signalnoise posted:

OK so here's my idea in parts

1- Minis on a grid. Squad based minis game. I want it to be grid based because I want clear rules for things like cover and movement, no guessing. I want no room for error. Each mini has a stat card with whatever special abilities it has, but by themselves the game is very very simple. Your dude can move a certain amount, make very basic attacks, that's pretty much it. However, there are special characteristics for each dude like knowledge of explosives, or special non-attack abilities the character can do instead of attack. The rest of the game's actions are served up by

2- Cards. Cards allow your character to perform special actions (suppressing fire for example), interrupt enemy actions, lay down new terrain, etc.. These cards are drawn from a communal deck.

I want to marry these two ideas to make it so even though you're picking unique dudes, you and your opponent still both draw from the same deck and the strategy here is always having options. When you kill an enemy's guy, I want it to be not because you rolled the right number the right number of times- I want it to be because you laid down a card and they had no answer.

I also like the idea with this plan that since you're dealing with one hand for each set of guys, every time one of your guys dies, the rest become potentially more dangerous because you have fewer mouths to feed, so to speak. The last guy will always be slippery because he is one guy with an entire hand to use.

So that's the idea in a nutshell. A squad tactics game with a hand of cards to deal with.

Problems I already have-

1- Nailing down exactly what cards I want available. I know that I want the main idea to be the active player laying down attacks and the other guy using what's left in his and at the end of his turn to evade those attacks. But what cards will those be?

2- Hit points. I don't think I want hit points, because I want the end result of you running out of options to be that a guy is dead. I want it to mean something for you to have no way out, and I want the attacker to have the satisfaction of knowing he did that. Should I have hit points?

3- Actions and theme. I would like to think that whatever cards I think up, those cards should be purely about the system, but at the same time I feel that the theme of the game, whatever it is (right now I'm thinking old west) should feel like it is integral to the game.

4- How the gently caress do I organize decks of cards? I could do it Dominion style where I have banks of cards and the player tailors their deck to their force over the course of the game, but that feels like I would be cheating in terms of game design. Right now the best idea I have though is to rip off Dominion pretty much wholesale in the deck building area, where players choose multiple types of cards to be available, and then pick units based on what actions they know will be available.