opponent to do something.
This is a very general mechanic and nothing is really wrong with it, but there are two aspects that could be experimented with.
Experimentation
What if we push the button?
One is that players have to directly interact. This can lead to players feeling picked on, or not liking when others play aggressively even when it is the correct play. Games are a social activity so this is an important consideration. I hear Dune and Cosmic Encounters deal with this by controlling fof you who you attack.
Two these games generally assume you can perform any action without respect the politics of the world. You can go to war even when your people are against it. You can stop trading something your people really need. What if you had internal politics to deal with?
The People’s Deck
Players play cards in each others decks.
So my idea is that each empire has a deck of cards representing the Will of the People. Throughout the game cards are added to the deck, randomly, by opponents, by yourself. At certain points the deck is examined and the actions the player can take are altered by what the people support.
I envisage that play would heavily revolve around controlling these decks. It would allow aggressive players to start wars without others knowing. It would allow subterfuge where one player can cause trade disputes between two others.
It feels like there would need to be two game systems. One representing the mechanics of economy and military etc, which plays out on the board, the other the people’s desk and how cards are added and effects caused by it, which would be a card game.
Permutations on the Idea
Ideas come in all shapes and sizes.
There could be fewer empires then players. The players represent factions and are fighting to direct the will of people, who in turn control the board state. This could mean a simpler board system since it would not be player controlled.
A long form game could involve two rich systems with play rotating between them. One round yiu determine the will, then a round of board play, then another round to determine the will etc. I expect this would lead to a long game.
Another idea is it could be the basis of a pure economic game, deciding market demand for example, players could create markets by adding cards or research the existing market by looking at the deck.
Another idea could be a deck building game where you are adding cards to others decks? Something more balanced then just trying to add junk however.
Final thoughts
I particularly like the avenue for subterfuge and sneaky behaviour. It is something that makes Battlestar Galactica for example, so enjoyable, never being sure who to believe.
I think the key thing is to think about how this deck is built, how do players get the cards to add to it, how to balance adding cards to your own deck vs adding to an opponent’s. Also how it could be tied to the real part of the game.