Z-Man's monster game

I'm about ready to send in my entry. One more read through and it's off.

I'm pleased with the design, although I wonder now if I didn't misunderstand Zev's request that the game not deal with named monsters. Are multiple monsters of each type a requirement? I myself only have one mummy, one wolfman and so on. Ah well, I'm committed now, so let the dusty bones fall where they may!

Against my normal leanings, I wanted to play this theme straight, rather than humourously. At the top of my page, I kept this quote from a horror fanzine:

For the longest time, that was my gameplay design goal. I wanted to have a slider on the character card that would see the monsters descend from noble to beastly. The winner would be the monster that held on to the most pieces of its humanity.

In the end, though, this became an albatross and I had to let it go.

The trouble is, what separates human from beast is largely control and restraint, so remaining human was usually a matter of NOT doing something -- resisting temptation. Not fun to play.

I kept the sympathetic approach to monsters in my final design, but it's part of the overall theme now, not a gameplay element.

Best of luck to all. I'll be posting my proposal once we get a thread going, and I look forward to seeing what other folks wrote!

Yogurt

All right. Mine's in. Good luck to everyone!

Nate

Nice twist on the theme.

I went with a well used theme monster hunting. I tried to highlight the mechanics enough that it will stand out. Mine straddles the euro and traditional american game style fence. This i hope will make it more apealing to Z-man games.

Nice twist on the theme.

I went with a well used theme monster hunting. I tried to highlight the mechanics enough that it will stand out. Mine straddles the euro and traditional american game style fence. This i hope will make it more apealing to Z-man games.

Dang. I did the same thing, albeit with more Euro and less American. This is odd for me because I usually design about 60% american/ 40% Euro. Dral, if you feel so inclined drop me a line and share your idea and I'll do the same.

-Darke

I ended up submitting a proposal for my "Reverse Zombies" idea. Where players control the villagers trying to survive the Monsters. They also bid for control of the Monsters and kill each other's villagers. I added some neat twists and the game seems very cool indeed. We'll see.

I agree, VERY cool board.....

One question, for you oneword, what do you use to bid with? I like the sounds of it alot, the near simutaneous play is always cool to have in a game.

Mine is more like a race. Players start with 2 characters they can't lose, represented by a pawn, moving down winding paths on the board. As they come up vs the monsters (certain sections of the path tell you when and what type) they gain or lose other townsfolk that they are trying to get to the goal. Think about "Dawn of the Dead", a few main characters that pick up folks as they go along, the "townsfolk" are worth a range of victory points, the player that gets the most points to the goal is the winner.

-Shrike

I agree, although I did try to get balance in the encounters and get a pretty good feel for how all of the mechanics would work/fit, the proposal didn't need all of that, just puts me ahead on the off chance that the design moves to the next stage, otherwise it makes it easier to finish it just for the sake of doing so.

Shrike

You pretty much nailed it. When a players pawn stops in certain areas, they draw an "event" card. 24 total in the game and each player would run into 6 during the course of the game. Most have monsters, some have 2, a few have just challenges, most are a combo of both. The monsters leave after the event is resolved (back to the movie thought, each event is a scene) The reward for 16 of the 24 events is to gain a townfolk that is worth x victory points. I went w/ a 50's theme, greasers, letterman jackets, car hops, that type of thing to fit in with the monsters. There are cards for the players to help themselves with during their turns, reactions to mess with the other players. I tried to keep it simple as far as that goes, worked out pretty good, I hope. The hardest part now is going to be getting the board built up, sigh. Shouldn't be too bad, but I'm holding off a little before diving into it. I actually have to work at work sometimes, stupid Air Force.... =)

Shrike

at the last minute I decided to submit a simple card game based on the Monsters theme.

Each player is a screenwriter developing screenplays for hidden selected monsters; playing faceup Movie Element cards on their face down monsters (Castle gives points to Dracula and Frankenstien, but is worthless to the Creature from the Black Lagoon). A player can "lock out" a screen play when he is happy with his points on the screenplay.

However, a player may continue to add movie elements, BUT anyother player may steal a screenplay from another player if he can guess what movie monster it is. A correct guess awards ALL the points in that screenplay to the guesser, while an incorrect guess awards ALL the points in any screenplay to the defender from the guesser.

So, is it worth you time and energy to bluff and get a player to guess incorrectly on one of your screenplays? hmmmmm....

Of course, there's no board; however, since zman games apparently likes general goofy movie mayhem, who knows.

Gold. Players start with some and then get more by moving onto certain spaces and not getting killed by a monster. So a space might have a gold symbol with a 3 meaning it provides 3 gold. But it also may be a nice target for the Monster in that zone.

They move around the track over the course of the game. There are about 5 spaces per zone going one way and 5 coming back from the other zone. So something like 25 spaces. I thought of a system something like this: At game end, survivors on the board are worth say 2 VP. If they get to the end, they could be "hidden" for 1 VPs, thus ensuring a VP, but removing them from the rest of the game. you put them in a sanctuary space on the board and they are out of play. If they make it back around to the beginning of the game, you could "hide" as well in another place for 2 VPs. Players get Vps other ways too, for example, the idea is that the villagers have to live for 5 days until a Van Helsing type guy arrives. So there are also spaces with generic weapons icons. Players get these on these spaces. The player who has the most weapons (thus provides the most to the Van Helsing guy) gets a VP bonus at game end.

Each turn players bid on the 5 Monsters. they also bid on 3-4 special cards. Special cards offer bonus scoring (goals) or bonuses in the game.

Yes. Village has a zombie mob token, Lagoon has a AmphibianMan, Forest has a werewolf, Mountain Pass has Frankenstein, and Castle has Dracula. Each monster has different kill methods and effects on the game. Werewolf kills alot but you still get to get any bonuses for spaces you are on, Frankenstein kills 2 villagers and shuts down another spaces for production.

Yes and No, I mean, it's only at the proposal stage so I haven't played the game yet, but I feel this will vary from game to game depending on how fast or slow players move around the board. If there is a bottleneck in the Forest, well, the Werewolf is going to be bid higher. The game encourages negotiation and dealmaking. Like, "I'll give you 2 gold if you don't kill my guys with Dracula this turn" "Well you stand to make 5 if I don't so make it 3." etc...

Absolutely. It will probably scale well from 3-5. 2 players would work if each player controlled 2 sets of villagers and the player who has the better average score wins. I even think it could work with 6 or MAYBE 7...

It seems possible that Zev might not want the details of the selected games to be public. I know as a publisher, I wouldn't want details about my upcoming games released too early.

-- Matthew

If you get selected you should hold off until the publisher gives the ok to discuss it publicly.

Come on Shrike don’t be so humble.

Your game is the best and will be picked. If it is not the best why would you have entered?

Hey wait my game is the best!

All levity aside Z-Man and his brother-in-law may already have a mental picture of what they want. The games that can both fit that picture while at the same time meet his production requirements will likely be the ones picked. Z-Man is not a newbie and I am sure he has a plan for his product line that this game will need to fulfill before being made even if he is doing this as a favor for a relative.