Meeple upon meeple

A recent addition to my hooks list says, "Worker placement + balancing.  Workers get put onto spots and can be balanced on top of those already there.  If you knock over (any of) the pile, everyone gets their workers back from that pile."

I've been thinking about this more than I probably should, and have partly been dwelling on how to do this, and what sort of pieces would be best to use for balancing.  Well, I decided that as I have a good supply of meeples in my stash, they would be a good thing to try.

Meeple balancing could become the next big thing.

Now, as an aside, balancing games are a nightmare for me.  I have what is known as an essential tremor, which in my case means that I have shaky hands.  Normally this isn't a problem, but it means that I can only really carry one drink at a time (getting a round in at the pub can involve a lot of ferrying unless I get a tray) and I absolutely suck at Jenga.  Trying to design a game that prominently features balancing things on top of each other classes, for me at least, as the dumbest idea since I tried to create an asymmetric game in under 24 hours.  Ah well...

So it was time for a feasibility study: would meeples work for a game where you need to stack them? And how high would the stacks be likely to get?  It took me a little while, but I managed to get a stack of 5 meeples, but lost control on the 6th.  I'm sure that more coordinated people should be able to get at least a couple more on.  My long-suffering wife had a go and, after quite a few attempts managed to get up to 8 in a pile, which looked like it might be very close to the limit.  All good data.

At the moment, the idea is that I could have a simple resource-conversion game with worker placement...

• Place a meeple on a spot and you get to gain or convert a resource.  
• If you are not first to the spot, balance your meeple on top of the one(s) already there and if successful you gain a larger benefit.
• If you are unsuccessful in placement and you knock one or more meeples over, everyone on that pile gets their meeples back and you get to place your meeple instead at the bottom of a new pile and get only the basic benefit.

That's about it.  All I need now is an actual game to use that mechanism, though I think that it needs to be something very simple: trying to add meeple balancing to a game like Agricola would just result in a more frustrating Agricola.  I'm thinking at the moment of having monkeys collecting (say) bananas, mangoes and coconuts for some reason.  I'll work on this.

Back to the list

Back in January I posted my "hooks list" of very basic game ideas that could be the kernel of something, along with my intention to create at least four games from ideas in the list.  How have I been doing?

Grabbed from openclipart.org

Well, not well.  Thanks to the 24 hour contests, this year has been pretty  good for actually creating games that are at least playable, but I haven't got any of the ideas on the list progressed, other than the experiment I did with musical chairs that I didn't actually get any further with.  In fact, there are now  a few more ideas on the list, so it is getting longer.

To be clear, I have had quite a few more ideas than I have actually made a note of, but don't always get them written down.  The most recent additions (not all particularly original, but ideas I would like to explore) are as follows...

• Restaurant co-op. One (or more) player takes orders from customers, another creates food to serve, someone delivers food, someone has to clear. Possibly other roles.  (Maybe realtime?)
• Trick-taking card game where cards are normally played face down and not revealed unless someone makes a challenge.
• "Minimals" (mini-animals)
• Team game where players pair off each round to play a mini-game against one opponent, then regroup to share resources and find out the objectives for next round.
• Semi-coop: if the players "lose" then one player is singled out as the main loser; if players "win" then there is one main winner.
• Drafting a la 7 Wonders and Sushi Go, but no scoring: aim is to achieve some sort of an objective.
• Worker placement + balancing.  Workers get put onto spots and can be balanced on top of those already there.  If you knock over (any of) the pile, everyone gets their workers back from that pile.

And when the music stops...

One of the entries on my "hooks" list is "Musical chairs (but not Midnight Party clone)", which I originally wrote down because Midnight Party is so clearly (and successfully) based on that kids' party game, and I wondered where else that inspiration can go.  Pondering on that a little, I figured, heck, why not just make Musical Chairs, the board game?

I figured that the first thing I would need was some chairs, which I drew onto some blank cards, and I would need some meeples to act as kids playing.  For a first (solo) test I made a line of nine chairs (alternating facings as is traditional in party games) with three meeples of each of three colours, sitting on them.  When the music starts, the meeples get off their chairs and travel up one side of the line and down the other; when one of the end chairs has no meeple next to it, it is removed, and then when the music stops, players try to get their meeples to sit down.  Initially I was toying with movement by simultaneous selection of cards (a from a subset of a suit of playing cards for each player), and the music stopping when certain cards were played.  This didn't really feel right.

Attempt 2, showing beautifully hand illustrated game cards at their very best.

