Context: In my ratscraft board game, players negotiate in each room how they are going to share the resources and victory point. If negotiation fails, then it's war.
In the early design, I was thinking that rooms are resolved 1 at a time with open negotiation. The problem is that it might disturb the pacing of game to constantly switch from war to negotation mode. Second, since my game is a parody of the starcraft board game, I was thinking of trying to find a way to use action tokens but in a more simple and elegant way. I think I found something and this is what I'll explain below.
The mechanic is inspired on game of throne action tokens and Cosmic Encounter negotiation cards. There will be a open negotiation phase where players can negotiate all their rooms outcome. Players during this phase will progressively place one of the 3 action token type in each room.
Share: Indicates that the player is willing to share resources openly.
Intimidation: Indicates that the player want to distribute resources in priority order, the player with most rats first.
War: It's war.
When all the tokens are placed, we reveal and resolve 1 room at a time. In the situation where all players placed the same token, the results happens like indicated by the description above.
If some players wanted to "share", while others are "intimidating", then only the players that intimidated will gain resources. So a weak player who intimidate could win if other players intended to share.
If 1 player ask for war, then everybody go in to war, but the players that placed a war token are better prepared and get some bonus.
The number of each type of token might also be limited according to the number of players preventing you from sharing everywhere or waging war everywhere.
Do you like the idea?
I know that the whole point is to have negotiation. When I played game of thrones, I don't remember having any negotiation even if the game suggest to do so. I think with a system like the above, it could make the game playable with different groups of people who likes to negotiate or not.
What do you think?
Mirror Threads
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/11323186#11323186
