Cheshire's Kingdom - part 1

I've posted a few blogs recently about ideas for new games.  As usual, I have latched on to one of those ideas and focused most of my creative energy on that one for now.  The other, I'm sure, will be picked up again later...  maybe years later!

The idea that's caught my attention is the idea of a co-op Kingdom management game.  I've even chosen a name "Cheshire's Kingdom."   The name kind of ties it (loosely) into Of Power & Glory.  Cheshire is one of the Kings from that game.  Why Cheshire?  It just kind of sounded good...  and I like the prospect of using a lot of Celtic fonts and borders.  The one thing that bugs me a little about it is that in the Of Power & Glory expansion, Cheshire is currently the King that starts in two locations, which is inconsistent.  But oh well, I'm not terribly worried about consistency across those two games.

But on to the game as I see it right now:
The board is mostly a map of the kingdom (I don't think I'll make any attempt to make it a real place).  The map has several locations on it that are connected by roads.  Each location is where you go to manage some aspect of the Kingdom.  Here are the locations I'm thinking about using now:  A Farm, Workshop (where repairs and big projects are performed), a Hospital, Barracks, maybe the castle and three other kingdoms.  There is probably also an open field where unassigned workers go (I'll explain that in a bit).  The players of the game are the ministers of King Cheshire.  There are role cards like in Pandemic that say some thing like "Minister of Defense" that gives that player an advantage when maintaining that aspect of the Kingdom. 

While there are specific ways to manage the different aspects of the game, there are some common themes that I want to discuss. 

Movement:  Each player has a big pawn on the board that represents where they are.  On your turn you have a limited ability to move... perhaps just to an adjacent location. And then you can perform the corresponding action there.

Workers:  There are many workers in the game.  I'm thinking these will be the peg pawns available from TGC that are stackable.  The number of workers that you have access to is variable and basically represents population.  Workers can be assigned to these various areas.  When more than one worker is assigned to an area, the minister of that area has an ability that no one else has.  He can choose to stack (or unstack) pawns.  I need a more in theme term for this, but for now I'll just use the word "stack".  Two pawns stacked on one another does the work of 5 pawns.  Three pawns stacked on one another does the work of 10 pawns.  You can't stack past 3, but you can have multiple stacks.  There is, however, a down side to stacking pawns,  When you're in a area, say the farm, you can add workers to the farm from any other area... but not if they are stacked.  Stacking kind of represents a long term commitment to that task.  And sense only the minister of that area can unstack those pawns, you have to wait until their turn to gain access to those pawns.

Turns: After each player takes a turn, the season changes.  I think I want to have the seasons have meaning in the game (primarily in farming).  I'm not sure, but perhaps each season, the player that goes first changes.  Kind of like the turn order rules in Puerto Rico.

Events:  I think there are two event decks; a good event deck and a bad event deck.  The bad events are revealed at the end of each player's turn.  While the good events are revealed at the end of each season.  This is a balancing mechanism in an attempt to make the game equally difficult for few or many players.  Better stated, it offsets the advantages of having more than one players in the game (because with more than one player, you can be in more than one location at a time).

Ok... on to the specific areas of the game board.

Farms:  There are two ways to farm, raising animals or growing wheat.  Animals are easier and more consistent, while wheat is more difficult, but pays off more.  Animals produce food every season in direct proportion to the number of workers that are there (taking into account stacking multipliers).  With wheat, you can only add workers in spring.  You can remove them at any time.  Wheat produces food every fall in direct proportion to the number of workers that are there in fall.

Workshop:  The roads and buildings in the Kingdom can fall into disrepair (probably from a bad event card).  Workers here fix these.  Roads and buildings that are damaged (or perhaps severely enough damaged), do not work.  There is another thing that I believe these workers do and that's big projects.  I was thinking that you have big project that require many workers for one turn.  These projects would produce something that has a long term benefit for the Kingdom.

Hospital:  Workers in the hospital protect the Kingdom from plagues (from event cards).  I feel like I need to add more here but this is all I have for now.  If I was the minister of Health (or whatever you would call it), I would feel jipped because there's not enough to do.

Barracks:  These worker are in the army.  There are protection against the three enemies and also the key to winning the game.  Your enemies will attack you at certain times in the game potentially leading to a loss of population (I have a clever mechanic thought up to drive this).  The bigger you army is, the more you soften the blow or perhaps even stop it all together.  Also, if your army is large enough, you can take over one of your enemies and be rid of them for the rest of the game...  I'm thinking that taking over all three enemies might be the winning condition.  I'll try to describe the mechanic that drives the attack of your enemies. 

Each enemy has a collection of boxes, say 6 long.  Events in the game will raise hostilities in one of the 3 enemies.  When hostilities are raised, cubes are either added to or moved up in those boxes. 

Some visuals would help... but since I don't have to time right now whip up some images, I'll use ascii art.  a O is an empty box and an X is a box with a cube in it.  Also, I'm thinking these will be vertical, but to save space, I'll show them horizontally.

