I've almost begun to prototype my first game (which I feel must be the hardsest game to create) but I feel stuck in a couple of elements that I feel I can both workout on here and with my co-designer wife.
The game is a prison gang game where each player controls a gang within a space prison. Mechanics will be worker placement and hand management. Each player has a gang leader and 4 lieutenants that are on a player board. Each player board will have card spaces for weapons, new general population prisoners and items that can be used to change your gang. The Gang leader for each team has variable abilities but starting lieutenants are all the same. As a player you will manage your gang in an attempt to control the prison gaining the most influence and prestige.
The five parts that I'm stuck in my design and are preventing me from starting a prototype are...(I know I need to fail faster but want to talk this out on here first).
1) Action Spaces on the Board
I know that I want to have at least 8 spaces, thus giving my players 8 choices of action throughout the play. I'm thinking actions spaces for
~Health (Infirmary- Heal up characters) = get characters ready to battle after losing in a fight
~ Commisary -( Get Action Cards) = disrupt play in interesting ways
~General Pop Cards (for new characters/Cafeteria) = diversify your gang with unique abilities)
~Gym (for working out leveling up gang members) = gaining advantage in fighting
~ Yard (Drugs - which are the economy of the game) = sometimes you will need drugs to use action cards/can be used for trade/
~ Workshop
~ Classroom - Misison Cards that give points based on completing objectives (This is a new idea)
~ Security/Administration - This location would be locked until you have several types of items possibly and or could fight your way in. But still trying to think about the function of this room - higher class action and weapons possibly but worried about balance.
2) End Game
I want the game to be based on a points system where at the end of the game there are various ways of earning points. Primarily through killing other gang members and being the most powerful gang within the prison.
Any thoughts on the game so far. This is where I think I will start to get some of my ideas out of my head and onto a computer or out of the design journal. There will be more posts to come on other idea that I've thought of in relation to the game.
I never meant for the game to be about a real prison on earth it's a space prison so that I can do alien races and variable abilities that way. Plus weapons can become more thematic to sciene fiction. However I feel that I'm still going to base much of the play on elimiating other players and killing. I don't find it to be anymore violent than air locking people in Battlestar Galactica or other games. I do have a mechanic in place where if a specific prisoner has attacked and killed three other prisoners they must be retired and put in solitary confinement. That way there will be a limit to the beat down a particular player can take without using other strategies or prisoners to attack with.
This game is not intended for mass market, it would be a hobby market game and I don't feel anything is to harsh thematically. There is killing in many games war games, zombie games. Never played it but you must banish players in Dead to Winter and that's as good as killing.