So I’m working on a dice-stacking game. I’d like your input on how it sounds.
set-up:
There are cards laid out with Roles, Tools, and building recipes. Beside it there are tons of dice representing Wood, Stone, Food and Gold.
There are 6 player dice (with more set aside for possible later use depending on roles your people take).
Gameplay:
Players roll dice trying to roll the symbols they require for performing the actions they want. They get one re-roll per character they have available to them (some characters will let you manipulate dice, but not allow for rerolls and such.)
The 6 sides are the following.
Hammer = build
Spear = attack/gather food
Axe/Mining pick = gather wood or stone
Gem = Gold
Zzz = Rest
For every worker-(you start with 2) you must roll at least 1 rest, otherwise, you loose 3 dice the next day as that worker has worked too hard and cannot manage to keep going. Regular worker cards allow you to swap any 1 dice you rolled, to a Rest if you want. Workers will also have upkeep cost where you will need to make sure there’s food. Food dice will work differently, if you pick up a dice that says 5, and your worker upkeep is 2 per round, next round you will still have 3 food. And so on.
Different rolls will let you manipulate the dice to what you want. Soldier roles when bought may let you change dice to spears, where as lumberjacks will let you change them to axes and so on and so forth.
You can use the resources collected to build tools, such as weapons that might give your characters different upgrades, such as a spear in any one characters hands might give him pull an extra hunting dice or perform an extra attack, if he manages to roll that, where as in the hand of a skilled warrior you could change the dice to a spear and then attack with the bonus.
players will use the resource gathered to also build buildings. Such as longhouses or barracks, things that will give you access to the advanced roles as well as passive abilities. A market might let you trade resources with other players. A wall can give you a big defense boost when players are attacking your finished buildings. Also, when players attack, they can target your workers, your resources or your buildings. Not sure yet how I’m going to work destroying workers (or just incapacitating them for a certain amount of time) Attacking resources lets you steal a dice per successful attack, and destroying buildings lets you take 1 dice of a unfinished building per attack. If a building is finished, you must roll enough spears to completely destroy it, which will get harder and harder as that player advances. Whenever a building or tool is finished, the resources used to construct are rolled back into the pool.
There are certain rules to building buildings especially, dice beside each other need to be + or – 1 from each other, and if there is a second or third level to the structure, they need to be a higher number exclusively. Gold dice work as any resource and add value to the building, but decrease the amount needed to hurt the building.
I’m thinking there should be a small deck of event cards that players can play on each other to give the game a little bit of that TAKE THAT feel.
End Game:
The game ends after a predetermined amount of time (still working on this) it will either be you can win by reaching a certain amount of points first, or having the most points at the end of the predetermined rounds.
I’m looking for some ideas on what I can change or make better. If there are any gaping flaws in the system I would really like to know.
Well, the regular worker that you start the game with, will be able to change dice to a Zzz. Once you start getting into the more definitive roles you start having some trouble with this mechanic. A warrior, might be good at pillaging and partying but he only sleeps if you make him. And if you don't roll Zzz for a character, he's only out for your next round.
Also, the way the game plays, you get the specific unmber of dice from the box randomly based on amount of players and roll them. The dice value they show is the amount they are worth for that game. When you roll spears you can try and grab high numbered food dice so they will last you longer (think of it as a 1 being a bunny you caught and a 6 being a cow) Food is the only kind of dice that's always good to get the highest number, as it will free your dice rolls up for other things.
some of the buildings that can be constructed are food producing, therefore in the late gmae, food wont me as big a need as in the beginning where everyone is trrying to keep their people from starving. Attack dice are the only time you roll extra dice per turn, for every attack dice you roll, you roll a regular d6 to see how well your hunt went, then you can claim a dice of that value or less.