I'm currently working on a piecepack-based design (link for piecepack info) that inflicted itself upon me the other day.
It's a coin-collecting game where each of the four players is a sorceror who is out to get as many spells (coins) as possible, by picking up the coins from the board and/or by winning them in 1-on-1 battles with the other sorcerors. The coins that a sorceror owns can be kept in 1 of two groups: (1) the stockpile is kept back at the sorceror's home and impacts the number of dice the sorceror can roll during his turn (more coins = more dice); (2) the "wears" are kept with the sorceror and determine his attack and defense power in battles.
Now, since the numbers rolled on the dice can be used to move the sorceror around the board, it seems that a couple of great rolls will give one player a distinct advantage, because they will be able to pick up more coins. So, to even things out in this regard (and to encourage battles "against the odds"), I've come up with the following scheme:
After a battle occurs (and the winner has been determined), the two sorcerors compare their total number of coins (stockpile + wears). If the winner has the same or more coins than the loser, they can take a single coin (winner's choice) from the loser. If, however, the winner has fewer coins than the loser, they can take either all-but-one coin from the loser's wears, or all-but-one coin from the loser's stockpile. (The loser is then allowed to re-distribute their remaining coins between the two groups.)
How well do you think this system would work? What problems will it lead to? I'm looking for the usual critical and clever opinions available at this forum. ;)
-Bryk
p.s. I realize that I haven't given you too much to go on, since I don't have a full set of the rules written-up and available for you yet. Just keep in mind that the piecepack itself limits the number of available coins (24 total), that the initial board setup puts 1 or 2 coins on every square on the board, and that the main point of the game is for each sorceror to venture out from their home, gather coins and battle as they see fit -- then return home to end the game (first sorcerer to get to their specific "touch square" and back home ends the game). Scoring will include points for different kinds of coins collected (there are 4 different suits in the piecepack), best score in a suit, bonus points for being the only one to own a suit, and special scoring for the suit that matches the player's color.
Thanks Seth ... you are right in that the stuff you don't know about the game may be more important than the stuff I was able to tell you about it. So ... I think I'll give you a bit more details here. (Hopefully this will help me in putting together the official rules doc!)
Without getting into the dark details of the game-board setup, I'll just tell you that the game is for 4 players, each playing a different color. The four "home" tiles are placed together in the middle of the board, and they are surrounded by the other board tiles, making up the "squares" the pawns move on. The 24 coins are distributed evenly around the board, at the intersections between 4 squares. The furthest squares from the home tiles will have 2 coins on them, while the others have 1. When a pawn moves into a square with a coin (or coins) on one of its corners, they can add that coin to their stockpile on their home tile. This means that moving a pawn so that it moves through 3 such squares will result in 3 (or more coins) being gained.
For each coin in a player's stockpile, they get to roll a die ... they will always roll a minimum of 1 die, and a maximum of 4 dice in a turn. So, players without anything in their stockpile (like at the start of the game) will still get to play each turn. And there comes a point where having more in your stockpile really does no good.
With each die that is rolled, the player can choose to "spend" that die to do one of the following:
Battles are determined by comparing each player's wears. For each sorceror, coins in their matching color represent their defense. Coins in their opponent's matching color represent their attack. Take each player's defense minus their opponent's attack, and the highest result wins. There are a few things to make these battles a bit more interesting:
From my quick playtesting that I've done, players generally had 4 to 8 coins on them at most times. Restricting movement doesn't really seem to be an issue either way ... the layout of the board is pretty compact -- the decision of what to spend your dice on seemed more of an issue.
One more thing to clarify about the board: There is a "touch" tile specific to each of the 4 players which is placed as far away from their home as you can get it on the board. Players have to navigate to a square adjacent to this tile (to pick up the tile) before they can set foot back in their home. The first one home ends the game.
Scoring (coins from stockpile & wears at the point the game ends are combined):
Hope that helps give a bit better feel for it ... I will hopefully have the real doc (with pictures -- especially of the board layout) done over the next handful of days. I'm really just looking for a way to handle battle-spoils to cause a good deal of coin-shifting, and to encourage the "small guys" to take on the "big guys" due to the potential reward.
-Bryk
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