Developing a New Major

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Here are my thoughts from the first couple of days at the world board game championships 2008

I was trying to think of ways to organize and describe in general what I was seeing - and here’s what i came up with so far

I haven’t played board games in a very long time and there are an amazing number of games out there now. One of hte creativity ideas they talked about at GDC was to break actions down into basic parts, think of all the variants of those parts and try to create new combinations. This is my effort to break boardgames down into basic parts and to start a list of variants. I think this will be part of their boardgame analysis homework - play a bunch of games, see what basic parts they come up with to add to/adjust the master list.

cards

• number of cards in hand (fixed, fluctuates) - one big deck or do players get their own deck (like in the stock card race game)
• resource cards, action cards, drawpile, discard pile
• cards as status indicators
• cards for bonus points, victory points
• face up, face down

dice

• number of dice
• kind of dice (how many sides - there are dice with more than 6 sides)
• number of resources to take
• number of spaces to move
• attack strength
• number rolled = number of players or fixed
• to win an auction by meeting given condition

boards

• central board
• players have their own board
• both central and player boards
• point indicator ring around the outside
• spaces for cards/markers
• maps
• do players move on the board  and if so how - in what directions, how many spaces

tiles

• build the land for others to move on
• create the board as you go so it’s always different

pieces

• marker of property/ownership
• resources to trade/buy/sell
• resource descriptions
• money

turns & turn taking

• how do you pick start person
• is there a new start person each round
• can’t play/lose a turn
• pass on a turn to get a future benefit
• what do you do in your turn
• when is your turn over
• turns with multiple actions per player

rounds

• multiple steps
• points scored at end of round
• fixed number of rounds or keep going till no more moves/all products gone
• what condition triggers the end of the round
• does something in a round trigger the end of the game

theme

• does theme affect game play or is theme ornamental
• how is theme worked into game - art work, card backs, resources, money….

graphics

• box art
• card backs
• card faces
• little pieces
• money
• design of the rule book
• player aids

instruction/rule book

• multiple pages
• talks about setup, who goes first, what happens in each turn what ends a round, player goals win conditions, scoring, might have strategies, might have alternative rules, acknowledgements
• some rules on the board, on a cheat sheet that each player has

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