Like any designer, I have way more ideas then I can ever actually work on. This post is about all the games I am currently working on. And there are a lot.
The reason I'm posting this is so that I can (hopefully) find out what games in particular are of interest to people here. So, in no particular order (All titles subject to change):
Market Share
The core concept for this game is setting up a sustainable economic engine. The game is played as a worker placement game on players Tableau (set of cards placed in front of the players) The cards are numbered to indicate what order they are carried out in, and depending on where you place your workers. It is inspired heavily by Machi Koro in terms of theme. The idea of building up a town from a small rural to a thriving economic powerhouse. Each card has several peices of information; sequence, storage, worker/static effect, a place to place a worker.
As an example, early in the game you may have a Farm, a Mill and a Market. The Farm Generates food if there is a worker on it. The Mill processes the food and makes the yield more efficient (If there is food on a farm, move one to the Mill and add 1). The Market, provided a worker, does the following in order; 1) convert 1 food to 1 money, 2) Move up to 3 food from a Mill or Farm to the Market. The sequence for these cards is Market, Mill, then Farm.
Europan Wars
This is my attempt at a war game. I am not a history buff, so I didn't want to do a historical war game, but I wanted to explore the possibility of a diceless wargame mechanic. The end result, is essentially an analog for real time strategy computer games. Now, in reality its not real time, but everything is executes simultaneously and orders have lasting effects. If you tell a unit to go in a given direction they will continue to do so until you tell them to stop, or they are incapable of doing so, probably because they ran into another unit.
Combat works based on how units influence their surrounding spaces. Each unit has 6 values, a type designation, and a facing/movement indication. The 6 values are how much affect the unit has on its surroundings. Each associated with a surrounding hex. The type designation indicates when the unit will activate in a round. Some essentially this is how I handle various speeds. Infantry moves less often than Ground Vehicles, which move less often than Air units. The Facing / movement indiction only shows whether or not the unit is moving and which direction they are moving. If they are forced to stop they will keep the same facing, if the player chooses to stop them they will decide on facing.
Thematically, this game is a setting builder for a role playing game I'm working on. I'll get into that more later, but short version, in the future, humanity colonized Jupiter's Moons and Mars, and then before they were really ready to be self sufficient there was a nuclear war on earth. Several hundred years later the colonies are more or less stable and self sufficient, and Europa has become a haven for refugee's fleeing oppression on Mars. Mars invades Europa.
The Racket
This game gets its mechanical inspiration from Eclipse. Thematically it is a gangster game. Instead of building ships and technologies, you build up a gang. Each member having unique abilities based on position within the gang. For example, a given character may have the Don ability of "Make an 'Offer', spend 10 Force to remove any one opponent cube", but if you don't have them as the Don, they can't use that ability. There are three basic positions, Don, Capo and Soldier. The Don has access to the Don, Capo and Soldier abilities. The Capo doesn't get to use his Don ability. The Soldier only has a soldier ability.
Aside from the gangsters themselves, the players have three major resources. Force, Influence, and Money. Each location they control will contribute one of those resources. Every time the players give an order they expose themselves, which has to be dealt with at the end of a round. If they can't deal with it. i.e. Pay for it using one of the resources, they can sacrifice a spot in the gang. The card is not removed from the position. Its simply unavailable. If the Don is flipped the player loses.
Sticks and Stones
This is essentially an abstract. It uses 50 cards (10 stone cards and 40 stick cards). There are 10 suits. A suit consists of 1 stone and 4 sticks.
The game is set up as follows; The youngest player chooses how many suits to use. Then starting with the oldest player, each player takes turns placing 1 Stone, or 1 to 3 Sticks adjacent to a stone. This continues until there are no more sticks to be placed. The player who placed a stick last, goes first.
Once the game begins, each player on their turn must take 1 or 2 sticks from one of the stick piles. If they take the last stick adjacent to as stone, they must also take the stone. Then the next player goes. This continues until all sticks and stones have been picked up.
Scoring is based on the following; Each stick = 1 point. Stones value is based on sticks in the same suit. If they have all 4 sticks of the same suit they get 5 points. 3 Sticks of the same suit earns 3 points. 2 sticks of the same suit means they neither gain nor lose points. 1 stick of the same suit and they lose 1 point. No sticks of the same suit and they lose 4 points. Highest score wins.
City States
Each player is in charge of a Greek City State. They have multiple types of poplulation (slaves, freeman, citizens, and soldiers) each of which has a different effect. Slaves generate 1 resource, 2 freeman generate 1 resource, each citizen doubles the effect of one slave, and soldiers are used to go to war with/ defend against your neighbors. Trade routes can be set up increase resources, the number of player the route passes through determining the value of the route, but also how easy it is to disrupt it.
