I'm currently working on a card-based game called "crimes". Every Player is the boss of a criminal group and has to get his gangsters into jobs. By this, he tries to solve as much jobs as possible to get the respect of the 'local' godfather and become a higher-class-criminal who doesn't need to do the dirty work anymore (equals winning the game).
Basic Setup
Every player gets a deck of characters who represent his gang. The Deck is placed face down in front of every player. At the beginning, every player draws 2 Gangsters and places them face upward in front of him: These character are 'active' and ready for action. There are basically three types of characters: the killer, the informant and the safecracker.
In the middle of all players lies a pile of jobs [face up]: Now the players can take their characters and place them at the sides of the jobcard so that their characters are 'in' and planing the heist. This happens roundbased, so in the first round every player takes a character and puts him on the job. At the 4 sides of the job are markers, indicating slots for certain character classes. For example, a bank robbery would require the character classes killer (left), and safecracker (top).
In order to determine the amount of player activity during a playerturn, everyone gets 'actionchips'. With theese, the player may send additional characters to the job, activate characters (draw from own gangpile and put them face up in front of him) or draw/play cards.
Characters & Cards
As mentioned, every player can send his characters to the job. He can also stack his own gangsters in the job instead of playing them on seperate positions: By this, the gangsters build a group with more influence/power concerning the activities on the job.
It also influences, which cards the player may draw: At the beginning of every player turn, the player draws up to three cards, chooses one, and discards two. Depending on the characters he's brought into the job, he can draw single gangster cards, double gangster cards [if he has a team of two stacked gangster on the job] or triple gangster cards [if he has a team of three stacked gangsters in the job]. So, the cards have different strengths and also sometimes special abilities, but also differents costs [actionpoints] to play them. In the case of a special ability, the actioncards can only be played if the the specific character [for example the killer] lies on the top of the stack.
End of a job
When a fixed amount of rounds [specific to the job] has passed, it is about checking who earns the godfathers 'respect' for the job: Players may get points for the amount of own character who were inside the job, extrapoint for specific cards played and of course points for being with the right character on the right position of the job [extrapoints]. The player with the most points gets the jobcard, indicating he won the godfathers respect for this job as the 'main actor'. Now, the next job is played. So, the game is pretty tactical, you can kill other characters, steal cards, switch positions, build groups and dissolve them, etc.
Argh…
Okay, so here are the basics :-) I'm really interested in getting feedback, especially about how you think about the idea in general, alternative game mechanics, contents of actioncards [I already got some] and about the job: I'm still somehow dissatisfied that only one player can win a job… on the other hand, I've no idea about different game mechanics which don't get overcomplicated. I'm also thinking about things to force the player interaction among each other.
It's my first game, so the whole process is pretty new and hard to me. Originally, I wanted to develop a pretty quick idea in order to focus on graphics and illustration [I'm a german design student doing the final thesis], but well, I'm still stuck in the gamedevelopment process ;-( I've got about 5 1/2 weeks left to finish. The game doesn't [and maybe can't] be really finished at the end of that time, but I would really like to start pushing the artwork stuff.
So, any comments and suggestions are welcome! and of course: thanks for reading! [&Sorry, this whole post has become longer than it was meant to be]
