Sprawling Behemoth: THE OMPHALOS

I've foreshadowed long enough...

The concept: A race-oriented game (i.e. get the the end first, not a type of people lol) with a slight flavour of RPG. Also, the game itself will change and evolve based on the games played similar in feel to Risk: Legacy...game rules and cards will come into and out of play based on both number of plays, how players choose to use cards, and the outcomes of various game plays.

The name (for now...gotta say, the meaning of the word is great, but I'm not sure Timmy the Power Gamer will like saying:) OMPHALOS. From the Greek, omphalos translates roughly to "core" or "navel."

The World: A pocket in the thousands of alternate universes, used by those who can get to it as a multiverse DNA bank. The various animals and plants (and alien stuff) are brought to the Omphalos from "doomed worlds" by the will of The Pantheon, an unseen but very active cadre of the heavy hitters in religion (YHWH, Greek/Roman gods, etc. They're all there and they're working together). The Omphalos itself is a portal to any number of millions of alternate realities, and the first player to complete his mission card and return to the Omphalos is the winner of the game. Near the Omphalos are four Realm areas on the board, each connected to one of the players' stats (below) and a series of spaces where you can move between the Realms.

The Players: Your PC is a harvester, charged by the Pantheon to collect samples of genetic material from all over the multiverse. A simple 4-statline recurring player charcater is used by each player. Keeping the "anyone from anywhere" theme of a big DNA bank, any small mini-figure from D&D Minis through Lego Guys or even army men is legal as a PC pawn. Right now, players will have Luck, Brain, Brawn, and (StillWorkingOnThisOne). Players can change their stats through the game, acquire items/buffs/companions/favours, etc. in various encounter spaces and save them for other plays or later in the current game. At the core, your job as a PC in the Omphalos is to complete Harvester business before being sent to find another sample on a Doomed World. This is done with a Character card dealt out as the game begins.

The Kick?

"DNA Samples" from "other worlds" are rules, cards, people, etc. from your other favorite games modified to fit the world of Omphalos. As a for-instance, if you were a MTG player, you could incorporate "poison counters" or "mana burn;" Yu Gi Oh fans could have the Millenium items as PC items or even use Fusion monsters as allies. Heck, if you wanted to bring in structures from Puerto Rico to the Realms, I could see that working. This doesn't encourage THEFT from games, per se, just adapting "greatest-hits" from your other favorite games into a world that's flexible enough to support them. Obviously you're not going to call it "mana burn" in this game...something like "flux" or similar. The idea for this actually came from the game XXXenophile, where one of the cards allowed you to bring any single card from another CCG into your game. Chaos? Sure. But fun, right?

This idea is huge-- not "I think it's the best thing since pants with pockets!" huge, actual scope, writing, development huge. Anyone want to start off the DNA bank with a sample? :-D