My first thought was creating a board where tiles could be placed or taken away by dice roll. The object of the game was to keep the tiles from dipping too low or two high. It would be collaborative play against the game itself, which would eventually win. Score would be kept as how many rounds it took before the system beat you.
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| Initial Concept Art |
I felt that the initial implementation was too uninvolved. It seemed somewhat dull to keep hovering bars in a stasis. So I furthered the idea. You are on a sinking island, the water levels are rising rapidly, threatening the peaceful villagers. Thankfully for them, there is a mountain in the center of the island high enough to survive the rising tides and each of the players has a rescue helicopter. The downside: each helicopter can only carry a limited number of people.
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| The Start of the Game |
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| The Merciless Rising Water |
I think the social commentary in the game is subtle enough to be effective without being overwhelming, and there is something more compelling about rescuing villagers from certain doom than watching over a stack of tiles and it grows and shrinks.
There's another way to involve dice-throwing more in this game design. Instead of a rescue helicopter, each player chooses villagers to move from one square to an adjacent square. A player maybe gets multiple moves per turn-- however, the player rolls a die and is only able to move that many people. More randomness, yet player actions reign supreme.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting idea, but the dice are still controlling the players actions in part: it's determining how many moves he gets. You could keep your system and abide by the rules of the exercise if you change it thus: a player gets three moves each turn. However, a rich character uses all those moves to make it forward one square (because the rich character is dragging all his possessions with him). The player can also choose to move a three poor characters 1 square per turn.
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