OOOOOO  - initial state
XOOOOO - After hostilities are raised once
OXOOOO - After hostilities are raised again
OOOOOX - After hostilities are raised 6 times - since it got the the top (right), the enemy attacks with a "power" of 1
XOOOOX - After hostilities are raised 7 times
OXOOOX - After hostilities are raised 8 times 
OOOOXX - After hostilities are raised 11 times - enemy attacks again with a "power" of 2
OOOXXX - After hostilities are raised 15 times - enemy attacks again with a "power" of 3
OOXXXX - After hostilities are raised 18 times - enemy attacks again with a "power" of 4
OXXXXX - After hostilities are raised 20 times - enemy attacks again with a "power" of 5
XXXXXX - After hostilities are raised 21 times - enemy attacks again with a "power" of 6

After that, any hostilities would result in an attack.  This mechanic makes the attacks increase in both frequency and intensity as the game progresses.  I think I want to also have the concept of appeasement. Appeasement is a short term benefit with a long term cost.  and I think it works like this.  Suppose an enemies hostility tracker looks like this:
OOOXOX
To appease them, you change it to this:
OOOOXX
but he doesn't attack.

Normally, he would have attacked you on the next rise in hostilities, but now he will require 4 rises before the next attack, but it will be worse.

Post Thanksgiving update

Please excuse my absence over the last few days as I was in Memphis TN to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. 

The same day the The Game Crafter released their chipboards, I converted Of Power & Glory to use it and bought a copy.  The first version of the game I got had 1/2 of the game board pasted on upside down.  So they sent me a new version.  It arrived on Wednesday at my house while I was somewhere between Atlanta and Memphis.  I got back today and yeah!  I finally have it!  I have uploaded new action shots of the game and (this is a first for me), made a video explaining the game. 

As I type this, I am uploading the video to you tube so I can link to it from the TGC web site.  Hopefully this will stir up some more interest in the game.

I know... short post.  I hope to have more for you shortly.

Bradfield Acres

I just published Bradfield Acres.  It's a game for a resources contest at The Game Crafter.  The crux of the contest is that you have to use their resource pieces in your game.  I playtested it yesterday and it played well.  I only had to add a little bit of clarification to one section of the rules.

Bradfield Acres is an auctioning game.  Resources are pulled at random from a bag and placed into a pool that all players bid on.  When you bid, you are bidding on the number of resources that you would like to take.  But the Players who bid lowest go first, so you're also bidding on turn order.  On your turn, you take the resources you've won and place them in one of your three trucks.  There are three common delivery cards shown at all times.  If one of your trucks can fulfill a delivery, you take the card and place it face down in front of you.  It's a simple game, but it's a lot of fun.

There is a companion game to it called Bradfield Estates that I'm wishy washy on.  It's not as good as Bradfield Acres.  I'm not sure if I'm going to enter that game in the contest or not...  right now I'm leaning towards entering it.  But I'm kind of wondering if there would be sort of a guilt-by-association effect.  I don't think so, but it does have me wondering.  I don't think I'll publish that one...  at least not as a standalone.  I might include it with Bradfield Acres as sort of a B-side.  The games use about 90% of the same parts. 

That's my update for now.

Chesspoker

So The Game Crafter has lots of contests to design games.  There were two contests recently, that I wasn't going to participate in until I realized somewhat out of the blue that I could have one simple game that could work for both contests.  The first contest was to design a standard deck of 54 playing cards.  The second contest was to design a game that is a mash-up of two other games.  I'm not sure I have a better explanation for where the idea came from....  it just occurred to me! 

If you've played both Chess and Poker before, Chesspoker is VERY simple and easy to learn.  You have a standard deck of playing cards, but each rank is paired up with a chess piece as well.  Some of the this obvious:  The King and Queen in the card sense are also Kings and Queens in the Chess sense.  The Jack is a Knight, The Ace is a Rook, The Jokers are Bishops and all the numbered cards are Pawns.  The cards also have definite top and bottom to them. 

One round of Chesspoker works like this:  You shuffle the cards and deal out a 4 x 4 chessboard.  The two nearest rows of cards to each player point towards the other player.  Those are you cards to move as chess pieces,  A player goes first (alternate this between rounds).  You move one of your cards just like it was a chess piece and try to capture one of your opponents cards.  If you do capture a card, that card is taken off and used as part of your poker hand.  Once one of the players has captured 5 cards, they other player is in check.  This means that they must capture a card every turn or else move on to scoring the round.  The round ends when an in check player fails to capture a card, or both players have at least 5 cards.  Then you make the best poker hand you can out of the cards you captured.  The winner gets a point.  You play until someone gets to 10 points...  or whatever point value you want really.  It's that simple.

Quintavox

Qunitavox is another large game that has gone through far to many changes over the years to list them all.  In fact, it's been known by at least 3 different names.  While Of Power & Glory is my current "baby", this is the only game that has a serious chance of replacing it... ok, maybe joining it.  I have resently completely revamped it for umptenth time and it needs serious playtesting.  I'll try to walk you through as much of the development process as I remember.

