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Resources in a Fantasy Game with Dragons

13 replies [Last post]
Wed, 02/10/2016 - 06:25
tdakanalis
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Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a card game with a fantasy theme with dragons. I am in the very beginning of my design, so my thoughts are a bit incomplete right now.

Actually the game will use a worker placement mechanic, where the workers will be the dragons that will strive to collect resources in order to achieve their final aim (VP).

My question is what kind of resources I could use in order to comply with the theme of the game. As a first thought I think fireballs (or fire-sth) is an option. Any suggestions?

P.S. This is my first topic in the BGDF!

Thanks in advance!!!

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Wed, 02/10/2016 - 07:54
#1
polyobsessive
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Dragons

It depends on what sort of dragons you are working with.

I guess gold would be a good starting point. Maybe gems too?

There was a cartoon about dragons years ago (The Flight of Dragons, IIRC) that had dragons eating rock that helped them fly and breathe fire. Maybe you could have something like that?

How about some sort of food resource? If you wanted to go dark, maybe villagers?

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Wed, 02/10/2016 - 15:59
#2
tdakanalis
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Dragons

Actually they will be "good" dragons. I am wondering if the gems and the gold make the game thematic. Why do dragons collect gems and gold? Well, maybe because they like shine things.

The idea with the rocks and the food is really interesting. Definitely, dragons need food. But how do they produce the fire? They burn rocks. It sounds good.

Any other ideas?

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Wed, 02/10/2016 - 16:51
#3
Orangebeard
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Resources for good dragons

I kind of assume that age, power and wealth are givens when dealing with dragons. I would think ancient, good dragons might be interested in ancient knowledge or magic. From a political standpoint, they would probably want a stable kingdom within their territory. They might want to increase their territory for that matter. I suppose they might also seek out friends or allies.

If the dragon is not involved with the other races of their world and basically live alone, then maybe they would lean towards food, gems, gold and knowledge?

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Wed, 02/10/2016 - 18:07
#4
polyobsessive
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Treasure

tdakanalis wrote:
Why do dragons collect gems and gold?

I was mostly just suggesting that because many versions of dragons have them building hoards of treasure. One suggestion I heard for the gold thing was that it is the softest thing for them to sleep on that doesn't burn. Other versions are that they are just avaricious!

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Thu, 02/11/2016 - 03:37
#5
ilSilvano
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Dragon eggs?

Rocks and gold sound like great suggestions.
Also, what about dragon eggs?
The story goes: dragons try to get back some dragon eggs stolen by evil men; these could also be used as Victory Points if you need them.

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Thu, 02/11/2016 - 04:02
#6
radioactivemouse
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I'd try something silly...

Off the top of my head, I thought "crystals", but that's way too cliche.

Then I thought about it some more...and I realized you (the OP) posted a pretty smart question. So I thought about something different.

How about pigs?

I know, it sounds out of the ordinary, but pigs are just about the right size as dragon food. You "train" your dragon by using their pig food as a resource to teach them (much like we use food to help train our dogs).

Of course you can do a lot of things to it. Introduce a sick pig and the dragon produces "bile" breath, which is like a poison. Feed a frozen pig and they can breathe ice. But be careful, you can only corral so many pigs and some may escape. You can use a worker placement to corral pigs or use a worker to get materials to "enhance" the pig before you feed it to the dragon.

I'm sorry if it sounds dumb. I'm just giving out ideas. Take them for what you will.

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Sat, 02/13/2016 - 03:26
#7
Midnight_Carnival
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combustibles, food, fairy creatures

Dragons are magical creatures but they have biological bodies which function slightly differently to ours but on similar principles.

Producing fire depletes their body's sulfur reserve so they would need brimstone from volcanos, in addition volcanos provide a habitat for fire fairy creatures.
They must also consume vast quantities of peat (swamp) and/or mineral oil (desert) and/or turpentine (forest) and/or blubber (ocean/ice caps) all of these provide habitats for fairy creatures but keeping fairies limits the ammount of combustible fuel you can harvest...

so why keep unicorns, selkies, boggarts and elves if they just use up your fuel?
Dragon's don't use technology so in order to "upgrade" your dragons you need to use magic and since they use natural magic they need fairy creatures in their domains to maintain the balance. The fairy creatures don't fight though, they just make the flowers grow, etc.

Food comes from habitats but they food and the fuel normally compete.

In terms of the cards, the way I suggest it is that you have terrain cards representing basic terrain types, each with a different number of "slots", then there are resource cards which can be 'added' to these. Food, fuel and fairies can be added to your basic geological feature but they can very rarely/never all be added at the same time.
Dragons also have "slots" onto which magical upgrades can be added but only if the apropriate fairy creatures exist in the realm.
That's my suggestion anyway, take what you like change what you want to and leave whatever you want, if there is any good in there it's yours.

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Sat, 02/13/2016 - 06:36
#8
Tedthebug
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How about minions?

If the dragons are controlling resources why not have them static & use the magical creatures mentioned previously as the workers needed to collect the resources & infuse them with the necessary magic. The resources grown/gathered could depend on the number of each creature assigned, the number of creatures is dependent on how much of their own food source they have, & maybe some stop working for a few turns while they have young which will increase the worker population a few turns after the parents return to work? That way the player is balancing short term loss with long term gain.
Then you can have the resources like the brimstone for fuel/fire, pigs for actual protein, gems for the magic to enable flight, & gold for the vp stack towards victory. Maybe players could even spend some gold to hire additional workers for a turn if there is a harvest glut that needs gathering for storage or something.

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Sat, 02/20/2016 - 11:05
#9
tdakanalis
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Some thoughts

Thank you all guys for all those really creative ideas. I have worked a bit more the idea, by using all the information you provided me with, and I have made the following decisions:
1. The resources of the game will be power, knowledge and magic
2. Dragons have to spend food in order to collect the resources.
3. Dragons will get older as they are used by the players and finally they will be removed by the game.
4. Players will be able to give combinations of power, knowledge and magic tokens in order to acquire wisdom tokens (VP) OR to upgrade their dragons
5. The player with the most wisdom points at the end of the game is the winner.

So, players have to spend food in order to collect power, knowledge and magic and finally to convert them into wisdom points or to use them for upgrading their dragons.

However, I am not sure if this is an interesting enough economy that will create interesting decisions. What do you think guys? I was thinking that maybe players might have to spend something more apart from food.

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Sat, 02/20/2016 - 11:44
#10
trichinosis
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Something besides food?

What if it cost food and ....time? Or magic and time, etc. Each dragon could start with a number of time tokens (either a standard number, or a random number, or each with its own number), and those time tokens had to be spend to convert your economy as well.

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Sat, 02/20/2016 - 15:18
#11
tdakanalis
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Some thoughts

Actually time is already in the game. As you use your dragons they get older and finally they pass away.

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Sun, 02/21/2016 - 13:45
#12
tdakanalis
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Game Economy

"So, players have to spend food in order to collect power, knowledge and magic and finally to convert them into wisdom points or to use them for upgrading their dragons.

Better dragons mean more food to feed them but also you collect more power, knowledge and magic. Food is collected by dragons from certain areas."

So, you have to balance the time you spend collecting food or the other resources.

Any feedback regarding the above economy? Do you think that it is interesting enough for players?

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Mon, 02/22/2016 - 04:06
#13
ilSilvano
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Game icons

Hi,
I think those resources may work very well, provided you use some inspired icons to represent them.

So, you can have these tokens in your economy:
CROWNS (power)
BOOKS (knowledge)
SCROLLS or STAFFS or WANDS (magic)

I think that "I need to gather a crown and two scrolls to end my quest" sounds better than "I need to gather a point in power and two points in magic to end my quest".

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