I'm usually pretty good at coming up with this kind of stuff, but I'm stuck on something here, maybe I've backed myself into a corner. I don't know. Anyway, hoping you guys can spit out some ideas, shoot from the hip and help me come up with something.
The game I'm working on is a steampunk themed deck builder. Two to four players are competing against each other (including by attacking each other), and are also competing against the Baroness and her minions (most of which are mechanical, of course). Essentially, along with various weapons and equipment and whatnot that come out of the deck for players to acquire, there are also enemies - the Baroness and her crew - that come up in the deck. The players can attack and destroy these enemies, and they can attack each other. Once per round, the enemy cards that are currently in play attack the players. In a sense, the Baroness is a sort of "fifth player". The difference is, however, she attacks with automatons and human allies (sky pirates, mad scientists, etc.) or directly as herself when her card comes up, while the players attack using specific weapon cards. The game ends as soon as any player is defeated OR when the Baroness is defeated. Victory points determine the winner.
The game has gone through a LOT of mechanical changes since I started, and the story/theme has dragged behind in evolving and has slowly gotten lost along the way... So I'm trying to catch up here. Where I'm stuck now, thematically, is "why?" Why are the players competing against each other to the death? Or rather, to the first death? Why against the Baroness to her death? Why does she fight differently than they do? Why will any one death stop the fighting/competition altogether?
Any help in thinking through this, any suggestions at all, would be hugely helpful. Like I said, throw out anything you can think of - even if the idea isn't a winner, it may be exactly what I need to spur creative thinking outside of this stupid box I'm stuck in...
Thank you in advance!
Ok, this certainly got the juices flowing... my initial remaining question was "why are the players also fighting each other?" That theme would be perfect if cooperation was the main name of the game... but now I'm thinking maybe the world is at war over territory... the players each represent a nation/continent, and perhaps as you said the Baroness has no land, lives and rules solely in the skies. She is at war as well, fighting for any land territory she can get her hands on. Perhaps players fight because she can take over the other players' land, so long as it's not their own... then the war ends when one player or she is defeated because there's no longer one too many entities...
I'm going to stew on that some more... great stuff! Thanks!