Game #25: Escape or die!

Yes, that one came to my mind too. This one introduces some extra complexity to the scenario however, which could be good or bad (who can tell!)

Hi hpox... This is the first GDW game I've commented on in awhile, which makes me feel guilty that I haven't done anything with the others... :(

Overall, it seems like a strong design. Like all the other GDW games, I wish I could playtest it!

First off, you say the game takes place in three phases: "The Big Rush," "In Space," and "Survival Probability Calculation." To me, "The Big Rush" is just setup, "Survival Probability Calculation" is just scoring, and "In Space" is the game itself. Renaming the phases would remove a bit of chrome, but would probably aid first-time players learning from the rulebook.

I love the idea that an escapee can be sacrificed in order to save air - it makes the game nice and bloodthirsty. :twisted: You may want to avoid the word "lynch" though, because it has racial connotations. "Sacrifice" might work a little better.

Here's a suggestion that might add complexity to the game, but may be helpful anyway: each person has a different "skill." Some people are good at computers, others are good at repair, others are good at leadership, others are good at healing. At some points in the game (maybe every turn, maybe at spots designated on the board), an event happens. Events can be rolled on a table, or drawn from a seperate card deck (though that might cause component overload). Some sample events...

- Virus! If the ship's passengers contain fewer than 2 people skilled at Healing, you lose one person.
- Radiation leak! If the ship's passengers contain fewer than 2 people skilled at Repair, you lose one person.
- Collision! If your leader doesn't have a Piloting skill, draw a Collision card.

There would be no corresponding Event cards for the Leadership skill; those people would have an extra Voice.

If you succeed at an Event, you could be immediately granted a random action from the action card deck; or a specific Action could be granted for each event. Perhaps the player can hang on to the Event card and use it as an Action card; it all depends on how rules-heavy you want the game to be.

The neat thing about giving people skills is that it adds a level of strategy to the vote. You may not want to vote against someone who controls people who have strong survival skills. On the other hand, you may want to get rid of those essential people to get at his annoying Leader.

Another thing you may want to consider is to weight the Collision deck so that certain seats are more dangerous than others, especially the Leader's chair.

I'm not sure about the "sexist" mechanic. I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but you want women to play this game, right? :)

Seriously, I find it a bit of a distraction. It breaks my suspension of disbelief, because I start thinking of gender issues instead of the game. What you could do instead is to print voices and point values right on the people tiles. This wouldn't add a great deal of complexity to the game, and you could have strong women and weak men; which more closely matches what I see in real life.

Can you sacrifice children? Would that be a little "over-the-top?" If some people find the idea of killing children disturbing, you could either institute a no-killing-children rule, or arrange the artwork so that the people are all funny-looking aliens (a la Awful Green Things from Outer Space), and the "children" are all eggs. After all, you can't make an omlette...

I really like where this is going. I like the relatively quick voting and action card game which you propose.

I like the chaotic start idea, it really captures the theme. You may want to emphasize the "roll then pass then place" mechanic a little more in your rules so that it is more obvious that everyone is essentially placing their people at the same time. I'll second Mike's comment about having more people than seats, but I'm not sure I like the dice deciding that you can't get someone on a ship, I'd rather that the primary reason you didn't get someone on the ship be that you were just too slow. Perhaps there is another mechanistic tweak to ensure this, I just can't think of one right now.

I didn't see this explicitly in the rules, but are you allowed to use a cheat whenever voices are counted? can you use a cheat to acquire the leader's seat?

Folks have already talked about this, but I'll reiterate, the board is a little unclear, but I can understand that at this stage. If you could clarify which are the two moons the ships are headed to, and which lines actually have dots (I can see most of them). I do like the more restrictive board better than the less restrictive, and I agree with the earlier comments regarding the idea that the asteroid fields should be easy to dodge at the beginning and more difficult at the end. Perhaps the extra navigation system would let you re-roll? This might give the folks on a given ship some incentive to keep it in working order.

Clarification on the action cards would be helpful, but from what I'm reading it seems that you're still sorting this out. How about this... each player is dealt some number of action cards to start... 5? , then after each "round" that is after all 5 ships have moved, each player draws three more cards before going back to ship number one. This would force budgeting of cards, and of course you could have action cards allowing drawing/stealing of more cards. ooh how about this... you could even have folks draw one of their cards face up, and if it's something bad it happens to you. (perhaps stealing too much from munchkin here)

Another clarification request, I saw the navigation system, and torpedos on the ship cards, how do these effect play? I don't think I saw them in the rules.

And what about collisions with other ships? How are these handled?

As for the "sexist" part of the game, I think this is a great game element... where one type of person helps you control your destiny, but you have to "protect" the other type of person to guarentee more points at the end of the game. Perhaps you could just have small medium and large pawns? Also, to make it more frustrating of a decision of who to sacrifice (so it's not always the kids.. or small pawns) you might want to make them more valueble at the end.... of course then the mid sized might be more readily sacrificed. Anyhow, I think this is an important part of the game but it might take some time to balance it.

