I was watching Gravity Fall's time-travel episode and had a spark of an idea. It's not developed or anything as I only played around with the idea at random times of day for like two days. Not to mention I'm not a game designer and this is my first idea ever. But yeah, let me know if it's already been done and tell me what you guys think. I feel like I'm approaching Legacy and What's He Building In There? territory, but I think it's different enough. Also, the seeding process (mentioned below) is inspired by the building mechanism found in Khronos.
So, a worker placement (workers are time-travellers) with the butterfly effect as the main concept. Players are a team of physicists that built a time-machine but instead of telling the world of their discovery, each of you made a duplicate time-machine of your own and decided to mess with history for your own selfish reasons. (I'm interested in worker placements with big flavour as there aren't that many that comes to mind straight away.)
*OVERVIEW BEGINS HERE*
On the board there will be four different alternate timelines (four different resources) and each of them are segmented into different centuries, starting with the present until all the way to maybe the 1500s. Each player starts with one time-machine on the current century and can go back to previous centuries to gather resources (centuries further back yield greater rewards). In order to visit previous centuries you need to pay dark energy, with energy costs increasing as you travel deeper and you cannot jump timelines. It takes a worker to man the time-machine; so as long as the time-machine is still jumping back time, you have one less worker to start the next round with.
Upon landing, you can EITHER collect the resources in that space OR play an Interference card to mess with history (to be explained below). Then you MUST 'seed' the timeline by placing a resource on that space (something your time-traveller accidentally dropped).
When you place a resource (seeding), you would take one from your OWN stock and place it in the century you are in. Then, place one of that resource from the BANK on each century ahead of the century you are in. This provides a dilemma of collecting better resources way further in the past, BUT leaving more things behind for opponents to collect.
You get Interference cards from the market (ideas you got from the Think Tank) and these cards have a cost (resources) and requirement (century to be placed in, skill level requirement). You pay the costs as you buy the card. As mentioned before, upon reaching the century stated on the card, you either collect the resources there or play a card on that space. When you do play a card, history is rewritten and you get it's effect when you go back to the present.
Cards have two effects, an instant and a constant effect. When you play a card, after you return to the present, you pick one effect that happens, not both. Instant effects are one-off benefits that are discarded after playing. Constant effects stay with you but you can only have two in play. Any more that you play would instantly remove the oldest one as time is trying to correct itself.
*OVERVIEW ENDS HERE*
Random examples I thought of:
1) Newton's Apple (1 VP); Requirement: 1600's, Level 2 Intelligence
Instant effect Plagiarism: You take credit for figuring out gravity before Newton did. Gain 3 additional Victory Points and move one step up the Immorality track.
Constant effect Chopping the apple tree: Newton's understanding of gravity came a few decades later than it should. All players except yourself will have to pay one more dark energy when time-travelling.
2) Cyborg Anomaly Police; Requirement (2 VP): Dependent on target, Level 3 Intelligence, Level 2 Innovation
Instant effect Anomaly prevention: You stopped a colleague from messing with the timeline. Cancel an interference card before its effect takes place (before it's owner returns to the present). The card owner would instead take whatever resources are left and the card returns to its owner.
Constant effect Anomaly immunity: You took a peek at what your colleagues did in the past, and prepared for it. You are immune to all constant effects of that timeline placed upon you.
That's pretty much what I've thought of in terms of the main things you do in the game.
So the game flows like this:
A) Worker phase:
1) Players take turns placing their workers on action spaces on the board, and performs the action immediately. This includes using time-machines, getting more dark energy or getting more cards.
2) After that, in turn order, players that have time-machines in the past are given the option to either collect the resources, plant a card on that space face-down or stay there (to move deeper in time during the next round).
3) Workers that collected resources or played cards are sling-shotted back to the current century (because going to the past is like swimming upstream).
4) At that point, all cards played would be flipped over and resolved simultaneously (some cards might interact with others).
B) Upkeep phase:
1) Take all workers back (except those that decided to stay in the past).
2) Add more resources onto the century spaces (Agricola style).
3) Shift Interference cards to the right.
