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Grimm Noir

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pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016

I am working on an area control boardgame with mob families based on the Grimm Brothers and other fairytales.

I have a good chunk figured out, need more families and proper gangland actions.
My main concern is the end game/ win condition.

Each player can do one (or two) actions draw cards, gain crew, or gain influince.
The cards are traded in for a colored dice representing a type of mook. The cards traded are dependent on the type of nook, 3 of a color, or activity, one of each type and such.

To gain influence you must play a card onto the city board. Each card is an activity in a neighborhood; protection money from Ella's catering or other store. Each activity has certain mook power (placeholder term) player can roll as many dice as they see fit to match or beat the numbers on the card. Each dice has the 1 replaced by a cop shield. If you roll to many shields the activity fails and you alerted the coppers. The amount of shields is also on the card.

Rolling to many shields will make you draw and resolve a cop card, this could be a raid making you loose dice to a dirty cop shaking you down and losing cards.

So far it's just a race to to own the most area. I have little player interaction. I was thinking of having you place a meeple on a influence tracker allowing you bonuses in the area, like a spot so you ignore a shield because you have a cop in your pocket or you know a guy so you have extra mook points.

There is a board with only a certain amount of notable store locations per neighborhood and a certain number of neighborhoods. Once they are full you can't hustle the Drury Lane Bakery because theres no lot for it to fill. This would be a double sided board so it can scale depending of player count.

If the neighborhood of Red Court has been filled with shops and its split between Bob and I we need a way to drive each other out of town. I could make some activities are destructive like a bottle of hooks rum and a burning rag through a window or a drive-by. Perhaps you can trade cards or dice for cop cards to play against each other.

Any ideas on end game would be helpful.
I don't think a count the areas you own and highest wins would work not on the neighborhood level. On a city level, yes

I might have solved it on my own, but I'm open to ideas...
Also how about some family names? I have the Charmings and the Babas. I can come up with street level gangs all day; lost boys, the 7s, the wolves. But I rather have mob families.

treeves3
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Joined: 04/18/2018
Great Theme

I really like the theme of what you're building here! But the description of game mechanics seems a bit dry, like it could fit most any mob/area control game. For example, any generic mob game might have the ability to throw a Molotov cocktail through a window. But because of your theme, you have an entire range of special powers players could tap to try to reach their goals.

For example, let's say you are playing the Wolves from Little Red Riding Hood. They could attempt to disguise themselves by going into "Granny Mode," to infiltrate the enemy target, destroying it from within. This beats just throwing a flaming bottle through the window which any mook could do. Same potential result, but integrates better with your theme.

Multiply these special abilities across the various factions you can choose to play in your game, and it gives you a wider range of interesting actions for your mooks. It can also give you different end game victory conditions. For example, the Wolves might score points by locating (and eating?) the other teams Grannies, which they get to hide in their buildings across the board at the beginning of the game. Another team might have very different ways to score points based upon their theme. Your game could conclude after X number of turns, and the player who leads their faction to the most victory points based on their custom goals, wins.

Just food for thought. Good luck!

-Tom

let-off studios
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Identify Conflict

Totally agree with Tom here, in that you need to plumb your theme to determine why all these fairy tale characters are in conflict - and alliances, temporary or otherwise - with one another.

Are they trying to rewrite the book of Grimm's Fairy Tales in their own image? Are they infiltrating the world beyond the books, a la Grimm or Fables? Has the old kingpin of the Fairy Tale Families somehow kicked the bucket and now there's a power vacuum?

Claiming and controlling territory is one thing. But the reason why everyone wants to claim and control it, instead of keep the peace, is likely another entirely.

Best of success to you on this project! You have a wealth of source material from which to draw your inspiration.

pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016
I have been on the fence on

I have been on the fence on adding the wolves as a family.

Think fables but in their own city. Odds are I'm just going to go lame and say the old boss does so theres a power vacuum.

The wolf family could have a "huff and puff" ability which is similar to a molotov cocktail. Decimates the place so a new place can be put there. The charming are probably the old family (it's all the princes.) I still need to toss around family abilities. Probably two each; a shop destroyer and a influence dropper...
Unless they are the same.

Thanks for the insight, I might have to make a player board for the families.

pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016
Heres the mooks I have so

Heres the mooks I have so far; wheelman, enforcer, mule, and fence. Maybe bent cops?

I dont have to many activities yet, gangland is not my forte. I have number running, book making, protection racket.

I need more activities, and perhaps more mooks.

Mosker
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Joined: 03/30/2014
End game and tasks...

Have you considered putting the game on a clock (perhaps with a bit of flexibility)...There's enough fantasy in your theme to countdown to a full moon, the witches' sabbath--or even the king's army coming in to clean things up, or at least to see who's on top and should be appointed ruler (with beheadings for everyone else).

As for tasks, gangsters also smuggle: get golden eggs past tax officials, noble offspring in or out of town to secure/avoid marriages, and if you go deep into the sources, everyone not rich is generally starving, so anything revolving around food has a great deal of potential. It all depends on how dark or whimsical (or if you and your artist team are in perfect sync, both!) you want the game to be...

pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016
Sorry it's late.

I could have the countdown to a big meetup of family heads.

I can add counterfeiting wishes, gold, and other things of that ilk.
With the setting being in the city during the heyday of mobsters, I'm sure hunger was still an issue.
I dont have an artist, mechanics come first. A whimsical darkness, compared to a dark whimsy, would be my preference.
I can toss in some fronts.
I'm tossing around an idea to add a family dice type. Something to activate the abilities the families have, like the wolf families huff and puff.

Mosker
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Joined: 03/30/2014
Your spinoff game (which may land a publisher for Grimm Noir)

pwyll wrote:
...counterfeiting wishes...

Counterfeit Wishes.

Very simple, single card deck (18?) bluffing game with an Arabian Nights vibe to the artwork.

If it doesn't interest you, may I have the name?

pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016
It's yours

It's all yours. I'm lucky if I will get this idea off you idea block. (Math likes to give me wedgies and stuff me in my locker. Dyscalcula math dyslexia) if it gets published give me a thanks.

pwyll
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Joined: 07/15/2016
Minor changes I made so far.

I had to tweak some of the game. Instead of placing a location on the board only when you pull a heist, at the start of the game you place shop tiles down on the map.

Doing it as a countdown won't work because I have tou drawing cards and playing card combos to gain mook dice. I'm thinking a neighborhood is locked from heists once al the stores are claimed only affected by family actions. Once all the stores are claimed game over...

I might be removing the mule mook for a different mook.

The stores will have a few symbols and numbers to tell you how many of each mook is needed. The player mats have stats for the family actions.

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