Addressing the suggestions of others to add skills and whatnot to the people, I think that could take the game in a very different direction with lots of things to track. Perhaps there is some simple way to capture this... perhaps even just saying that everyone represented on the ship could agree to discard action cards in order to repair something. ... or some other cooperation mechanism. Perhaps you could put symbols on the bottom of the action cards (like engine, navigation system etc) to indicate that it can be sacrificed to repair something - then require a certain number of cards to be sacrificed to make a repair.

Looks like a lot of fun, I look forward to seeing where it ends up going.

peace,
Tom

Which card do you want clarifications on? I'll give precisions.

I really like the idea of drawing a new set of cards after all 5 ships have "acted" and I'm pretty sure that's how I was going to do but forgot. The Holodeck is on the 3rd ship (middle one) and it's supposed to give one new card to every player that have someone on it.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my question. I was more interested in how the action cards came into play which I didn't see mentioned in the rules.... except that they are to be shuffled and placed in a stack.

I think one of the things I like about re-drawing after all the ships have moved is that it may help to reduce analysis paralysis, so you aren't considering your new cards after every ship moves. This is difficult to gauge without a playtest, but intuitively it should have this effect. Also you could reduce the number of cards a person is allowed to hold prior to moving the first ship, so you may draw two cards after the 5th ship moves and then have to turn around and discard a card to get down to the limit. ... unless you happen to have the "really-big-carry-on-luggage" card. .. or a person on the ship with the biggest "trunk" (or "boot" for our UK friends).

Upon explaination I like the little twists added by the navigation system, torpedos, holodecks and shields.

I guess I was assuming that only one ship would be allowed on a space at a time. I naturally tend toward constraining things more rather than less. This of course complicates collisions between ships as well as the use of torpedos.

For torpedos I think it makes sense just to handle it as a collision, and it can be dodged the same way as an asteroid field. And if you can't occupy the same space then it would have to be fired on an adjacent space... or maybe you could use the ship movement modifiers to give the torpedo more range?

Ship collisions are a little more difficult to handle if you want to keep things fairly consistent. I think it makes sense to invoke a collision on both ships, but where would the ships end up?

Again, looks like a fun game, I think it has some potential for fun player interaction. Also, I'm sure there are some interesting dynamics which will only be visible once it's playtested. I look forward to hearing the first playtest report :-)

I will.

What's the deal with killing children! Why is that not acceptable? :evil: The cryo-sleep idea is cool but won't it strain the already limited resources on the ship?

JF,

Finally got a chance to read it over fully. Great, great game!

As for killing children, I have a couple of thoughts:

Some folks mentioned that the children would be the first to go. This seems like it would be probably true because you (as the player voted out) don't want to sacrifice someone who has a voice. However, if you look at the bigger picture, this probably won't hold true. A player who has children *might* be selected first, but the other players won't gain anything from it in reality since your not immediately weakening the voice of that player (in reality, you may cause them to score less). More likely, people will vote against their nearest rivals in voice strength, everyone will try to gang up against the leader, or you'll pick on someone who doesn't have a 'child buffer'. Also, I'm not sure if you intended it, but this phase would be a GREAT table talk phase. I.E. People could discuss treaties, future promises, etc.. Of course, there would be no rule saying they had to actually stick to the treaty, so a lot of backstabbing could ensue, and of course retribution later. I think this would add tremendously to the feel of the game.

One thing you may want to do is to attach some sort of stigma to children being jettisoned from the ship. Such as for each child jettisoned, that ship gets a 'Barbarism marker'. At the end of the game, each player who has surviving people on a ship with such a marker suffers some sort of penalty. Again, this is just an idea, not even a suggestion really. Just something to think about. I think it will add another level to the game. It might further discourage people from 'voting out' a player who has children. If that person 'spikes' one of their children, then it may negatively affect the whole population of the ship later on in the scoring stage.

Just some thoughts. I love the idea. When you feel like it's in a play testable state, I'd love to try it out with my group. Just drop me a line.

-Michael

A couple of random thoughts below ... take them or leave them.

Another way to handle the infanticide issue, aside from the barbarism marker, might be to award points to players at the time the ship lands. Each player represented on the ship receiving a number of points equivalent to the number of people on the ship, so there is incentive not to kill anyone... sort of the way villages are scored in "Clans." Teleporting onto a nearly full ship would end up being a decision to attempt to solidify points at the end while losing a voice on the ship you are leaving.

Previously you stated that the largest number of the cards are the teleports. As we see here these will make for lots of player interaction. If, after playtests, it seems to be too chaotic, one way to reduce the total number of teleports, without neccesarily reducing the number of cards might be to limit the total number of teleports that can be initiated from a particular ship... sort of an energy counter on each ship which would be reduced on each teleport (like your oxygen counter). Then there could be some consequence for the energy counter getting too low.... ie the ship stalls, no more teleports allowed, other systems start to fail etc.

peace,
Tom