Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Now here you might have a serious problem. I think the legality of the moves should be determined by the rules of the game, not at a player's discretion. I suspect you might have trouble dealing with something that has to do with the cooperative aspect of the game (perhaps a thing that usually a "DM" would handle), but without knowing what it is exactly, I can't help you out here.

Don't worry, the rules are all determined by the game's concise instructions. It's just that there needs to be someone who can stop a player from cheating if they, say, move one space to far or not mark their remaining HP correctly or if there is a conflict over a rule whose ambiguity could not be foreseen by the designer. The rules SHOULD be %100 clear. Following the rules require an interpretation of them regardless of their clarity, so that's why there is a moderator type person. And there also needs to be someone to stop cheating as well with final authority.

Two quick thoughts:

1) I agree with the comments of some others. As a designer, you should approach a game with the belief that all players will follow the rules. After all, a game is a set of rules describing acceptable ways of manipulating the game state. If some/all players don't want to follow the rules of your game, then they are not your target audience and you can safely ignore them.

Nevertheless, as a designer, it is always worthwhile to build in ways to help other players double-check or confirm the integrity of an opponent's moves. Consider for example in Magic the Gathering CCG. Whenever you are permitted to search your deck for a specific kind of card, you must reveal it to all players. This functions as a public check on a player's actions.

2) Seth and Rene raised a good point about having one player decide the legality of another player's moves. However, I wonder whether you could provide an adequate set of checks and balances in a game that would actually allow that and make it work. Maybe think about the three branches of American government and their checks and balances. Each branch has its own jurisdiction and set of things for which it is responsible, but the other branches have ways to keep the third in line. Can something similar be done in a 3-player game? Perhaps one player decides which moves are legal (but must be consistent about it), while another player decides which locations on the board have which abilities, while a third controls how a player's actions score. Each player relies on the other two to do anything, but would separately (though perhaps not independently) control 1/3 of the rules of the game. Unfortunately, I don't have any specific ideas about how to make this work, but it seems like an awfully interesting situation to ponder.

Come to think of it, if it works in real life, why can't it work in a game? After all, our Legislative branch makes *all* the rules ...

Enjoy!
Captain Sky