Yesterday I read the Mark Twain short story "Playing the Courier"
http://www.twainquotes.com/Travel1891/Jan1892.html
In the story Samual Clemens (Mark Twain's real name) acts as courier (which in those times was some one who makes the travel arrangements for a travelling party) for an party trying to travel from Geneva to Bavaria. In the story he is beset with mishaps, mistakes, forgetfulness and bad luck, resulting in him singularly failing at the task at hand.
Having read the story I'm sure there is the heart of a game in there somewhere. So far I haven't got much, here is what I've got.
The board is an 1890s map of Geneva with the following locations:
Hotel
Apartment block (the pension in the story)
Bank
Railway Station
Grand Quay
Post Office
Store (the cigar shop from the story)
There may be other locations, for instance the story has a police station, though not sure how that would fit in with the rules).
At heart the game is a time and resource management game. Play starts at 9am on the morning of the first day. Each player has a limited amount of cash and a number of tasks that must be completed. A time track is used to keep track of the time of day.
Players must complete the following tasks:
Send a telegram to the Netherlands
Purchase train tickets
Arrange for transport of their luggage from the hotel to the Grand Quay
Arrange and pay for transport of their luggage from the Grand Quay to Bayreuth in Bavaria
Get money from the bank
Purchase supplies
Collect the two party member from the rented accommodation
Ensure their luggage joins the other luggage at the Grand Quay before it leaves for Bayreuth
Check out the hotel
Board the train
Each task takes time and money, as does travelling between the various locations (walking is free, but takes longer, cabs are quick, but cost, if there is any luggage then a cab must be used).
So the winner is the first player to get to Bayreuth, with all the members of the expedition, with all their luggage, with the necessary supplies, having successfully sent the telegraph to the Netherlands.
I'm thinking the amount of money you can get from the bank at any one time should be limited so players have to visit multiple times and try to batch their tasks in the most cost and time effective manor. Would also want random events to effect the players to give the feel of the mishaps encountered in the story.
Check out the hotel
Comments
Game Board
I'm also thinking maybe the board should be made of an number of tiles, say 20, 7 being the various locations, and 13 being various street tiles. These are then shuffled and dealt out to form a 4 by 5 grid.
This would greatly add to replayability as it will stop playing simply determining the most efficient route and then using that every game.
How would you ensure that
How would you ensure that there was always a route to each location? Couldn't one of the locations get blocked off in the corner?
Maybe the streets could be fixed and you only randomise where each location is.
That could work
Definitely a possibility, anything that stops players using the exact same tactics each game.
Ideally, like any real city, there will be multiple routes between the various locations. That way players have to decide which routes to take, and events can also cause routes to be blocked or slower, etc.
Some roads could be one way, meaning they can be walked in either direction, but only travelled in one direction in a cab.
What I was really thinking of with the tiles was for all the road tiles to be broadly similar. i.e. there would be road exiting the tiles on all four sides and internally they would have either a crossroads, two bends (e.g. one joining left to top and one joining right to bottom) or a t-junction and dead end or possibly a one way street as part of one of the aforementioned layouts. That way it should always be possible to get from one location to another, you just have to pick the most efficient route.
Board idea
Ok, just had a bit of inspiration.
The board is made up of 21 squares in a 3x7 grid. We'll add in the police station location (find a use for it later) to give us 8 locations, which are dealt out onto the positions marked with an 'L' below. The road tiles are then dealt out into the other squares (marked with an 'R') giving us a board layout of:
L R L R L R L
R R R R R R R
L R L R L R L
Each location card would have a t-junction on it so they fit in all the locations.