I'm somewhat stuck on my "London Underground" game that I've mentioned here in the past. It's a steampunk-themed co-op dungeon crawl with a new and (hopefully) interesting mechanic (not mentioned here, though). Each player plays a character such as Knight Templar, Musketeer, or Aetherographer.
My current combat system uses special dice. The way that the players improve is by replacing parts of their weapons. For example, the Musketeer starts with a long gun, that has parts stock, trigger, barrel, and bullets. They might find a treasure "Flame-thrower" which is a barrel that gives +1 damage for every flame icon you roll. The base (white) dice only have a flame icon on one side, but if he were also to get the treasure "Incendiary bullets" he would convert 2 white dice to red dice. The red dice have 3 sides containing a flame. A big part of the game is to put together these device synergies, so you do enough damage to take on tougher enemies and ultimately the final boss.
My issue is that I'm not a big fan of rolling a big handful of dice each turn. Also, if I actually consider manufacturing this thing, custom dice are pretty expensive. I would need at least 20 dice (8 white, 4 each of red, blue, black) to fulfill all the combinations players might put together, so I think I start to price the game out of its market.
I'm considering, instead, a deck-building approach. Each player would have a deck of attack cards that he adds to by adding different devices to his weapon. Each turn he plays some number of cards from his hand and the synergies work or don't. A smart player will put together a lean deck with only cards that go well together.
I'm not sure I can make this work -- after all, when he swaps out a part, does he have to hunt for those cards that part added and remove them? Awkward, but does it make sense that he keep them? If the cards from lower-level devices tend just to clutter up the deck once you've moved on to higher-level devices, then just leaving them creates some interesting trade-offs, but it doesn't really make sense. Is that important?
So, what do people think? Is the basic idea of combining deck-building with a co-op sound appealing at all? Do you like the dice approach better?
Thanks for the feedback. I'm a Dominion junkie, so I know the value of card trashers. :-) Assuming I went with the approach that the lower-level cards stay to clutter your hand, I would include some (though not enough to make the trade-off a trivial decision).
What do you think about the idea that the cards you gained when you attach lower-level devices to your weapon stay around after you remove those devices? That doesn't feel weird to you? I think it makes for the better gameplay, but it seems like sort of an odd concept. After all, I'm removing the device, so why wouldn't I remove the cards that came with it when I acquired the device?
Yeah. Trying to incorporate both was never on the table (it being a terrible idea, and all). But thanks for reinforcing the point. :-)