A problem I've struggled with is trying to introduce "omniscience" into a game without having a player as a GM. Here's a simple example that illustrates the dilemma: imagine that I'm developing a game in which there are 6 treasure chests, and one of those contains a treasure. I also want to have clue cards that will help players discover which chest contains the treasure. The difficulty here is, how do you get the card mechanic and the treasure chest mechanic to talk to each other? How does the card deck "know" which chest contains the treasure?
I think that I have a solution to this kind of challenge, and I'm interested in whether the clever folks here can find any obvious flaws, or, for that matter, any obvious improvements.
Let's say that I'm working on a game that involves a treasure map mechanic, whereby there is a component (a card, a board, whatever) that shows a treasure map, and another component (a deck of cards, a paragraph book) that gives instructions to follow to get to a spot on the map that contains the treasure. Here's the essence of the concept: there are certain locations on the map component that are translucent such that, upon illumination, these locations will allow light to pass through.
It's easy to do an experiment to see how this works. Take 3 index cards, and using a hole punch, put a hole in one card. Then place this card in between the other two. When on the table, the location of the hole is undetectable, but when held up to the light, you can see where it is. In the game, illumination would be performed by a small pen light-sized source.
To attempt to "dig up the treasure", you'd illuminate the specific spot on the map component that you want to dig at. If the treasure is there, you'll be able to see the light through the map card. Otherwise, you'll see nothing.
(This possibility of a null result is crucial to the necessity of this mechanic: if the goal was simply to follow the instructions, then the game could simply be about assembling a set of instruction cards. The idea of allowing for a null result is that part of the challenge for the player is to assemble the correct instructions. Picture "Raiders of the Lost Ark" - the Germans used the wrong-length staff in the "Well of Souls", and hence, "they're digging in the wrong place!")
Now, one obvious limitation is replayability: if the instructions lead to the same location every time, then the game will get old quickly. A solution to this is to have more instruction cards than the number of instructions required for a valid solution. For example, maybe there are 5 "instruction" cards, but only 2 instructions are required to find the treasure location; some other aspect of the game tells you which two you need. The map component would then be pre-drilled to yield a "hit" on all possible combinations of two-card instructions. However, this still has a problem: you could acquire ANY 2 of the clue cards and get a hit. The whole tension of digging and hoping that you'll find something is gone - you will inevitably find something with any combo you try.
So here's the actual solution: there would be multiple map cards, AND the map cards themselves contain the instructions, on the backs. At the start of the game, one of the cards is selected as the "true" map, and the others are used as instructions. Additionally, the cards are ranked from 1-5, and the "solution" to each card requires combining the instructions on all of the lower-numbered cards. So, a "hit" on map 3 would require assimilating the instructions of cards 1 and 2 (BUT, if you also incorporated the instructions from cards 4 and 5, you'd end up in the wrong location!)
I have a few more tricks to play to get the replayability up even higher, but just with what I've described here, I claim that this mechanic allows the game to be played with a unique result as many times as there are "instruction/map" cards, and that allows a set of cards to influence where a treasure is located.
A couple of observations. First, what I've described actually appears to sound more or less like a deduction mechanic -- one card is pulled out, and by finding out what the others are, you identify which card was pulled. It's sort of like that, although the "only cards with a lower number 'point' to the chosen card" changes things a bit. Also, the additions that I haven't described yet extend the concept further to move beyond a deduction mechanic into a full fledged "treasure hunt" mechanic. I'll probably post those later, to show how the full-fledged mechanic will work.
I welcome any comments or thoughts on this concept! Feel free to post any solutions you've come up with or seen to achieve something similar.
Thanks,
Jeff
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I am not good in english so I didn't understand the text very well. So maybe you already wrote done this idea, anyway.
The idea is that you got let's say six treasure places, at one of that places is the treasure. Or even better there are more treasures smaller and bigger ones. By following up clues you can examinate one of the place and look wheter there is a treasure or not. Then you also got clue cards wich can be played by the players, or must be played, and wich are buyed by other players the buyer may have the card if the clue make sense the player who played the card gets an reward. Also you could say that players may talk to each other and help each other by giving clues or to lie to each other. So the idea is basicly nobody knows where the treasures are but by helping each other you can find them.