Themes waiting to be used

Seth,

Cool design topic! Minor correction, my GDW game was called "Profit and Provenance".

I don't know how much I'll add to your list, so much as to expound on what my observations have been of discussion on this board and of my own approach to design.

I think that some "themes" that seem very common include fighting, arena combat, and territorial-conquest style wargames. I think I've seen several journals or forum posts by people who are designing one of those games.
I've also been surprised by how many of the games, particularly those in the civ contest, involve the players being "gods". My guess is that this is primarily useful as a thematic device -- it's easy to justify moving these pieces around if you're a "god". This seems common to a lot of games, not just this board.

Personally, I tihnk that several themes/mechanics have been done to death in the gaming world. These include:

"Medieval merchants" -- we're merchants in medieval/renaissance Europe, trying to make money by pushing commodities around in some way
(examples: Medieval Merchant, Traders of Genoa, etc)

"Area majority" -- we drop cubes on the board in different territories, and get points based on who "controls" each area. (Examples: El Grande, Web of Power)

"Trains" -- we're laying track and speculating on stocks to make mucho money. (Examples: 18xx series, Union Pacific, Age of Steam)

"Egypt" -- we're in Ancient Egypt, farming along the Nile, making sacrifices to the gods, etc (ex Amun Re, Ra, etc)

"Pirates" -- we each have a pirate ship, and we're sailing it around trying to pillage and plunder (ex: there's a barrage of games this year -- winds of plunder, Mutiny (I think), Pirates of the Caribbean)

Note that all the games above are, as far as I know, good games, and the genres are popular precisely because they're interesting to people -- they evoke experiences people find enjoyable. Ironically, I find that it's fun to try to jump into heavily saturated genres and try to design a "better" game than others have done -- for example, right now I'm working on a "better" Civ game. What I find, though, is that to pull this off, you can't just have a variation on a theme -- you need to have a totaly new approach to the design. For example, in my pirate game, instead of each player having his own ship, there are several ships that all players can use. This is just different enough that it might salvage the game even in the preponderence of pirate games out there. If I tried to make a "we each have our own ship" game, I'd be dead in the water (no pun intended!)

As far as mechanics, I find that I don't have favorite mechanics so much as principles that I'll use repeatedly. I find that it's easy to tell which of my designs came when based on what principles the games are built around. Often, my games emerge at the crossroads of an older principle I'm working on and a newer one I'm exploring. For example, my "bidding game" came at the heels of a principle "players have some information to guide their bidding -- it isn't completely blind" and at the leading edge of a new principle, "all players can access the different 'moving pieces'". The pirate game came at the tail end of the latter concept, and anticipated soem mechanics I'm subsequently trying to incorporate into other games.

So, for me, I find I don't have "tried and true" mechanics (I don't think) so much as a dynamic chain of game design concepts around which I incorporate specific mechanics as needed.

Interesting topic. I look forward to hearing others' thoughts on the subject!

-Jeff

I would like to see more arabian games, myself, and more egyptian games. Actually any ancient culture would be nice to see, if they haven't been done lately.

Not a lot of games on Native Americans. I mean there is New England, but it didn't seem to a drop of N. Americans in it. I'm not really thinking Cowboys & Indians (which would be interesting also) but something that deals with N. Americans in a way that is different but cool.

I agree with Seth, that there is always room for fantasy games. Unique ideas, seem to hold people's attention much more than anything else.

Overused ideas? If the game is good and unique it doesn't really matter to me if it's the 20th railroad game, or the 1st plant eating game (or something original.) Although settling or conquering is becoming used a lot these days...

Oh yeah, how did I forget Pirate's Cove? That was one of the original examples I was thinking of, I must have forgotten to mention it. At any rate, you've definitely helped me make my point -- pirate games have been done to death! Not that this is in any way a bad thing, as a good pirate-themed game can be fun to play. For me, it's more a question of "what genres/themes should I consider exploring" from a design standpoint? For me, this year's plethora of pirate games was a real bummer because I've been tinkering with a pirate-themed game myself!

Winds of Plunder, from what I've heard, does sound like quite a good game. How is the process going? And do you feel that Pirate's Cove (probably the biggest of the bunch, I'm assuming...) will affect the success of Winds at all? Were you aware it was going to be coming out at the time that the Winds project began?

-Jeff

Fantasy Flight has Mutiny! coming out this month, fyi: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/mutiny.html

I designed one last year that was (IMHO) killer. I even reserved the website (www.piratedays.com). However, given the plethora of pirate games released, we're sitting on it. Until there's a break in pirate games by "the big boys", it just doesn't make sense to do anything.

The problem is that some of these pirate games just aren't moving very well, and I'm worried retailers will get skittish about carrying any more.

Back to your question, though, I'd throw "Old West" into the theme mix...

Pat,

Care to share what was unique about your pirate game?