Additional thoughts:
- There's going to be individual player boards where you have spaces to place constant Interference cards, plus the player's own skill tracks.
- There are 3 levels of Interference cards for sale at the Think Tank: I, II and III. They would be displayed like in King of Tokyo where 3 would be displayed at one point. The three levels would be separated into three stacks and only 3 I cards would be for sale at first, then at a certain point of the game 3 II cards would be displayed, then 3 IIIs. Meaning, 3 cards for sale at the beginning, then 6 then 9. At the end of each round, the cards would shift to the right, a new one is added to the new empty slot and the further most right card is discarded (this represents an idea the physicists had but lost).
- I'm not sure how to end the game yet. I think right now, reaching a specific number of points would be ideal but I would also need to have some sort of mechanism to end the game in case no one reaches it in time. Maybe a fixed number of rounds, or maybe the game could end when all cards in the Think Tank are gone. I've even considered having a special Interference card right at the bottom of the deck called "The Mad Scientist". It would be VERY expensive and would need all three skill tracks to be at Level 3 (Intelligence, Immorality, Innovation) BUT if anyone could actually afford it, you win regardless of Victory Points while everyone else loses (the flavour text states "You've become way too smart, rich, powerful and insane. You jump to the beginning of humanity and sever your colleagues lineage, erasing their existence. You win."). I ruled it out for the normal game as I thought it was too dark and cut-throat (plus I worry that no one would care for Victory Points), but that inspired the next variant.
- I thought of a chance-filled variant aptly called Chaos Theory where instead of paying for dark energy to jump back in time, you would roll two special d6 (1,1,1,2,2,3 & 0,0,0,1,1,2) and the total is how many centuries you can travel back into (2s and 3s being most common, followed by 1s, then 4s then a lone 5). You can pay energy to jump a little forward assuming you did not land where you wanted to. You're free to land somewhere closer to the current timeline if you want to of course. There will be a set of new cards to accommodate all the chaos (resource stealing, dice manipulation, etc). Also, cards at the Think Tank will face down (this time you pay it's cost as you plant them, not when you get time like in the normal game)!
- A different variant I thought of called Theoretical Physics: where instead of having random cards showing up at the Think Tank, there would only be 9 Interferences available for purchase and there would be as many copies of that card as number of players. The idea of having three levels of Interferences is ditched (all cards will be more or less the same strength). There will be an entirely new set of cards which is much more passive than the cards in the normal game, which comes with randomizer cards. Like in Dominion, you would take those randomizers and shuffle it and randomly draw 9 cards. Those 9 will be in the game. This makes the game a little bit more puzzle-y as you figure out which combination of Interferences would net you the most Victory Points.
- I'm thinking maybe asymmetrical would be pretty cool. Maybe one physicist has built an energy-efficient model of the time machine and therefore pay one less energy for each jump. Another may have built a more sturdier time machine and can therefore have 3 constant effects in play but would need one more energy when jumping.
- I initially thought that having two types of workers would be a cool idea where the physicist would get more benefits from spaces than his minion robots would (since he's smarter), but someone told me it's been done in What's He Building In There?.
- I wonder if adding a future timeline would be neat:
1) You can go to the future and get a future version of yourself (an additional but temporary worker; temporary because as I said before, going to the past is like swimming upstream and therefore he would be sling-shot back to his present after doing his job).
2) Or you can go to the future to gain more knowledge to increase one of your three tracks: Intelligence, Innovation, Immorality.
3) Or even simply to get more dark energy (since that's the future's main source of power).
4) Resources that get seeded could end up in the future timeline too and that might provide a fourth function for the future timeline.
- I'm a bit concerned that the game is too similar to What's He Building In There?. I only heard about it while researching game mechanics and I was surprised to see how similar the game was.
- I'm not sure if I want to limit how far you can jump in a single turn since I find the planning ahead concept of Tzolk'in very interesting. Maybe instead making a single jump, it would need to take one turn to move a century. Consequently you would have one less worker to work with until it comes back to the present.
So, yeah. Let me know if it's done (I did some research and I don't THINK it has), thoughts, etc. :D