I need a name, a name for a game, preferably a punish double entendre. Here's the premise:
It is 1958 and pop culture is transforming London, life and society. It is the age of the young and the young want to party and to hook up and to disappear into the night. But first they have to get involved, find their ways to the parties and avoid the police who don't quite approve of the new social order along the way.
Yep, that's mostly ripped off from the truly wonderful Absolute Beginners, and yes, this is a game all about getting your's and the other player's pieces laid. Structurally the game features network-building, pick-up-and-deliver, a very relaxed definition of player ownership (players may play any colour pice at almost any time), and a Velano-inspired scoring system. Intended playtime is in the 75-90 minute range, which feels about right but it is early days yet.
The other inspirations include the usual suspects:
- Age of Steam
- Bridges of Shangri-La
- Clans
- Through the Desert
- TrainSport: Austria
- TrainSport: Switzerland
The core premise is that of shared public actions, player actions which affect and move not only that player's own pieces, but those of other players. The hope is to create a diffuse yet strong temporary emergent alliance/mutual incentive system that is based on spatial relationships and not partial-ownership via company shares (ie not like Wabash Cannonball, Pampas Railroads etc and more like Bridges of Shangri-La and Clans).
FWLIW previous themes and titles included Infection and Necrosis, but #bgdf_chat successfully persuaded me those titles and themes were non-starters. So I changed the theme to teenage sexual exploration in the newly liberated London of the late 1950's by simple search and replace...
I've posted the first draft of the rules to my blog to give a better idea of where I'm heading. Please note that the basic arithmetic hasn't been done yet regarding bit counts, scoring values, board sizes etc -- that stuff is still in flight. But, I've no notion of a good name for the game. Any ideas? I'm also interested if you think a different theme would be a better choice.