For a second attempt, I switched to two "players", each with three meeples, and I constructed a small set of special cards for each, with various movement options on them, including options to jump over chairs or barge other meeples out of the way, for a little more realism.  Each player had two cards in hand to choose from on their turn, and reshuffled their mini-deck when it was exhausted.

This version seemed to work a bit better, but I need to play it with someone else as I think much of the game will be figuring out what options the other players have available to them, and I find it particularly hard to bluff myself, so I have no idea how well this works.  I should have an opportunity to give this a spin with real people at the weekend, and will see what I need to do to make this into a working game.

I've got a little list...

I said that one of my resolutions for this year was to develop four ideas from my "game hooks" list into playable games and that I would post the list.  Well, here is that post.

Grabbed from openclipart.org

My hooks list is a file of a bunch of ideas that I think of at various times and remember to make a note of.  They aren't necessarily original ideas, but they are something that I think might be a decent thing to try out at some time.  Similarly, they vary dramatically in scope and detail, but they are what they are.

Actually, now I look back at the list in a different format, it doesn't really look very long.  I know I have had many more ideas than this, so I should probably make more effort to write things down.  I also need to do something about the ideas -- but that is what this resolution is about.

Anyway, enough rambling.  Here's my current list, as it stands today...

• A fantasy adventure (like Talisman, Runebound, etc.) with little or no downtime. 
• Players are on secret teams and have to figure out who their teammates are. 
• Three cards each: all players simultaneously play one, pass one left, pass one right, then draw one.
• Or slightly different: put one into a stock for the end game, put one into another other player's stock, and play one now. 
• During play, one player can request a boost and, if other players agree, can take a special ability, XP boost, money boost, or whatever, but the other players all gain a VP boost if they allow it. 
• Cooperative game where at the start of each round the players agree turn order. Or possibly there is a "captain" role, who assigns turn order. 
• You spend a resource to buy stuff to enhance your position, but that resource is also your "life", so run out and you're gone. (A bit like pool in V:TES.) 
• One player (maybe more) has a victory condition (possibly hidden) related to attacking the first other player to attack him.
• Game with just a few tiles or cards, with different colours and paths/patterns on each side.  Players take it in turns to flip cards (can put back any way around, or maybe choose axis to flip over) trying  to complete their own pattern.
• Use "Mastermind" style guessing/logic mechanic in a more themed game.
• More than one player taking a turn at the same time.  (Check out http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14812/camelot)
• Auctions based on Loot tricks... several things to acquire, each player bids (or adds to a bid) on a set number each turn (maybe just one bid), and wins the auction on anything that they are ahead on at the start of their turn.  
• Dungeon crawl (or similar) based on stealth.  Actions create noise. Noise above a certain level attracts attention, which is bad.
• Tower defence/assault game where you acquire (maybe 2-sided) tiles which can either be used to build up/defend your castle or as attackers to assault your opponents.  I'm picturing queues of attacker tiles on each side of a castle.
• A game that requires no table - all play is cards in hand (see Top Trumps or Oddball Aeronauts).
• Dutch auction variation.  Resources sit on a price track.  Each player, on their turn, buys one resource at its current value, moves 2 (probably) resources one space down the track, and adds one resource to the top.  (Maybe attach this to purchase of Splendor-style cards or something like that?)
• Something like Left-Centre-Right, but with some sort of tactical decision to make.
• Something like LCR, where instead of passing chips you pass the dice themselves.  (Can this have some skill element?)
• A game with player elimination, but where the first elimination triggers the endgame (maybe one last round?).  Possibly with eliminated player taking a new role for endgame?
• Rock-Paper-Scissors liar's dice.
• Queueing worker placement.  Place workers at the back of a queue in a production spot, then when enough workers are in the queue, the one at the front can be popped off to complete the action.  (Maybe also allow "neutral" workers to be placed in order to stop workers getting completely stuck.)
• Diplomacy plus Dune/Rex style (temporarily) binding alliances.
• Dexterity + area control/majority...  Flicking, catapulting or dropping counters onto a map and scoring areas at times. (El Grande + tiddlywinks?)
• Base something on Cribbage
• Combat: make combat dice rolls in secret (in cup or behind a screen) then alternate with opponent adding or removing troops before resolution.
• Musical chairs (but not Midnight Party clone).
• War/conquest game, where you declare your objectives ahead of a number of turns ahead of invading; the value of a region to you is related to how far ahead you made the declaration.

As you can see, this list is very much a "note to self" sort of thing, and I haven't elaborated on the items so they make more sense to anyone else.  

I am sure I will be extending the list as we go along, but I will do my best to create my four games from this list as it currently stands.