In the center of the table there is a Mount Olympus board, where the gods desires are shown. Satisfying those desires, results in increased Favor and/or Victory points.
Additionally in the center of the table there is research deck and several possible revealed technologies. Just being revealed doesn't mean you can gain a tech though. The tech tree is player generated. Each Tech has a type indicator (solid color bar at this point) and a next Research Indicator. The type indicator must match with the next research indicator of the last tech you researched. Your first tech can be any tech. Each tech you gain gives you an ability that no other player can gain. There are no repeats.
Pretty much everything you do will require some kind of check. A check is basically a roll of dice against some value. For example, you may want to increase you slave population. You could do this by attacking a neighbor and stealing from their population, or you could try breeding them. To breed them you roll a number of dice equal to their population. 5+ means the population grows. But you have to be careful, if the slave population is to large they will revolt.
Rule the Waves
This is a deck building naval combat game with a board. Each player has a ship, and a hand of cards. Each card has a sailing section and a boarding section. There is a system for storing money between rounds, changing hand size based on damage to the ships sails, morale of the crew etc.
The Dueling section of the cards has a response mechanic, you have to play a card to counter the card played on you. So each card has a defense and attack, or rules for replacing the defense/attack of another card.
Spray and Pray
This is a first person shooter. It uses cards an simultaneous resolution for movement on a hex map, and for gunfire it uses a physical system. Cubes in a cup overturned on a target. Each cube corner in the target silhouette damages the target. It can be played solitaire or cooperatively, using a card driven ai system. Or competitively in deathmatch, capture the flag scenarios. I may set this in my RPG universe. I haven't decided that definitively yet.
Labyrinth
Constantly shifting board. Monsters with special powers. An adventurer with an expanding power set. Basically the monsters all want to capture the adventurer but don't want to share and the adventurer is trying to get treasures and get out. Very simple concept. Then the board changes.
Trader of Sol
This is another game in the RPG Universe. It is not the RPG. This is basically a pick up and deliver game set in the Sol System of the early space fairing future. This game takes place before the nuclear holocaust of earth. You are a trader, trying to get rich by trading between the various colonies of Sol and earth. Some are mostly self sufficient, others are basically research stations that need constant influx of goods. And of course the planets keep moving so you need to plan not just according to who needs what goods but where they will actually be by the time you get to them.
Dark Age of Sol
This is the RPG. The actual system is called the VIP (variable initiative point) system. Dark Age is the first setting book. The core concept of the setting, about 500 years earlier, colonies were finally set up on various locations throughout the solar system with the intention of ultimately being self sufficient. Then a nuclear war broke out on earth. The colonies that survived are now self sufficient but some colonies did not make it. Earth is not habitable. The major super power is Mars, but the are resisted by a lose coalition made up of Europa, Callisto, and Io. Mars is run by corporations. It the definition of capitalism taken to far. Europa is predominately made of of refugees who have fled other worlds for various reasons, primarily Mars. Callisto was set up as a prison colony and is still run as such. Io is run under communist doctrine. There are also several pirate outposts, in the system and mining along the Asteroid belt means there are various other isolated groups.
Players can be from any planet/moon/asteroid they want. This is a Point buy system. Checks are number of dice versus an attribute (trying to roll under). Keep three dice. Number of dice is determined by skill plus difficulty. Normal task with zero skill, roll three dice. 2 ranks of skill? Roll 5 dice keep the three lowest results. Zero skill and with a two die penalty? Roll 5 dice and keep the 3 highest results (remember you want low results).
In addition to the skills and attributes players can have Traits (good or bad) that tweak the rules a bit. Being lucky for example, would mean when you make a reroll once per session per rank. So, one rank, one reroll. Two ranks, two rerolls.
There is also a system for designing new that weapons, superpowers, armor or whatever. Each of which is made up of Effects, Modifiers, and Augments. Effects are core concepts like movement, damage, buff, etc. Modifiers are things that are added to an Effect that adjust the cost per rank. Making an effect passive for example. Augments are purchased separately but adjust the way the effect works. Range, Area of Effect, etc. By combining those three things you can build pretty much anything.
Anyway those are the games I'm working on at the moment. Any thoughts welcome.
In other news, I've decided to start a patreon page :0)
http://www.patreon.com/NHGames
So, I had expected a little more feedback. Is anyone interested in any of those titles?