I'm a bit new to the mechanic of worker placement, but generally one important aspect of this mechanic is that player's basically interfere with one another because they all share the same worker placement part of a board. This means that if I select an action this round, it's not available to other players - they have to choose a different action.
There are varieties of this such as where a limited amount of workers can be placed in each area, so 2 players can choose a particular action, but there wouldn't be room for anyone else this round. Or players can place multiple workers wherever they want, but once an area is filled, no more workers can use that place.
The game Scythe is different in that players have their own boards where they place workers to decide what action they want this round. Players can't interfere with each other this way, as far as restricting each other's worker placement options. There are other ways of interfering in the game, just not through this action selection mechanic.
I'm considering having to do something similar for my game in order to simplify some things, since I have individual player boards with resource facilities for each player. But I'm wondering if this is a fairly new or uncommon way to implement worker placement, and if so, are there tricks or pitfalls to be aware of? Or are there other popular games that do this?
Currently, my game allows you to add workers permanently to facilities until they're full, and you get resources by rolling a die to determine which facility produces this turn, and you gain the amount equal to the # of workers. Players can attack to try to eliminate or capture workers. But I think I need to simplify battles and use them for a different part of the game, and not have them affect workers, and with worker placement, I would need fewer cubes or meeples - 5 or 6 per player, instead of 20!
Here's an overview by Jon from JGG.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzDxc3G61U4&feature=youtu.be&t=5m33s)
Granted, It's an area control game, so there's no lack of player interaction. It might become problematic in a more euro-ish design.
That's pretty cool Elkobold! Actually, I've been thinking over something similar - my game is an Alchemy theme, and I have Alchemy dice with a few symbols for the experiments, but I have been working on giving numerical values to the symbols so they can also be used more or less like your dice mechanic - place the dice on the facilities you want to produce this turn & collect # of resources based on the value of each symbol.
Part of the issue is thematic - the symbols represent reactions from Alchemy experiments, but what does that have to do with resource production? This is probably a different topic, but all I can come up with is this: your workers are "golems", "which you awaken" with Alchemy, so the dice represent how many workers you were able to awaken this turn.