Game About Women in History

It's a real struggle to come up with a compelling co-op design idea that doesn't involve some kind of conflict within the game. The players usually need a motive to join forces in all except the most puzzle like , think Hanabi, of games.

The only suggestion I might add is "Timeline", but it's pretty dry theme-wise.

Of the influences you have shown, I really like the idea of re-designing 7 Wonders. In the first era, you might include basic contributions of single or groups of women that would act as the "resources" for later eras. Instead of Wood, Stone, Clay... you would have Literature, Leadership, Science, Exploration...

The second era might add some contributions but would also allow players to earn achievements.

The third era would primarily be using contributions to attain achievements.

So you might draft a few "Leadership" producers in the first era, that lets you draft "Suffragettes" in the second era which allows "Voting Rights" in the third era. Or with Science you might Draft Ada Lovelace in the second era which leads to Grace Hopper, or with Exploration, Amelia Earhart leading to Sally Ride.

There's lots of cross over, you just need to figure out a replacement for the military Strength mechanism which is where you would let lose with some design ideas. One thought is to deal each player a "goal" (target contribution level) before each era and based on how well they completed that goal vs their neighbors, they get a small bonus.

Call it "Women of Wonder".

For a moment I was thinking you had four different kinds of currency in your game, which I feel would be INCREDIBLY confusing. Then I read it a few more times and realized that the different symbols on the die were like the different colours of cards in Machi Koro. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.

As long as there's only a single unit of currency, then here are some suggestions. You may want to try a few:

- Like in the original Machi Koro, cards can have different costs based on the power of the card. For example, the Diamond cards can be very valuable, while Circle cards can be very cheap in comparison.

- End of Game Suggestion: Although it depends heavily on luck and becomes a dice race, it can favor specialization in the previous card-collection phase of the game. For example, as soon as a player has collected any three of each suit/shape, they are eligible to win the game. To win, they must declare a suit, and then roll the die once for each card of that suit they've collected. If they roll the needed suit a total of three times, they win.

Each time you attempt and fail, you earn an Attempt token. If a player begins their turn after collecting three Attempt tokens, they win. This can allow other players to catch up and/or win with lucky rolls.

- You can limit the number of cards of any one type that players can collect. You mention suffragettes, so an example can be that a player can only have three different Suffragette cards in their tableau.

- You can have several different cards of the same suit available for purchase in the "market" (still limiting purchases to 1 per player turn, as in Machi Koro). This way, if players are trying to collect several of the same suit, they can still earn Achievements without having to spread over too many suits.

- You can have several cards of the same type, but be of different suits. For example, you can have four Suffragette cards of each of the four different suits. This caters to specialization, as well as helps out players who are trying to earn the Achievements you mentioned.

- For adding in a second or more dice, simply allow an expensive card to add in the second (or any additional) die. After rolling, the player can choose which result they want to activate. You could even borrow the "under construction" mechanic from Machi Koro and flip the card over after it's used, so that the player can't do this every turn. Or maybe the player can use it only a certain number of times, and then it's returned to the "market."

...

Your game seems solid enough so far. Now it's time to create some cards label your die, and test things out. :)