My first attempt at game design

Quote from: Adam Dray on September 01, 2006, 01:58:16 PM

This sounds really cool. So far, it's a game I'd want to play!

To make sure I understand, it's intended to be a cutthroat, player-vs-player game?� Don't smack me too hard, but tell me why this should be a role-playing game and not a strategy board game.� I'm sure you have a good answer.

I wouldn't go and post answers to the Power 19 just yet. If you're antsy to talk about your game, answer one or two of them (in order) and let us ask questions. The Power 19 is just a bit much to digest as a reader.

making a board game is really hard. This might be heresy around here, but its MUCH harder than making a role playing game. Most role playing games leave a lot up to the GM and/or the players - guidelines for this, suggestions for that. A few mechanics here and there that may or may not mesh exactly perfectly.

but board games must present an exactly perfectly meshing set of mechanics that are very well balanced and not open to exploitation in any way, and they must model what you need to model with the least amount of complexity as you can get away with. perhaps gamist rpgs have elemnts of this, but an actual boardgame is at the extreme end of design difficulty in these respects.

Personally Id love to see this type ofgame implemented as an RPG. I guess traditionally all RPGs are 1st person in that the player is looking through the eyes of the character. some games are more 3rd person in that the GM and players are looking on at the ensemble cast of characters from a near distance.

But did you intend to roleplay a specific character with thisgame or an entire princiality? Can you 'roleplay' a principality / nation? Im not suggesting you do this, but it would be intersting to kick around.

On the other hand, if each player is taking on the role of a specific character (which is what you intend, I think), how do they interact? specifically through diplomatic meetings, eye to eye (1st person?) or is it more of a 3rd person, every player looking on at scenes involving one or more principle characters, and then moving across italy to another location to watch another scene?

is there real secrecy in this game or are secrets public domain knowledge that players arent allowed to act on?

one final idea - I tried to make a board game based on this idea, but I gave up (for now) because real secrecy was too hard to implement. But what about a twist where players arent competing princes from different principalities, but all members of the same court/aristocracy of one particular principality. Then there is more scope for them working together and being in roughly the same location and you get some conflict between working together to support their principality above all other NPC principalites, but also the political power theme is still going where each player character wants to rise within the ranks of their own principality and replace the current prince with themselves.