Hello BGDF Community!
Was hoping I could get your guys opinion on a game I've designed. I've tried to design quite a few but as I always playtest it, usually by just drawing it out, I always discover some large problems that stop me from being able to continue. I could always figure out ways around it, but they end up making the game complicated. I can never figure out an elegant solution. Anyway, here is my latest attempt, and I've gone for a more simplistic game.
I plan to have the combatants be humoursly drawn, and have unique funny skills.
Version 1
Deck of fighters
Deck of items
Gold tokens (in 100 gold increments)
It's a game with combat between 2 players. Though 4 players minimum are required to play.
Some basic rules.
You have to always bid on a fighter, even if it makes you go to zero gold.
If you have zero gold at the end of a fight, you are out of the game.
First player to reach 1200 gold wins.
Players start with 2 item cards, maybe 3. Whenever they use one, they draw a new one to get back up to 2 or 3.
Game
So Player 1, and Player 3, basically whoever is two seats to player's right, each draw a fighter card and look at it. They just announce whether they have a melee, ranged, or magic character, nothing else. Most of the time, Melee beats magic, magic beats ranged, ranged beats melee, but the different fighters have have skills that change that up. This helps you decide who you have the best chance of winning and who to bid on.
Fighters would have and attack stat, and defense stat. Those are compared against each fighter and that determines the winner of the fight, plus any fighter skills or item cards. I haven't fully thought out the combat yet, so maybe no attack/defense, just one single stat strength, whosever is highest wins.
Play by play
Player 1 announces his card is a melee fighter.
Player 3 announces his card is a ranged character.
Player 2 bids on melee with 100 gold.
Player 2 chose the underdog in this fight, melee, because let's say he has an item that can be played that blocks arrows.
Player 4 notices that player 2 bid on the underdog, and let's say he has a card that increases strength, he bids on the ranged for 100 gold, thinking that player 2 is likely playing a damage card or defense card to survive the ranged.
Any other players now bid as well.
Now that bids have been placed, player 1 and 3 flip over their fighters and everyone can now see the stats and abilities of each fighter. For keeping it simple, let's just make 2 basic fighters for this fight.
Melee
Barbarian
8 Str
Ranged
Archer
5 str
As I stated above, ranged beats melee, so it gets a str bonus that is doubled, so ranged has 10 str for this fight.
Player 1 and 3 don't do anything now except hope their fighter wins.
Player 2 takes this opportunity to play his block arrows card on melee, face down.
Player 4 takes this opportunity to play his str increase card, face down.
Once all players have played any item cards, flip them over and figure out who wins the fight. (They are played face down to stop players from countering, by waiting for someone else to play a card first.)
Melee 8
+ block arrows card, reduces ranged str by half, after all item bonuses.
total: 8 str
Ranged 10 (because it's double for fighting melee)
+ str increase card, increases str by 5.
15 str
total: 7 str (15/2 rounded down, because of block arrows card)
Melee Barbarian beats the odds and wins!
Player who played melee, gets the amount of money that was bid on him, so 100 gold. (Careful who you bid on, if they win they could end up getting the last of the gold needed to win!)
Player who bid on melee, gets bid x 3 for bidding on the underdog.
Had ranged won, the person who bid on them would get bid x 2.
That's the game, first player to 1200 gold wins.
All these numbers are estimates, including str values.
Another version of this is that the fighter cards are chosen without being a player's fighter, and then everyone does bidding and playing item cards. This way the game can be any number of players. This actually may make more sense, since really the people choosing the fighters aren't doing anything but hoping their fighter wins.
What does everyone think? Are their any problems with this game that you can foresee, or does it just not sound fun? Or does this game already exist? Any feedback, good and bad is helpful. I want to make the best possible game. =)
Avalaunch, I went with simple, as a cooperative game my brother-in-law and I are working on has been having issues with being fun, but too complex (we want to try to make it accessible to more people, but making it less complex seems to ruin part of the fun of it, or destroys a lot of mechanics, so we're stuck). So we decided to start simple first and work our way up to a bigger game.
I definitely want it to be over the top humor. Similar to Munchkin.
I'm starting to like the alternate version better too, and with larienna's comments about how to do the betting I think it I could rework it to be something like this:
Two fighters are randomly chosen. Now all players get to use their cards (only 1) to buff a fighter out on the table. Cards go face down, so that no one can watch and wait for others to play their's and then counter it with a card. Players put their card next to the fighter they are enhancing. Maybe it would be more fun to get players playing cards in a certain order. Maybe whoever decides to play a card first gets a bigger money bonus. I was thinking the way betting could work is that fighters are worth 100 gold by default, no matter what the fighter is. They could just be base cards like melee and ranged and have no stats, as that's what the other cards are for? Not sure. But anyway, the stronger the card you play, the less gold value it is. The weaker (the less chance you have of winning) the more gold it is worth if you win.
New way like this:
Two fighters are chosen and put face up, melee and ranged.
Players decide who to back up with their cards in hand.
Players frantically grab for the turn markers, while deciding. (need to rethink this, but I like going first is a disadvantage, but a bigger reward)
Player order: 2,3,1,4
Player 2 plays a card face up on the melee fighter enhancing him. (larienaa different characters instead of items may be the best way to go about this, as you said.)
Player 3 plays a card face up on the ranged guy.
Player 1 was originally going to play a card to enhance ranged, but now decides to enhance melee.
Player 4 enhances ranged guy.
What I'm still not sure about is how to distribute the money. Like what's stopping the last person from just choosing the easy win? I guess they'll get less since they went last, but still.