What game does that? It seems so obvious. Just give everyone a different color or different shaped pawn to mark the spaces they have acquired with their rolls.
It’s less rare now I guess, but the persistent game board from Risk Legacy or whatever went on with Pandemic Legacy (I never played it).
Hrm… what if you twisted a deckbuilder so that cards gradually changed rules as you played more games? Maybe more the territory for a video game like slay the spire where you could track all that without ruining the cards.
Slay the Spire and Hearthstone both do this. In Slay the Spire cards can be upgraded to their second stage.In Hearthstone cards can be enchanted and buffed, even when they are inside your deck or hand.
It doesn’t persist through games though. I’ve played through slay the spire at this point. Risk Legacy actually included persistent changes to the game and game board after every play, so if Greenland got nuked, Greenland would always be a radioactive wasteland. Slay the Spire actually just added an event in beta that gives a limited cross game persistence, you can basically put a card under a rock on one play through and pick it up on another.
Dwarf Fortress does that. Instead of a Roguelike that generates a map just big enough for one play through, it makes a map so big you can play many many times on it.
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Also, the way they implemented the worker placement in The Sanctuary is pretty cool: in a lineup of cards, your worker can take the main action of the card you place it on and the secondary action of every other card it can “see,” with line of sight blocked by other players’ workers.
Came here to say Hanabi.
Are you looking for mechanics in extant games, or do shit-talk imaginary ones count too?
The Shadow of Mordor’s Nemisis system is pretty interesting, and it was kind of surprising that more games didn’t take up something like it.
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Despite it being one of the most interesting things about the game the attacking and blocking system in Magic the Gathering isn’t used nearly enough by other games.
When I played through that game last year, I felt like I really didn’t get much out of the Nemesis system. Maybe it was because I pretty much slaughtered anyone who got in my way.
It really comes into play when you start doing things like building up armies to back you, or if you fail to take dudes down, so on. I tended to sneak and dominate my way through the first game, so I guess I got a lot more impact out of the nemesis system.
In terms of shit-talk imaginary mechanics…
I made an RPG game based on The Never Ending Story in which as the game went on the pages from the rule book were torn out and discarded. By the end of the game the book was empty and the only way to rebuild the world was with the few rules salvaged by the players during the course of the game.
I’d love to get that idea of pieces covering rules working but it quickly becomes broken beyond comprehension when there are more than two pieces on the board.
Torchbearer is bloody rare when you think about the grind and condition cycles in that.
Murderous Ghosts is the closest thing I’ve seen to a two player choose your own adventure novel. I tried to write one years before I knew about gaming and RPGs and it was horrendous.
Drawing on transparencies, as in Doodle Quest and Looney Quest.
Listening for audio clues, as in Mord im Arosa
Intentionally conflicting rules, as in Dimension
I still find the Gravwell gravity slingshot movement to be very unique.
Do many other games bundle randomness into groups as Zooloretto does with its carts?
Along lines of “not knowing your own info” of Hanabi is Confusion, which is essentially chess where you don’t know which of your own pieces are which, but your opponent does. They tell you after you declare a move if it was legal or not. