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Game #63 Rats leaving sinking ships by Johan

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Mon, 02/21/2005 - 05:30
Johan
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Joined: 10/05/2008

Hello

It was mid December, when I send a request for this slot. my plan was then to have the game "The Serge" (a game about intrigue and backstabbing) up for review. In the latest test, I found that it had some major bugs and the game went back to the drawing table.
Instead I choose a game that never been tested or even had rules. The reason is that I soon will build a prototype and I want to see if I should continue or select another game.
The response to this idea has been from "Yes that is a game that I want to play" to "I don’t understand why you want to do that kind of game". Therefore I decided to use the slot for this game. BGDF is good way to find this out and to see if the base for the rules is something that I can continue to work on.

I have always wanted to create a sea battle game. The idea behind Rats leaving sinking ships is to relive the chaotic moments in a battle and try to survive. At first the game was about the crew, but when I switch it to Rats, I could add a lot of humor to the game. Time period is to be 1600-1800 (Pirates or Napoleon theme).

I also want the game to be about 25% luck and 75% skill. You got random cards, but it will be the player that use there cards best that have the best chance to win the game.

The only thing that exist is this document (the game has never been tested, no really rules exist, no prototype exist and I have never worked on the cards). This is the first outline that I write for every game and it a game that I soon will start working on (the game has about 10 pages of "outline" design work).

The outline to the rules can be found here .

// Johan

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Mon, 02/21/2005 - 09:57
#1
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game #63 Rats leaving sinking ships by Johan

Hi Johan,

I actually think the game would be fun to play, and I wouldn't find it to be dull or not interesting.

One of the things I like are the Rats instead of regular humans. The Rats add a bit of variety to the mass of Sea Combat games out there.

There were some things I was confused about.

  • How many hits does it take to sink a ship? (How many hulls?)
  • Why does the person that owned the ship get more points than the person that sank the ship? You think it would be vice versa, or else nobody would ever sink an opponents ship
  • When does the scoring mouse move? (After a ship is sank I assume)
Hopefully you will be able to answer those few questions for me, even though you just made up this "rulebook". Like I said before though it sounds like a fun game (and one I would at least try)

-Justin
P.S - Maybe you could even get little mice standing up with a patch on one eye and a sword in the other! (or this could be box art...)

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Mon, 02/21/2005 - 11:27
#2
Johan
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Joined: 10/05/2008
Game #63 Rats leaving sinking ships by Johan

Hi Justin

Thanks for the response. I will probably do a prototype to be ready in a week or two.

DSfan wrote:

  • How many hits does it take to sink a ship? (How many hulls?)
This is one thing that is written on the ship card. Each ship will probably between 4-8 hull points, (at least in the first test).

Quote:
  • Why does the person that owned the ship get more points than the person that sank the ship? You think it would be vice versa, or else nobody would ever sink an opponents ship
You want to be the last rat that left the ship. If a new rat leave the ship, the previous will be removed.
Every player can move all ships (select the ship (ship id card) and the action (card)). The reason why you get points when you gun down a ship is that you have a reason to do that.
One thing that was not mention is that the rats that are left in ships that is still on the board when the game is over will also get points.

Quote:
  • When does the scoring mouse move? (After a ship is sank I assume)
Yes.

// Johan

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Mon, 02/21/2005 - 12:52
#3
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game #63 Rats leaving sinking ships by Johan

I'm having a little trouble following the rules, so I too will request some clarifications:

- The process is that each turn, every single player will play one of every ship card and the Leaving The Ship card, right? So like everybody picks one of those 7 cards from their hand, and they all play simultaneously, and this continues until all 7 have been played? It's confusing in your outline because you list the components as only 1 Leaving card total, when if I am right, there are that many per player. And if I'm not, where does this card go and why?

- There are also 12 ships... is it a random set of 6 that are in the game, or when one sinks a new one replaces it?

- The Leaving The Ship card just lets you pick any ship to put a rat on?

- I don't understnad the deck of cards I think... is it an assortment of ther 12 ships on the board, with various numbers to indicate when they can do things?

I think I get the idea and it sounds kind of fun... you're basically sinking ships somewhat at random, but with the hope of having your rat as the one that's on each ship when it sinks. Plus there's a bonus for being the guy doing the sinking. It seems though, like there should be more rat changing going on. Each player only gets to place one rat per round, but for rats fleeing sinking ships, you'd expect a flood. I wonder if it would work to either:
1 - when you play a ship card, you either put your rat on that ship, OR move/fire with it.
2 - when you move/fire with a ship, you also put a rat on it.

That second idea is interesting because it means you are always putting your most recent rat in a fairly useless position, since the ship you're using is the one that attacks, not the one being attacked (of course, maybe it's one you will then attack with another ship right after). It just seems like you would expect a chaotic stream of rat craziness in a game with this theme, rather than one change of rat per person per round. With 2 or 3 players, there would be many ships without rats for quite a while, and the rats would only change 2 or 3 times per every 12-18 ship movements (well, as a rule, 1 rat change per every 6 ship movements no matter what, assuming I understood the rules).

Another idea (which would really only work if rats change often as I was suggesting) is to have the rat on a ship leave and score points as soon as a ship is hit. Then each ship would have a succession of rats flowing off of it and scoring points as it kept getting hit. So the rat points would be individually lower than the sinking points rather than higher, but you'd earn a much higher total of your points from rats than from sinking in the end.

It might be interesting also if the rats could queue up 3 deep or something, instead of always replacing completely (once the queue is full, adding another would toss out the oldest). Then one goes each time the ship is hit, and if a ship is sunk with multiple rats, they all score (and a clever player would have more than one on a ship that was about to sink). That's more like the real rat situation, and it may either add or remove some strategy, I'm not sure which.

Oh, and one other note: I'd hope for a very small map in this game - you'd want the ships constantly pounding each other, not maneuvering for several turns between shots. After all, you want chaos, right?

I think I like it a lot, at least in theory, though a lot I don't quite get yet.

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