I'm in the very early stages of developing a board game which would feel somewhat like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Now, before I spend too much more time on it, I'd like to make sure that I'm not creating something that already exists. I'm counting on you fair readers and the vast number of games that you all have collectively encountered. Are there games like this that already exist?
The rough concept
The game would include perhaps a couple dozen different scenarios--some may be cooperative, some may be pvp (some may switch in the middle of the game, depending on the players' decisions). In each scenario, there would be a main series of quests that the players will complete, creating a coherent storyline. Additionally, there would be shorter unrelated quests that the players can find and complete to gain loot, swag, etc needed for the main quest at hand (somewhat like in Skyrim, where there is a "main" series of quests which drives the central plot forward).
The twist is that the main storyline has multiple branches, resulting in completely different stories and endings, depending on the choices of the players. This is the similarity to choose-your-own-adventure books (CYOA?)-- players can choose to complete a quest in one of a few different ways, and each decision will drive the story in a different direction, resulting in a different quest that the players get next.
In CYOA books I've played, your decisions don't typically take you far from the main plot...most paths either lead you to a quick death, or merge back into the main storyline, and there is only one "right" ending. This is where I want my game to differ--I want multiple "right" endings so a single scenario can be replayed multiple times.
I'd like to stay away from complicated character sheets, fighting mechanics, rolling lots of dice, heavy reliance on strategy, etc. I'm striving for a more accessible game driven by story and the choices players make to alter the story.
Details
Setting: Currently I'm imagining the standard fantasy world.
The board: Depending on the scenario, a randomized or semi-randomized hex tile board. Each hex would be forest, plains, desert, mountains, hills, etc. Some tiles would have points of interest, like a town, castle, cave, ruins, etc. Players move their characters around the board to complete quests and gain skills and loot.
Player characters: Each player's character has certain attributes (i.e. strength, magic, speed, intelligence, charisma, good/evil alignment etc). Attributes may be at a high or low value, and can be increased or decreased. Players can gain items or spells which give them extra abilities or bonuses to their attributes.
Tile encounters: Similar to Eldritch Horror, when a player ends his turn, he gets a random "encounter" based on where he is. This would be like a paragraph taken from a CYOA book. Something like
Main quest: At any given moment, there will be one main quest, which may be able to be completed in one of a few different ways. Completing the main quest gives the player a new main quest, until they've reached the end of the storyline and finished the game. To create a sense of urgency, there could be bad events which would happen on a semi-regular basis (similar to epidemics in Pandemic). The details of the bad event depends on where the players are in the main plot. If too many of these happen, the players lose.
Side quests: Players can spend time at a town searching for side quests. These would involve traveling somewhere and performing some action, or delivering some item, etc, and would result in a good reward.
Similarities to other games
I haven't played any D&D... is this just basically a simplified and board-ified version of a pre-made D&D adventure?
In my brief amount of research, I haven't found any games which look quite like what I'm envisioning. The closest I've found is Tales of Arabian Nights, which is essentially a bunch of random CYOA-like encounters, and doesn't have a cohesive storyline.
So what do you say? Do you know of a game like this?
Thank you for your time.
It seems as though games like 7th Continent, Barbarian Prince, etc. have a "storyline" which is made up of random encounters.
Indeed, the core of what I'd like to make is a game with consistent storyline combined with meaningful player choices and repayability. The only ways I've thought of to do this are:
1. A D&D type game, where the players have near unlimited options, and a game master reacts to what the players do and creatively improvises the storyline. (Lots of work for the game master).
2. A large pre-made decision tree, where players have a limited set of options at each step, but the tree is large enough to offer repayability (lots of work for the developer).