tl;dr: I'm trying to create a small card game inspired by the Addams Family that I can give away to friends towards the end of the year and have a few basics down, but need to do a lot more to turn it into a working game.
OK, so some background... Every year for the last decade or so, my wife and I have been going to a "medieval" banquet each November. The banquets are a private (ish) party organised by a bunch of friends from way back, and the word "medieval" is in quotes because, while the banquets started off being themed in the Arthurian mythos, they have developed into more esoteric themes over the years. Last year was based on A Game of Thrones, the year before that was Serenity/Firefly, and before that it was A Midsummer Night's Dream. The theme planned for this year is The Addams Family (and any other similar sources that anyone fancies going with).
One of the traditions that has developed is that many people exchange banquet gifts, as most of us generally don't see each other at Christmas and, you know, it's a nice thing to do. Often my wife crafts some things for us to give away. This year, I feel that as one of my main hobbies is game design, it would be nice to give away a small game.
So, the brief is that I want a game to be a small card game (18 cards max) so that it would be cheap for me to get decent copies produced; it should have some relevance to the Addams Family theme (I'm planning to avoid the actual IP, but if The Munsters can rip off with something similar, so can I!); it should be the sort of thing that is quick and easy to learn and play.
My plan at the moment is for this to be about gift giving. There can be one set of cards that are gifts (a cake, a puppy, chocolates, a bomb, a machete, a set of electrodes, that sort of thing) and one set of cards that are characters. Each of the characters likes particular types of gift and dislikes others. The aim would be to simultaneously hold a gift and a character who wants that gift.
How this happens, I haven't quite figured out yet. I figure that for now, everyone gets dealt one character and one gift. We may remove unneeded gifts and character from the game, or some or all of them (or maybe just the gifts) could be placed (probably face down) in the middle of the table.
I now need to come up with some form of swapping and peeking protocol to allow players to try to move towards a victory. It is tempting to make it so that, after the initial deal, players can look at other people's cards but not their own.
There is a possibility that I might allow characters to have special abilities that they can use, in the style of Mascarade, where others can challenge if they suspect a special ability is being used by the wrong person. Though this would make the game significantly more complicated; certainly at first.
I'm also not sure about how to stop the round. Maybe there should be a vote to open the presents, or perhaps after a set number of turns, we see what everyone has.
I'm in the process of making up a rough play set to try some ideas out and will try some solo testing -- though a game like this is very hard to solo! I'll then see if I can inflict it on a few people some time soon.
In the meantime, if anyone has any thoughts, comments, questions or suggestions, I would be very grateful to hear them.
Hi Zag, thanks very much for reading and commenting. That's a really cool idea for getting a game design apart from one element: that I like designing games and want to give away something that I have made at least most of. :) (I should probably have mentioned that!)
I was actually just working on this and have a basic set of components that I am playing with.
So I have two sets of cards with distinct backs...
One set is gifts, and my initial set is: axe, bomb, brain, chocolates, cleaver, electrodes, gateau, puppy, and whip.
The other set is for characters (who don't yet have names), each of which has two of the gifts that they like and one that they don't. This is another set of 9 cards, and the cards are set up so each gift is liked by two characters and disliked by one.
I started trying out and improvising the game on my own, which was tricky as the game is developing into a guessing game with elements of bluffing. I need to get some friends round to help try this (actually I've been meaning to try sorting a playtest evening some time soon...) so I can figure out how we are doing.
Anyway, I was playing with 4 "players" and gave each player one character and two gifts. The remaining gift and one of the remaining characters were put face-down in the middle. Each player could look at their own cards and one gift and one character elsewhere around the table.
From there on, I reckoned we could have a couple of rounds of swapping cards (you swap one of your cards with one of the cards of the same type held by another player, or in the middle of the table). I'm not sure yet if players are allowed to look at their cards once the game gets to this stage (probably not).
It was at that point that my brain melted because I can't keep the right information in my head. I might try this again, making a note for each "player" of what they "know".
Eventually (and I'm not yet sure when) we get to a "showdown" point when everyone scores points if their character has gifts that they wanted, and not ones that they dislike.
And while I was typing that, it occurs to me that the final phase could actually be everyone deciding whether they score for their own character or someone else's. That could be a bit of craziness to add in there.