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Stellar Diaspora Game Concept

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Sat, 12/11/2010 - 07:44
ecfitzgerald
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So I have been working on this game for over a year now. It's a random map, resource collection game, with an attempt to encourage player interaction.

Here is the story. (I am no writer)
Your people have started to spread among the stars. The bad news, you aren’t the only ones nearby that are starting their journey to the stars. The worse news, all the good star systems are already colonized by older races. The good news, you aren’t near any of those good star systems. If you want to compete in the greater galaxy, you need to have as much influence as possible over this backwater. The sooner the better.

Player interaction is encouraged through resource distribution, requirements that trade and routing for new Outposts need to be clear, or the blocking player(s) can ask for something, a fee or quid pro quo.

The game is meant to be light hearted, if mean. If a player has been hoarding Hydrogen, a resource, you could play Careless Smoker, an Event, on them, and all their Hydrogen goes bye-bye. One of the bonuses is called Rabbits! and goes to the first player to deploy all their Outposts.

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Sat, 12/11/2010 - 15:22
#1
rcjames14
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Promising

There are a number of hot games right now with a scifi theme. So, you'll be facing a little bit of competition in that space. But, to my knowledge, none of them are parodic. So... you may have something interesting to work with. But, what exactly do you envision this becoming a parody of? Will it spoof popular cultural in general or a specific scifi brand/property?

My sense is that a parody of popular culture will be lost in this setting. Whereas, you might gain some traction if you go the Galaxy Quest or Starship Trooper route and make fun of a lot of the cliches in scifi. You could even start poking fun at well-known scifi games like Merchant of Venus, Starfarers of Catan and Race for the Galaxy if you want to make the game particularly relevant to the audience which will likely buy the game.

That being said, I think that there may also be some room to make a more serious, strategic game in the space as long as you do something different than the existing games. Most existing games about space involve exploration. But, your diaspora idea has some promise to circumvent this cliche and simply assume that all the powers that be are already around. Rather than play explorers in space, your players might play upstarts who want to make a name for themselves among the existing powers. But, instead of exploration, this might involve diplomacy, cunning and economic reinvestment. Something akin to the game of international diplomacy in the far east in the latter half of the twentieth century.

There is no new land to conquor or colonize per se, but there may be plenty of room to grow in influence and capacity as you navigate through the eternal conflict of the existing great powers.

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Sat, 12/11/2010 - 18:40
#2
ecfitzgerald
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I don't want to go parody,

I don't want to go parody, just not full serious. There is nothing to explore, unless I implement something with actually interacting with the older races. But I would not likely make that exploring, just make it known. I am not trying to cram every game mechanic I can find in here.

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Sun, 12/12/2010 - 20:18
#3
mdkiehl
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Settlers in space?

This isn't "Settlers of Catan in Space" is it? What all is involved in the game right now? Cards? What else?

Art can really set the feel for a game, serious or not. If you don't want it to be serious have some funny little Dr. Sues aliens and goofy looking Muppet space ships.

Regards,
Matthew Kiehl

http://mdkiehl.wordpress.com

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Sun, 12/12/2010 - 23:29
#4
ecfitzgerald
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I won't lie, Catan has

I won't lie, Catan has influence. It's possibly my favorite general group game. So I wanted certain elements from it, like the trading and player interaction. I like the random board layout. I don't like the dice or the extreme variability the resources can come out in different games. I also wanted a bit more conflict, there isn't much in Catan unless you play Knights and Cities, which I really did not like. And there isn't much more here, but a bit. I have what I might call an alternate rule that could ramp up the conflict quite a bit, with direct action on the board. But I want to make what I consider the core work first.

The other big influence is a few sci-fi concepts on what happens when you leave the planet, and that's where the name comes from too.

Maybe I a reading too much into the Catan in Space comment. Text communication has that flaw, but people make games like other games all the time.

I''ll have some of the graphics done in a few weeks, right now they are parts all over the place. Though I am not enough of an artist to get them to the state I would want, they are in the general sense where I want to go.

