As promised last week, I’m putting my random money where my mouth is and creating actual games based on the results of random game idea generators. Just remember that these games are little more than pitches; they aren’t playable as written, and probably aren’t any good. But they should be fun to to read about.
Today’s entry is Super Team-up Challenge. It was generated from Boardgamizer, which gave me the following:
Mechanics: Trading
Theme: Superheroes
Victory: Reach Objective
I think I can work with this.
Overview
Each player controls a team of superheroes that is trying to score the most points by defeating evil schemes. The first player to reach the object of… oh, let’s say 100 victory points is the winner. But if there are too many evil schemes in play and undefeated, everyone loses!
Components
The game uses two types of cards: Hero cards and Scheme cards.
- Hero cards have a number of aspects, each of which has a value. For example, Foot Stabber has 4 Strength and 2 Speed.
- Scheme cards have a number of aspect requirements, which are the same aspects that heroes have, but with larger values, as well as the number of Victory Points they are worth (16 in our example). They also have a number of card icons (two in our example), which is how many new Scheme cards are drawn when this Scheme is defeated.
(Bonus bit of randomness: all superhero names come from random generators here and here; their images were generated arbitrary at Hero Factory.)
Setup
Shuffle the two types of cards into their own decks and deal each player some number of Hero cards. Then draw a number of cards from the Scheme deck (based on the number of players) and put them in the center of the table as the Scheme Pool. Finally, each player draws a Scheme from the Scheme deck and puts it into play in front of him- or herself.
Playing the Game
On your turn, do the following in order:
1. Trade: Trade any number of Hero cards in your hand for any number of cards from any number of opponents. Opponents can only trade with you.
2. Play: You must play at least one card. You may play cards to a Scheme in the central Scheme Pool, the Scheme in front of your, or both.
Imposters: If an opponent already has at least one copy of a Hero card in play, you can’t play that card unless you play more copies of that card. (For example, if Donna has two copies of Ghost Priest in play, Chuck can’t play his own Ghost Priest cards unless he plays at least three of them.) If you do, the previously-played Hero cards are discarded and that Hero declared to have been an imposter.
Defeating Schemes: If you have enough Heroes on your own Scheme to fulfill its Aspect Requirements with your Heroes’ Aspects, then you defeat that Scheme. Add it to your score pile and replace it with the number of Schemes indicated on the card. Likewise, if you (perhaps with help from the other players) defeat a Scheme from the Scheme Pool, that Scheme is discarded and replaced with new Scheme(s). You don’t score that Scheme, but do take a face-down card from the Scheme deck and add it, face-down, to your score pile. You know you’re getting some points for being the player to finish off the scheme, but don’t know how many.
3. Draw: Draw Hero cards up to your hand size.
Game End and Winning
When a player has at least 100 points in his score pile, the game ends. Everyone reveals the cards in their score piles and adds up all their victory points. The player with the most victory points wins.
On the other hand, if there are Scheme cards totalling at least 100 victory points in the Scheme Pool, the game ends and everyone loses! Maybe if the superheroes had been focused on doing their jobs, the bad guys wouldn’t have been able to destroy the world!
Analysis: Game Design Challenges
- Trade Incentive: Do players have enough incentive to trade? I think that forcing you to play encourages you to trade in order to not “waste” that play, and the “everyone loses” condition likewise keeps everyone looking to build just the right hand of cards… but won’t know without playing it.
- Card Balance: Are the Schemes challenging enough? Are the aspect values varied enough? Is the quantity of each Hero card correct? There’s no way of knowing until we play it a few times.
- Suicidal Players: Any time a non-cooperative game has a “we all lose” option, there’s a risk that a player who is losing will try to tank the game for everyone. As it stands, the game has no way to mitigate this.
- Boring Cards: The cards have nothing but raw data on them. This might be interesting enough to play on its own (and is definitely how I’d start playtesting it), but I suspect the game would be more fun if at least some of the cards had game text on them.
Analysis: High Points
- Imposters: I really like this mechanic. It adds a sort of bidding mechanic to the mix, and gives you a reason to play Heroes even if they won’t immediately defeat a Scheme.
- Replacement Schemes: Replacing defeated Schemes with a variable number of new Schemes seems a simple way to change the game’s environment every few turns. In theory, at least.
- Scoring Central Schemes: The challenge with the Scheme Pool was how to track which player played which Hero to each Scheme. After all, if I do most of the work but another player adds the final card to win it, I’m going to be annoyed and not do that again. By having the player who finishes the Scheme score some other, random card, hopefully it doesn’t feel as bad for the players who started it, while still providing incentive for the player who finishes it.
There you have it. The first random game. If you’d like to see it fleshed out into an actual prototype, let me know.
