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Geas board game

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 7:18 pm
by luminier
Hey guys, I was thinking about putting together a Geas board game for fun. I have played a few board games with my friends but I don't really know what makes a board game fun or how to keep each game to a set amount of time.

Somethings I wanted to include was guilds (fighting and non fighting), a dice roll for random encounters, being able to play good or evil, a cooperative experience, equipment abilities etc.

Anyone wanna help me brainstorm? I have some ideas written down, but, just wanted to pick your brain first.

Re: Geas board game

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2015 7:48 pm
by Reptar
Yeah lets do it! Exactly what are you trying to make? A co-op with a common objective, with an evil side trying to accomplish their goals, which is to sabotage/destroy the other side before they finish their goal?

Re: Geas board game

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:27 am
by Olrane
You've piqued my interest. I'll definitely spend a bit of time considering it.

My favorite broad structure is to have a stable of preset heroes that represent each faction - even, perhaps, creating multiples for each faction to allow for diverse styles and to allow for more cameos!

The objective would be to achieve specific victory conditions that align with your faction, each granting a victory point. Some amount of accumulated victory points would end the game crowning that player the victor.

What could make this interesting is that these tokens - the victory points themselves - could be on conditions that are a) shared among 1-3 factions, allowing for a minor amount of cooperation and/or b) be competitive conditions, where to have one nullifies the ability to gain another in an opposed faction. These could be dynamic tokens, such as struggling over control of the Tower of Pain.

The key to making it work is to make a good list of cooperative and competitive goals that would merit a token and align them with a faction. This sets up our objective, but nothing more.

What you need now is a Resource system that allows for things like trading and faction-based perks, and a random Encounter system that also interacts with resources and factions. At first blush these should be card decks, but they could also be present on tiles.

Probably MOST important, however, is designing it such that player input is relevant, and it is not a procedurally solved game of simple RNG. Trading is one way to do this, but the avenue of basic resource generation should require some special effort of the player in order to keep it "gamey", not something to simply watch unfold.

I'm just spitballing thoughts, not offering solutions. And anyway, I already took the wheel when it wasn't desired.

Re: Geas board game

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:14 am
by luminier
Oh yeah that was great! lots of good input there, thanks Olrane!

Re: Geas board game

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:50 am
by luminier
speaking of resources, we could have a system sort of like settlers where you need certain things to make things. so you need like 3 ore to level your equipment. or you need 5 herb cards to make a sick potion. this would be good cause trading would make your guy stronger and everyone wants to be stronger.... but how would we farm these resources? dice rolls and search functions? maybe we could have races that are better at finding certain cards.

killing mobs could give you victory points, winning the tower of pain could give some VP as well, maybe holding it for a full turn also. i love the victory point idea because i really didn't want a single game to last more than 1-2 hours. that'll keep it down on time.

the tower of pain is a great idea as a struggle place. perhaps elementals could be attacked too but if you attack them maybe there should be an "Order deck" which causes bad things to happen for the attacker but you also get good rewards from killing the elemental so it is incentive-ized.

making a dynamic game board would probably be a good idea as well to keep the game fresh. couple ways of doing that... have it work like catan or betrayal at the house on the hill...

as for factions... i guess like taniel/crusaders ... asrals/ mercs... satho/thieves... with factional perks.. maybe even have a money system and you can gain money from territory you own at the end of each turn? use that money to buy items from a store instead of farming them yourself or trading with someone you don't want to give an advantage to. can use money as a trading tool as well.

Re: Geas board game

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 8:16 am
by Wade
I love the idea so long as the board game version Rangers get a buff :wink: