Hi everyone, I've posted only a few times already so now I want to put some of my ideas out there, I hope some of you find them interesting enough to comment on :)
BOULANGERIE
A game where players compete to be the most popular bakery in the town. They achieve this by expanding, hiring employees with certain bakery skills and buying specialised equipment to make the goods which ultimately go onto their display for sale to the public. The types of goods which are most valuable are dictated by the tastes of the local population and on how easy they are to obtain. A core concept will be the effect of weather on the quality of the flour. Too much frost/rain or too dry weather will affect the crop, and this impacts the price the bakers must pay for their flour. The weather is determined by rolling dice during each harvest.
PARTICLE PHYSICS THEMED GAME
Players represent research teams conducting experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Each of the four main detectors can be used to collect the data from different types of experiment, represented by card decks. Each experiment requires a certain level of energy (represented by different types of dice from d4 to d20) and a success criteria representing the different levels of certainty (up to 5 sigma). Lots of ways to interact - bidding for player order, experiments chosen by drafting or 'I split, you choose', recruiting the best scientists, obtaining funding. The scientific community will also conduct experiments, limiting access to some detectors and to the computing grid, shutting down the accelerator for upgrades, helium leaks, etc.
WATLING STREET
Inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard, players represent workers at an archaeological dig racing to uncover as much of the hoard as possible before news of the find reaches the public - and the greedy night-hawkers who will try to steal some gold.
LIMITLESS
Inspired by the movie and the TV show, players compete to catch criminals whilst evading the plots of Senator Morra and Mr Sands. Players have different roles based in that universe, and one is secretly working for one of the villains. That player has access to NZT, but can the other players figure that out and catch the player before he/she triggers the win condition. I'd like to use a Mancala mechanic to plan the actions available to players in this game.
OTHERS
- A trench digging WW1 non-conflict game
- Time travel using a timeline represented by cards that can be substituted by the time travellers
- Endangered species reintroduction theme
Anyway, those are the projects that excite me the most at the moment and I welcome your comments on the ideas.
Chris.
Thank you all for the comments and encouragement :)
SSM, yes I had wondered about how to capture the feel of a bakery theme and it's something I might have to think about for a bit. I work closely with that industry so I may have a certain view that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality.
Questccg, Pelle, sounds like some good advice there, thank you. All of my notes are currently scribbles in a book, and a couple of pages of more substantial mechanical stuff for boulangerie, including a general idea of how the board might look. I just need to spend a few hours getting everything in to a more accessible form.
Pelle, yes I'd be interested in a few links about trench warfare please. How far did you take your design?
For the particle physics theme, I think the next stage is to study a bit more detail about how things are organised at CERN. Their guide to the LHC is useful and an interesting read besides, but I want to dig down and see if it can make sense for the endgame to be triggered by a 5-sigma discovery.