It started as a card game called Political Agenda.  This idea was fairly simple, you have a deck with 8 different kinds of political issues.  Each player would care about three of them (chosen at random and kept secret).  Then players would add cards to a bill and when the bill reached a certain number of cards, the bill was voted on using vote cards (that I can't remember how you got).  If it passed, the country was affected by all of the cards in the bill.  You could move up in power, and you had chips that represented political capital (that I can't remember how you used).   That's the first version of it in a nutshell.  I don't remember all of the rules, but that should give you an idea of where it started.

I played around with the rules quite a bit in this basic format; players having a hand of cards or not, having multiple bills or just a single one, players reveling their issue cards or not. etc.  But the first big change occurred when I added the map.  I decided to have a fictional country divided into 5 states where all of this political fighting was taking place.  This is were it gets complicated...  literally.   Once it was a more of a "board game", I threw all sorts of complications into it.  There was political influence being applied to counties, the election of senators and a president each with their own sets of powers, special cards you could put into a bill that had side effects and probably a lot more that I've forgotten.  I adopted a new setting "Vaguely Ancient Roman" and a new name "Quintavas" which was a bad Latin translation of what I thought was "5 states."

On one hand, I liked where it was going...  I'm a big fan of big games.  But on the other hand, it was getting too complicated to make work correctly.  At about this time, a friend of mine was inspired by the game and made a pure card game version it.  The two games have widely diverged into completely separate games.  I'm not sure how much he would want me to say about it, since it's not published yet, but I don't think he would mind me mentioning it's name:  Pork Barrel.  I, on the other hand, was determined to make a board game out it.  But I had to start by cutting out a lot of the complications.

I feel like it's appropriate to fast forward to were the game is now...  and since it's not completed, I'm sure there will many more changes that  will be explained in far greater detail.  I'll start with the name.  I liked the setting, but my bad Latin needed to be fixed.  When I discovered what 5 states really translated to in Latin "quinque civitates" it didn't exactly roll off the tongue.  So I stumbled around a bit until I came upon "Quinta Vox" or "The Fifth Voice"  I decide "Voice" could be seen as poetic term for "Vote" so I ran with it.

Quitavox has a board that is dominated by a map of a fictional country with  5 states.  Each state has 5 counties.  Next to each state is a place to put cards that form a Bill.  There are still 8 issues, but they are now paired up as opposites (e.g. Expansionism versus Isolationism).  Players no longer have 3 issue assigned to them to care about but he will develop concerns for the issues as the game is played.  Each county has an issue that they care about.  This is represented by a token that is placed in each county.  Players have pawns that can be placed on the map.  These pawns are used to influence the county.  On a player's turn, they have 5 action points that they can spend.  Here are the types of actions:  You can place a pawn on the map, move a pawn to an adjacent territory, campaign for an issue (put a ring on a pawn representing an issue), or add an Issue card to one of the 5 bills (one for each state).  When a bill reaches 5 cards, the bill is voted on.. had here's a big change from previous versions... it's voted on by the counties.  However, you can influence the county to vote your way by moving your pawn there.  If more than one pawn is in a county, then how those pawns have campaigned in the past, along with the issue that the county is concerned with determine which player gets to decide how the county will vote.  As you campaign for an issue, you become more concerned with it's advancement.

That's it for now...  But I'm sure I'll blog more on this game as it develops further.

A Couple of Game Ideas

I had a couple ideas for game in the last couple of days.  Like usual, they are both  just rough ideas.  So here they are.

Idea 1:
A game where the players are trying to kill one another...  but here's the twist.  If you are killed, the game does not end; you can continue to play as a ghost.  I think there would need to be an advantage to staying alive...  you don't want all the players try to be killed...  but the advantage needs to be not so big as to make it impossible to win as a ghost.  Honestly, the thing I like about this idea is not the killing in and of itself, it's the idea that there could be a huge fundamental change to game imposed on you by another player, and you have to react to change.  And the change needs to be final and unwelcomed, but not dooming to you as a player in the game.  I've even thought that maybe it becomes more advantageous to be a ghost as more players die.

Idea 2:
I used to play a computer game when I was young that I loved.  It was called Defenders of the Realm.  Essentially it was a Kingdom management game.  You played a King the was trying to take over England and manage the counties in Kingdom at the same time.  Right now you might be thinking "I've seen that 1000 times before."  But here's the twist (I'm stealing this twist from Of Power & Glory):  You are not the King....  and here's the other twist (I guess I'm all about twists today!) It's a co-op game.  You and your fellow players are Nobles that are responsible for managing the various concerns of the Kingdom.  Every co-op game needs a enemy or two.  In pandemic, it's the viruses, in Flash Point it's the fire....  here, it's your boss.  And maybe the Kingdom(s) in the area too.  I think there's a lot of opportunity for "stress" with the needs of the Kingdom, and the King and the threats of your enemies all stretching you in different directions.

Website Updates... continued.

I've just made a number of updates to the site:

• I re-wrote it in PHP.
• I turned the main page into a games summary page and added a specific game page that you can link to from the main page.  This page has a lot more detail than the previous one.  It includes images, reviews and links to related blogs.
• I fixed numerous IE related bugs with the site.
• I changed the contact page to use a web form instead of just a mailto: address.

I'll try to have a game related blog soon...  I had an interesting idea as far as that's concerned.  :)