I have a theme but am struggling to find a blend of mechanics to make this work. My theme is based on the so called 'Progress' of Queen Elizabeth 1St during which she would travel around England staying at various honoured guests castles and stately homes. This could be both at enormous and some times crippling cost to the host but also potentialy of great advantage.
In my game I want the various members of the Queens court to form alliances with those of the host. Players have control of a group of ranked pieces representing the social status found in Tudor society which they move around to take control of areas of the stately home/castle. They use action points (the higher the status of the piece the more each piece has) and compete to control as much of the areas as possible and to dominate other players pieces which are of lower status. Gaining control of a room or suite of rooms earns cards which have skills on them such as 'Flatter', 'Subterfuge' etc. These are used to help break other players alliences or to help cement your own. The board has an 'outer court' complex where players compete for control of areas and an Inner court where the Queen and her court resided. So on your go you can move your own coloured pieces and the centrally shared pieces representing the Queen and her courtiers.
Other cards are collected: Events such as 'Plague', 'Feast' and 'Heresy' can be played to mess with other players strategies. Players can also pull 'Schemes' cards which give different goals to the players ( Expose the Heretic, High Ranking Marriage, Prevent Business Deal etc)
Somehow - and here's the rub- I need to build into this a mechanic for the tension of the fast disappearing fortune of the host (ie the players) and a mechanic to represent the alliences and plots connecting the host and visitors. Any ideas?
Mechanic ideas needed for 'The Queens Progress' game
It sounds like action points are a huge point of strength. I good balancing mechanic involves the idea that using action points uses up your fortune. More valuable pieces that have higher capacity might have higher cost per use as well. That way there is value(saving your fortune) for using smaller pieces when the actions are less needed.
One simple way to denote alliances would be to have a tile or card representing each piece on the board, with, say, their name, rank and house on each card (plus an illustrative picture of the scheming aristocrat). If you currently hold that character's tile, you are in alliance with them. Then you could add tile trading (alliance trading) between players as well. Perhaps some of the more powerful event cards require that you hold an alliance with a member of a certain house or clan before you can play them. This might create a nice dynamic between the tiles and the cards.
That's a great suggestion; I was wondering how to give players a motivation to use their weaker pieces.
My idea for the 'fortune' is that it is joint i.e. all the players are gradually exhausting the same pot of money but playing for themselves. Kind of co-op light. A 'fortune' track on the side of the board that just ticked down each round was the plan but your suggestion makes it much more interesting. This way I can also build in a players ability to use more expensive pieces if they want to end the game quicker or to perhaps trigger events spread out along the 'fortune' line.
I am still stuck on creating/finding a simple mechanic to represent the actual pairing off of pieces to represent alliences. My thoughts are that a player moves into the inner court and as long as his action points are higher than the Queens pieces an allience is formed. Maybe then the allied piece is inverted to indicate its 'allience' status or is placed in a room controlled by that player or something along these lines. Of course other players can set out to break the allience; placing it back in the inner courtyard or make one of their own with the same piece.