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Game needs more interaction

5 replies [Last post]
Fri, 06/28/2013 - 00:34
Brandon Ward
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Joined: 06/25/2013

Hi New Friends,

My wife and I are having a contest to see who can create a more fun board game this summer. She's pretty far along on her ideas, so I have some catching up to do. Can you please help with my preliminary ideas?

I want to make a mystery game like Clue, where you have to collect evidence in order to solve some crime. Here's the basic gameplay mechanics:

People start the game with 1 detective and $10.

Player A's turn:
Everybody pays an amount from $1 to $5 based on how much they want to find a clue.
Player A rolls one die. Each player who paid at least the dice roll gets to look at a clue. A roll of 6 means that nobody gets to look at a clue.
Player A picks up $2 to end his turn.
Then, he passes the die to player B, and the cycle repeats.

My main problem is that the "optimal strategy" is fairly obvious: pay the maximum possible on every turn. Is there an easy fix to this issue?

As well, there is very little interaction between players. I am imagining that there is more than one crime solved during the game (unlike Clue). And for each crime people solve, they get more money and more detectives. But Player A's wagering and crime solving doesn't really have anything to do with Player B. How can I add more interaction?

Thanks for all of your help! It is very much appreciated!
Brandon

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Fri, 06/28/2013 - 07:34
#1
Corsaire
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Joined: 06/27/2013
If you look at it more as

If you look at it more as worker placement, you could have multiple crimes on the table at the same time. Then players alternate committing resources to the crime scenes. Then roll at each scene based on number of workers?

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Fri, 06/28/2013 - 18:00
#2
RGaffney
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Joined: 09/26/2011
Let the players commit

Let the players commit crimes!

Give me a choice to either work on solving a murder, or committing one with an MO that will lead my rival detectives astray.

Obviously if i'm caught committing a crime I lose, but If you falsely accuse me you have to pay my lawyer fees.

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Sat, 06/29/2013 - 15:40
#3
Brandon Ward
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Joined: 06/25/2013
Re:

Thanks, those are both great ideas! I definitely need to experiment with starting with more than 1 detective so that people have a "resource distribution" decision to make. I also really like the idea that you can both commit and solve crimes. Although I need to think about how people could commit a crime and then "get away with it".

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Sun, 06/30/2013 - 16:38
#4
hotsoup
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Joined: 08/28/2009
Some ideas: Let players steal

Some ideas:

Let players steal clues from each other.
Let players plant false clues.
Let players compete for things other than clues, like contacts and resources.

I'm not sure if the "spend money to find a clue" system would be very engaging. There isn't many interesting decisions players can make there. Perhaps clues could be planted around a board, and players have to complete different challenges to look at them?

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Fri, 07/05/2013 - 16:02
#5
ruy343
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Joined: 07/03/2013
Inspire Cooperation and Competition!

Cooperation and competition are, to me, the key to getting players to interact with one another. One way in which you could inspire a cooperative feel to the game is to provide tools to your sleuths (think listening bugs, fingerprint analyzers, magnifying glasses, IR Cameras [or a program that allows you to hack cameras that may have seen the crime], DNA Microarrays [I'm a physiologist, others might call it DNA fingerprinting or something]) and allow the sleuths to obtain these tools to be able to solve crimes (which you might draw from a deck or something). However, because resources are limited and expended, you might want to, on your turn, team up with another detective to solve a particular crime and share the reward.

As for how you would win, you could say "solve 10 crimes" or "earn X money" where more difficult crimes earn you more. That would lead to a few players trying to hoard stuff in the off-chance that they draw a difficult crime and get a killing on it all alone, while some more cooperative players might simply work together with everyone to split the winnings with those that shared their items with them.

That was all stream of consciousness. I hope it was intelligible.

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