Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Designer Game Idea

Title: Spies

Object: Complete your mission before the other players.

Basic Rules: At the start of each game, a player selects two cards: a Country and a Mission. For each country and mission combination, a player need to acquire a specific set of resources to complete the mission. Players are each given a $100,000 budget, in chips, to complete their mission.

Basic Mechanic: Each player has a turn and turns over a resource card that has a resource and a cost. The "turner" has the first option to purchase or pass. Then the option goes to the next player and next player and so forth.

*I'd like to introduce a trading element, where players can make trades of money, resource cards, or a combination of each. I'm not sure how or when this trade option would come into the game.

**I'd also like to add an element where a player can actually lose by winning. That is, another player can get a mission that is completed by allowing the first player to win. (I haven't figured out how the original player can turn this around...)

Dynamic Element: Each player is trying to complete their mission, but at the same time trying to sabotage each others missions. Therefore, one tries to keep their own mission a secret, so other players won't sabatage and might inadvertantly help. If a player is too obvious about completing their own mission, other players will figure out their mission and exploit it.

To complete a mission, players will need to collect a specific mix of 9 resource cards. For instance:

Mission Card: Steal Rival Missile System
Country Card: China

In order to complete this mission you will need to collect: 3 translators who speak Chinese, 3 scientists with aviation expertise, and 3 transports of metals.

*Note: each resource card will be "dual use," that is, each translator speaks two languages. Each scientist has two areas of exertise, and each container ship can hold either metal shipments or oil.

Sample resource cards:

Translator: Chinese and Farsi. Cost: $6,000
Translator: Chinese and English. Cost: $3,000
Translator: Chinese and German. Cost: $4,000

Scientist: Aviation and Biological expertise. Cost: $5,000
Scientist: Biological and Chemical expertise. Cost: $2,000
Scientist: Physics and Chemical expertise: Cost: $4,000

Transport: Metals and Oil. Cost: $10,000
Transport: People and Bombs. Cost: $1,000
Transport: Drugs and Cash. Cost: $5,000

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An idea of how the player who can lose by winning might turn it around - they must realize at the board that they are being sabatoged by that person and set out to undermine them first. This might create a nice level of paranoia in weak players.