-Darke

Dang blast it, this keeps happening! First "Maya" rips off my great semi-blind bidding system, now Karibik rips off the last vestige of originality in my pirate game. What's next, a civilization building game playable in 3 hours? Oh, wait...

-Jeff

Hi all -- long-time lurker, first-time poster (apologies if i do something moronic).

I was watching a movie that I thought would provide an interesting theme for a game, and this thread brought it to mind. I can't remember the title of the movie or why I was even watching it, but it was about the French aristocrates before the revolution, and it told the story of a commoner who needed to get an audience with the king so he could ask for some money to build a hospital for poor people or something.

Anyway, the whole plot of the movie revolves around how difficult it is to see the king. You have to know the right people, say the right things (they talked a lot about "wit" -- who had it and who didn't), go to all the right parties, wear the right clothes, have the right religious beliefs, etc. One mistake and you're out for life.

One character -- an aristocrat who had lost his home and money -- was waiting in the antechamber to see the king for days with nowhere to eat or sleep. He fell asleep in a chair and one of his enemies snuck up and stole one of his shoes. Later, the King's secretary-type dude woke up the aristocrat and told him he could now see the King, but when the aristocrat saw that one of his shoes was missing, rather than face the humiliation, he ran out of a window and killed himself.

See where I'm going?

Another character -- a speaker of some kind -- was giving a speech for the King and some of the other rich folk. Everyone loved the speech but right at the end of it the speaker made a joke about proving that God doesn't exist. The King and his entourage immediatly got up and left the room. Just like that, the speaker was out of the King's graces forever.

The main character had a lot of work to do. He had to get a loan from a Banker, had to forge some documents proving Heritage, had to be groomed by a rich mistress, had to socialize with the rich and prove that he was "witty", etc. He climbed the social ladder and was very close to making his move, but he had to attend a ball. During one of the dances at the Ball one of the bad guys tripped him. All the aristocrats laughed and just like that, he was out for good.

I think the movie still happened to have a happy ending, somehow.

Ever since then I've been trying to turn that kind of goal -- to climb the ultra-petty social ladder just to get an audience with the king -- into a game. Kind of an anti-Guillotine. :) So far no luck but I thought I'd throw it out here and see what you all thought.

Before your requests hijack this thread, why not start a new thread or journal? It might be best so you don't have non related replies in with replies about your game idea.

-Darke

Yeah, sorry about that. I got kind of carried away. I guess my only point was that games where you climb the social ladder using charm and political connections (as opposed to games where you build a civilization using resources and armies) may be a little underused. Honestly, I didn't even think of the French aristocracy thing as a game idea, just a theme that could be used in some game. Oh, well.

PS -- Thanks for getting me set up, darke!

My suggested area -- Schoolyard Games (like those played by school children during their daily recess) ...

Based upon a recent design I've tried to pull together for a boardgame version of the children's schoolyard game "Dare Base" (link to journal entry), I think that whole area seems under-utilized ... lots of fun times playing various versions of tag, and kickball, dodgeball, kick the can, capture the flag, etc.

I've even started a GeekList (link) to see what games already exist on the topic ... not much out there, it seems.

-Bryk

...or BGDF – The game.
A card game/or board game (probably a CCG) where the players should try to have as long threads as possible with new interesting quotes/replies and without get the thread blocked (or removed) by an administrator ;).

// Johan

How about just whoever makes the most money? If you got your game published earlier than others, than you would have the opportunity to make more money over the long run, but you might have to cut corners and make a skimpier game. Perhaps even have each player run a publishing company with the goal of having the most successful product line.

-Darke

I love your dripping sarcasm. 'Horse'. LOL.

-Darke

This actually bears an odd similarity to a game I just playtested with my family to incredible success (can't wait to test more!). Mine's about artwork. In each round, all but one player draws a picture, then they all present their picture to the one player who didn't draw (the Critic), who ranks the pictures 1-N (N=# of artists) secretly. Then the artwork is auctioned off to the players by the Critic, and play continues with a new Critic, until everyone is a critic once. Then, everybody unveils how they ranked the art, and the winner is the player whose art collection (what they bought at auction, not what they created) is the most critically acclaimed!

Similarly, each player could make up a game pitch, maybe everybody gives a secret score to the pitches or something (you have a set of 10 Quality tokens with values from 1-10, so you can use each token once only). Then, as publishers, they vie for the rights to the different games, and the actual worth of the game is unveiled after its bought, based on how many Quality points it had assigned to it. A game of guessing which pitch is going to be liked most by the most people, which effectively makes it a game about being a publisher's purchasing agent!
Then you could expand that with some rules about how the game actually ends up selling so that really good games actually turn out to be flops sometimes or something, and some games are just quick fads while others last years and years. Maybe some kind of supply vs. demand curve so you can set prices or something. I don't know, I see potential... Ooh, I just came up with an even better element... royalties! Time to get designing.