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Mon, 12/13/2010 - 23:27
#5
mdkiehl
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Catan or not Catan

I think it is okay to barrow elements of other games especially if you really like specific mechanics. It might also help players to learn your game if they are familiar with Catan. I'm just wondering how different your game is from Catan because, if you simply re-theme it and make minor changes it is still Catan in my eyes - or Catan with some house rules.

However, if you are eliminating the die - this will be a very different game. Catan is all about the die, and playing so that the die will help you the most. If your game has no die than it is going to have a completely different strategy, play and feel.

To really make your game different, I would also think about the tiles. If you are using hex tiles with a single resource each... it might feel like playing a different game on a Catan world. Four-sided or three-sided tiles might work just as well. If you really like hex tiles you could do something like adding "paths" through the hexes or having multiple resources on each hex... or other things that work with your mechanics.

The more you focus on and enhance things that are different from Catan the more unique your game will become. For example, my brother took Uno and added about 30+ house rules to it and ended up with a completely different game.

Regards,

Matthew Kiehl

http://mdkiehl.wordpress.com

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Tue, 12/14/2010 - 08:17
#6
ecfitzgerald
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So I do like the hexes,

So I do like the hexes, though, they are very expensive to produce. I was just yesterday contemplating other shapes, triangles being the front runner.

So each intersection is a star system. On any given hex there are only 2 planets, sometime the same resource, sometimes not. Most intersections end up with 1 or 2 planets surrounding it. So almost every intersection have some value. But only 2 intersection per hex have access to the planets on that hex, and only the planet at that corner of the hex.

Players have to pay a resource, Hydrogen, based on how many hex edges need to be traversed to place a new outpost. They cannot pass freely through a system occupied by another player, unless that player allows it, but the occupying player could charge a "toll". Otherwise you will have to take a longer route, if one exists.

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Thu, 12/30/2010 - 13:46
#7
ecfitzgerald
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Prototype

So I got my first cut at a prototype together.

Here are some pics.
The board, at the full 6 player layout.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_c5LkWPB0YWY/TRzDinPHFSI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/xR8qtdqAJsU/s8...
Some detail of the cards and board.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_c5LkWPB0YWY/TRzDjTWKw3I/AAAAAAAAAhU/O8Mp3HVmgRQ/s8...

I should be play testing a bit this weekend.

Damn, just noticed the Sweden card is jacked up. The bottom is right, but the top is from the other bonus card.

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Fri, 01/28/2011 - 20:00
#8
mdkiehl
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Looking interesting. How did

Looking interesting. How did play-testing go?

I see that you are using images of the hoursehead nebula :-P

Where did you have your prototype printed?

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Mon, 03/28/2011 - 11:38
#9
ecfitzgerald
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Play testing went very

Play testing went very well.

We tried eliminating the "bank" for trading, so the only way to convert resources was with other players, or building to obtain trade routes to "aliens". This worked great, until the end game, so I will need to add cards to the event deck that allow for one time trade to the "bank".

Also need to change the resource distribution, having the planets on opposite pounts will reduce the number of alien trade eligable planets, they were way to accesable, also changing the tiles to have 2 reosurces, instead of 2 of the same. The concentration I wanted was there, but it becomes insurmoutable for some players in some games from the very beginning.

Even with all of that though, we had fun testing, and even new players seems to enjoy the game.

I used SPOD for the printing and the quality was very good, and they now offer playing card stock for the cards, not a requirement, but they will feel better than just cardstock.

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Mon, 03/28/2011 - 12:55
#10
genericm
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Did SPOD do the tiles? I

Did SPOD do the tiles? I didn't think they did Die-Cutting.

Could be wrong though

EM

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Mon, 03/28/2011 - 14:33
#11
ecfitzgerald
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Joined: 12/11/2010
No, I got the tiles from

No, I got the tiles from galeforce9, gf9.com, and SPOD printed the faces on 8x11.5 strickers and I cut them out using one of the tiles as a template.

SPOD could do the die cutting, but I would have to buy the die, or get enough orders for them to absorb the price of the die, which is 200 sheets. The game needs 6 sheets now, that's a lot of copies for now. I also don't think they can do double sided printing on chipboard.

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