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Game mechanic sought - piece movement

4 replies [Last post]
Wed, 11/26/2003 - 06:56
Anonymous

I am trying to decide on a game mechanic for player pieces, and I am trying to decide if it is an arbitrary choice, or a themed choice. Also, if some mechanic will work better then others.

Assume 2 player game. Each player has 5 pieces, each of which may have 1-5 actions. What would be a good mechanic?

A) Roll to see who goes first. Players alternate until only one player remains, who then completes his moves?

B) Roll to see which piece goes first? That piece completes all his moves. Alternate players?

C) Roll among pieces with most number of actions ...

D) Player with most number of actions ...

E) Player with fewer actions ...

etc...

I guess this is a pretty open ended kind of question. Maybe just tell me what mechanic you WOULDN'T want to see.

Thanks,
Yehuda

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Wed, 11/26/2003 - 09:33
#1
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Game mechanic sought - piece movement

Yehuda,

Without knowing more about the game itself, it's hard to comment too intelligently, but I would say that there are a couple of ways you could think about it.

First, I'm under the impression that you have 5 pieces numbered 1-5, and the number gives the movement range. I'm basing my analysis on that.

In the game El Grande, each card has a number of guys that it allows you to place on the board, and a correponding power, which scales pretty much with card number. Thus, the high number cards also have the most powerful abilities. There's a bidding mechanic to decide which player will go first. That might be a simple solution.

Or, if you had an inverse correspondence where the low-number pieces also had some other special power, then you could just have high-value pieces move first, with the more powerful pieces moving last.

Or, you could just have each player move one piece at a time, whichever they want, and have some way of keeping track of which has moved.

I think that based on what you have said, it's almost hard to say whether you could make a bad choice. Especially if your game is short, just try some different things out and see which seems to work best!

good luck,

Jeff

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Wed, 11/26/2003 - 16:20
#2
FastLearner
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game mechanic sought - piece movement

No offense intended: To me this question is comparable to "I have a piece of paper and a pencil: what should I draw?" It strikes me that you don't have an idea for a game.

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Wed, 11/26/2003 - 17:04
#3
Anonymous
Game mechanic sought - piece movement

FastLearner wrote:
No offense intended: To me this question is comparable to "I have a piece of paper and a pencil: what should I draw?" It strikes me that you don't have an idea for a game.

Fair enough. I didn't realize the question would be so broad when I first started asking it.

I have a game with many different phases, end conditions, theme, story, piece types, resources, etc..

The only thing missing is "how to the players take turns moving their pieces once they have gotten their assigned actions". Take turns? random? according to a certain criteria? Point to the opponent's pieces and say "you move that piece first"? auction? simultaneous?

I apologize if the question was vague.

Yehuda

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Wed, 11/26/2003 - 17:33
#4
jwarrend
Offline
Joined: 08/03/2008
Game mechanic sought - piece movement

I don't think your clarification has made it any less vague!

I don't know if we're going to be able to give you very useful feedback unless you give us more input as to what kinds of things you want to affect a player's movement, what motivation and effects are associated with movement.

You're asking what order the different pieces should move in, but we don't really know what the pieces actually do, what kind of a board they're moving on, etc.

I respect that you probably are being secretive for fear of giving away your ideas. Fair enough. But my advice to you in that case is to probably hang around here until you've found a couple of posters who you trust and then pose a more specific question to them. Or, ask your friends in your regular gaming group. But without more specifics, you can probably brainstorm just as effectively as we can, whereas with more info, we can give our ideas/experience as to what will and won't work.

For an example of a discussion that dealt with a specific mechanic yet didn't give away a lot of ideas, see a discussion called "working on a new combat mechanic" in which I solicited (and received!) help on a combat system I was working on as part of a larger and more comprehensive game.

Good luck!

-Jeff

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