M.U.L.E.: The Boardgame

Interesting - we clearly have very different ideas of what makes MULE tick, since my starts on such a game (I've started at both a direct adaption and an "inspired by" game) have been very different. Somehow, this doesn't surprise me; while I think a huge number of people have attempted a MULE boardgame, I doubt they have a lot in common.

Joe

This will be short (I hope) as I have to run, but I want to say a few things before I forget...

1. Can cut down on bits by using 1 d10 in each color per player... 8d10 is alot fewer than 120 cubes. Just use a few cubes to represent 10's of goods.

2. Consider a game-determined start player (mayor) so it's more equitable especially considering there's a set number of turns.

3. Don't set out the land tiles at first (44 tiles next to the board? Sheesh!), keep them in a drawstring bag or else in facedown piles. Reveal either X or maybe X+1 at a time (where X = number of players), and during Land Grant you choose from that pool. The auctioned land could be either random (drawn from bag or stacks), or could be the leftover of the X+1 tiles.

4. Draw a Crystite tile at random each time you place a tile on your board and place it on that tile.

5. On second thought, maybe they need to be placed facedown on the tiles when the pool of tiles is revealed, so you can Assay them.

6. The Mules could have a hole in them, and the 'production token' could be a peg that fits the hole.

7. Are the odds for gambling good that way? Or should it be even odds of winning, losing, and pushing? (1-2, 3-4, 5-6)

9. Does the scoring put too much weight on land tiles? Or no... because the only way to get ahead in Land tiles is to win auctions, which means having more money throughout the game... *shrug*

More later,
Seth

I can agree with that. Just trying to think of some way to keep the number of bits down. Really though, if there are '10 bit' bits (big cubes), then you only need enough of the smaller cubes for 9 for each player at a time (max)... that's 9cubesx4playersx4colors=144total... bummer. Likely that won't happen though.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? Say something like "roll a die, high roll goes first"?
No, I mean each round instead of the Mayor passing to the left, find some way to let the game state determine the new mayor. This way, if there's an advantage to going first (like the tiles to choose from or whatever, for example... or there being enough resources*) you can mitigate that by letting the losing player go first or something. This takes away the imbalance of some players getting more turns as Mayor than others.

FastLearner had something like this in Everest... the player lowest down on the mountain is the start player each round. It works really well. He also talked me into a system like that for 8/7 Central, where the leading player (in VPs) plays first each day (where in general, being last is best for VP scoring).

* There's an idea- do something like Puerto Rico where there's only so much of each resource... so during Production, you might want to be Mayor because if you're last you might get screwed.

I see what you mean, and I recall the computer game having a timing aspect to it- the curser ran across the board, and the player who presses the button fastest for any given land plot got that plot (1 per turn). You could see where rivers were (usually better for production).

However it's kind of unwieldy to have all the tiles out, don't you think?
Hmm... maybe the board itself could be made up of the tiles laid out (at random?), and the Land Grant phase could go like this: Starting in the upper left corner and working left to right, top to bottom each land tile in turn becomes 'up for grabs.' A player can choose any tile they want, but they must choose in turn order, and they must choose a tile that comes after the last tile picked. A player can only pick one tile per Land Grant phase, and the option of tile does not wrap around... if you do not choose a tile then you don't get one.

This simulates that curser thingy from the computer version, and it gives priority via turn order (rather than who presses the button first). It also allows people to shut other people out of getting land by just taking the last available tile, which is probably a big flaw in it.

Here's an amendment. For each tile players in turn order either take it or pass. If they've already taken a tile this turn then they must pass. I think that's what I meant at first. Again, the 'curser' does not wrap around.

Finally about the fertileness of the land plots. I wonder if there's a simple way to make the 'value' of a tile relative to it's placement. If the 'random board of tiles' idea I suggested above makes sense (this would be instead of taking the tiles onto your own little board), then maybe a land tile would have a static base Farming value, which would increase if it's on or near a stream (for example)- where a steram would be a tile feature. In this way each player would probably start off on equal footing.

- Seth

I don't think I like the distributions of production variability. Rolling 1 die is bad I think. What about rolling 2d6 and the more productin you have, the more numbers you produce on...

Something like this:

<br />
Production     Roll on 2d6     Amount produced<br />
0                  2-7                0<br />
0                  8-12               1<br />
1                  2-6                1<br />
1                  7-12               1<br />
2                  2-5                1<br />
2                  6-12               2<br />
3                  2-4                2<br />
3                  5-12               3<br />
4                  2- 3               2<br />
4                  4-12               4<br />
5                  2-3                3<br />
5                  3-12               5<br />
6+                 2-12               6<br />

That's a meager attempt off the top of my head, but maybe you see what I mean and can figure out a better way. The idea here was supposed to be that however much production you have, that's how much you can get (max)- but you can always get some (unless you have zero production, in which case you're lucky to get 1)

- Seth

Ah, true. I still think it's worth considering because somehow it seems so much more fair than passing clockwise which seems so arbitrary. But maybe that's because I just discovered this game-determined thing and am still fascinated by it.

Also true, but I think it's better than cluttering the whole table perhaps. Maybe there's an easy way.

something like tht would be good I think.

I was thinking the land tiles would be randomly distributed on the board at the beginning. Even in the computer game the 'boad' is made up ahead of time, and you can sort of see where fertile tiles might be. These tiles could have river segments (good for farming) and mountain icons (good for smithore) and etc.

So like the mountain would already be there, players wouldn't put it there.

I liked Torrent's suggestion of a chart, although charts are bad in general.

- Seth

I think this is a good idea for sure.

As for economies of scale, could that be more easily represented with something like this?:

For each land tile producing a good, you get an additional +1 to your Total Production value of that good for each adjacent tile you have also producing that good.

So if you have 4 tiles producing Food, 3 of them in a row and one seperate, and each has a food value of 1, the total production value would be

2+3+2+1=8

and the amount of food produced would be 8/3 (round up) = 3d6

Another example, 9 tiles in an array:
4 corners * 2 bonus points +
4 sides * 3 bonus points +
1 center * 4 bonus points =
24 bonus points for the group.

24/3=8 d6 extra dice for production.

That's in addition to the 9 or so dice you're likely to be rolling already for those 9 tiles. And that's for each resource.
This game is looking like it will be bit and die rolling heavy. Not that that's bad.

- Seth