Hey all, New member/longtime lurker here
I've been tinkering with this game idea (Calling it "The Gales of November")for about 10 years, and it actually was originally for a school project. I've had a couple of prototypes in the last few years, most recently howeever, it's just been on paper. I'm wondering if there'd be a market for a Great Lakes shipping game. It basically follows the Empire Builder scheme of upgrading (Start small and grow) both with ships and by company.
I've seen a couple of references to a game called "Great Lakes Cargo" which apparently is along the same lines of what I want to do. It seems like it was a very limited release howeverm and aside from a couple of Newsgroup references, I haven't seen anything else on this game. I kow there have been a few other shipping games out there, and I'm looking for opinions on these as well.
Has anybody else thought of this? I'm going to have to redo my rules, ship specs and cargo lists, as I lost them in a recent HDD crash and all I have are older versions in a binder.
Basically, players compete against each other to build the largest shipping empire. Destinations will either be single or will have several destinations in order. I've thought of having "Situation" cards where the player gets to chose from different scenarios, or possible "Sabotage" cards that people can play on their opponents ships. There will also be storm cards that affect different Lakes.
Ships will also have certain storm tolerances, and I originally had players rolling 2D10 to evaluate damage based on the ship. Each ship has a certain number of Damage Points, and if you neglect to repair them, they may be lost in a storm. Not sure how I'd keep track of that. Would it be acceptable to have players keep track of the damage for each ship?
Also I'm not sure how cargo payments will be done yet. I thought of having fluctuating cargo rates, all dependant on card draw. Problem with this that I can see is one may need a calculator to figure out payments.
I'll post my rules and such up on the board when I get them retyped.
Looking for feedback both positive and negative.
Thanks for reading,
Dan MacKellar
I think great lakes shipping will go over well if the game is solid. It'll be nice to have some transportation games that aren't train related.
As for keeping track of damage for each ship, it really depends on the number of ships one player will be controlling at a given time, and the # of types of ships.
Meaning, if you have 10 different types of vessels and 10 ships on the water that would be a lot of placecards/mats to keep a tally on (I know from experience trying to make a naval wargame that having each boat have it's own mat for keeping stats is cumbersome).
Perhaps simplfying the boats into classes would be easier (but then detract from the theme and variety of boats available), small, med., and large.
I'm curios, what time period is the game set? And do you include the Niagra and the locks to get ships from Eire to Ontario and out to the Hudson, or is it all "inter-lake" travel? (grew up outside of Buf. NY)