Building A Game - I

Having recently finished the latest version of Rise and Decline (v0.7) and after giving Mercenaries to general public, the next project I need to start, possibly kicking and screaming into the World is Convention Organizer.

Now, that is but a simple name, but not yet even a concept. But we will make a concept out of it, piece by piece, and I will put it into this world, no matter the cost.

Let´s start with the basics.

What kind of game should Convention Organizer be? A competitive one where every player fights one another? A solitaire game like RaDoaGI and Mercenaries? A cooperative game where all players play against the game? Let´s go for cooperative.

But what does that mean? It means we build a game with a similar basic concept like PANDEMIC and numerous others, where all players need to unite their efforts in fighting against the system as designed.

What is our game about? It´s about organizing a convention. What kind of convention? Actually, this isn´t as important as you might think it to be. The word convention already implies a certain kind of great gathering in a modern mindset and therefor will never be misunderstood as something like a trade fair. No, this is something like a Star Trek Fan-Convention, or GenCon, or anything like that. Great gatherings of unwashed masses of rabid or semi-sentient legions of fans which want to worship their idols upon the altars of modernity.

What kind of tone do we want? Let´s go with tongue-in-cheek, a bit of satire but mostly fun and all in good humor. We don´t need to be bitingly true nor is comedy the only thing we have going for us. As such, a bit of fun and seriousness is enough.

Now, theme and tone are established. How is the game supposed to work? Do we need dice? A game board? Cards? Miniatures?

Piece by piece we shall get into this.

First, the all important question of dice. Most games use dice. It´s a sufficient randomizer and often enough serves it´s purpose excellently in giving us all the results we could wish for, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. But for a game like this, I´d actually want to eshew dice. You see, I have a grand plan. I say, NO TO DICE and thus we need another element of randomization. And in this, we use the cards instead. So you see, we draw cards to determine values and each cards is given with a certain value to determine worth.

As such, we have also introduced several elements with it. Already we know, that there will be some kind of value system depending on the number on the card, as well as we use card draw as a mechanic within our game, not to mention for randomization and other elements throughout the game. But even deeper into the rabbit hole, we suddenly reward players knowing the cards. With a dice, you can never know the outcome, unless you manipulate the roll itself. But with cards, you can assume, up to hilariously silly degrees, what might await you with each and every card draw. Of course this is only true, if we are to assume a basic number of cards that do not get reshuffled with one another each and every turn and thus a constantly dwindling number of cards in the deck.

Of course, this is something we need to think about. And what we will do with that thought, I´ll tell you next time.