Need Advise with mechanics on my Board Game

My first guess at a easy way to end the game would be have X amount of colored points. When the bank runs out of a color, the game ends.

The other question I would have is, in the current state of the rules, is there a need for the board? You could get away with colored dice or a deck of cards to determine the category.

Assume 2 six-sided dice. One dice has the four colors plus two-sides for the player-select color. The second dice gives is a 1 in 6 for the points doubler. Granted, the math is a little different than what the board currently shows; however, I think that if the game is based on the points awarded for a specific category (in this case, the least), you might want to give the players more of a chance to choose.

My only concern in scanning your rules is that if the game is inteneded for children, the "challenge" spaces may be too brutal. If, for example, you have children of a few ages playing the game, the older (and presumably more knowledgable) ones could really wield this mechanic to beat up on the younger ones, which could be very frustrating for the littler kids. As it is, losing might be frustrating for them, but that's probably a reality you can't avoid in a trivia game.

The only other thing that seems weird is the Tigris scoring system. It's a great system, but it seems out of place when you don't have any control over which spaces you'll land on. If I, by luck, land on "Green" half as often as the other colors, and happen to get some real posers in that category, my overall score might be pretty low, through no fault of my own. Maybe the board corners (or some other space) could be wild colors or something?

Also, you'll definitely end up with some ties, so you should identify a tie-breaker. Probably something like "the person with the highest total in their second-lowest category" or whatever.

Other than that, the crux of this game will lie in the trivia aspect. If the questions are interesting and fun, people will like playing the game. If not, not.

Good luck!

-Jeff

Well, it doesn't make sense to pay 2 points in order to possibly win 1- unless your turn continues when you answer a question right.

Also, aside from purchasing stuff, are the category points worth anything?

Finally, it will be difficult to land on the corners, which is why I had suggested before that you spend points to asdd to your die roll.

The idea that you win by having the most points in your weakest category was pretty cool, but I guess you thought it was to 'gamer-esque' for your audience? Maybe if it were stated like this: whoever has the most sets of points (a set is 1 of each color) is the winner. Then there would be point tokens in the 4 different colors, and you could still 'spend' them to do stuff (like add 1 to your die roll).

The 4 corners could be special in that maybe you get a challenge round where you are asked multiple questions in that category and are rewarded better... maybe 3 questions, 1 right = 1 point, 2 right = 1 set, all three right = 1 set & 1 point. Something like that.

And if I remember right the game end condition that could work with this is that you stop when one of the colored token supplies runs out. So if you run out of Blue tokens then the game is over. Or Green tokens. Or whatever.

It DOES make sense to spend 1 point to get a shot to try again. That way anyone can have the option of "passing" on a question, and as long as they get the second one right then they haven't lost anything. Furthermore, if using the set collection system, it even makes sense to trade in 'extra' Blue points to get a new question in the Green category (if you don't know the first question you're asked).

Switching places might be neat, as something you could purchase, but otherwise you don't want to much stuff to hinder other people (I think) because you want people to play the game, not bash each other.

And I still contend that the aim of the game should be trying to answer questions over all the categories, not trying to land on the corners (which would turn out to be pretty easy if you can spend all your points to add to your move and there's no reason not to) and then land on the middle.

f you explain it as sets of colors, even go as far as saying you can trade in a set of one of each for an Elephant (or whatever), then the player with the most elephants at the end wins.

Another idea is to allow trading 2 of 1 color for 1 of another color- so if someone's exceptionally good at the Yellow category, they can try to almost always get Yellow questions, and if they get enough they could still maybe win.

The corners should definitely be special- I think they should be like a bonus round, where you get a shot at extra points if you do really well (like a whole elephant), but are still rewarded a little for just doing OK.

The Red Challenge squares are a good idea I think- They could be worth anything really if the reward is on the card, and tey could even have multiple parts, like "Who's signiture was the biggest on the Declaration of Independance and what year was it signed?" where you get a point for each part that you get right. Maybe you could even choose which color token you get.

I don't think that's too much to scare away non gamers. Do you?

I think this should stay.

I think this should go, based on what you've said. I think aving a lst of different things you can buy is too out of place for your target audience.

The exception is being able to move extra spaces. If that's the only thing you can buy then I think it's ok.

I don't know anything about Muslim culture, but isn't there some sacred thing that people might want to collect or accumulate? In my example before I said "elephant" because that's the first noun I thought of at the time. But I think your audience can relate to the idea of collecting [something]- and you could even promote the collection of that thing.

If it were judaism that thing could be Mitzvahs (which are like "good deeds"). It's good to do Mitzvahs, so the game could reward "doing Mitzvah's"... and in this case you can "do a Mitzvah" by turning in a set of colored tokens.

I think that's a really good way to make a decent game out of something that's otherwise a Trivial Pursuit knockoff, without making it too scary for non gamers.

The arguement that you should make a lousy game because your audience is used to lousy games is a lousy arguement.

In passing, I will note that I believe Snakes and Ladders was the original, and the theming of the negative component (the Snake) was changed later.

As to your other idea: I like the idea that you need a "set" of special items, and you could get them either by visiting the specific squares or by trading in a defined set of normal tokens. That adds some sort of player choice into the game which is good, without making the whole thing top heavy.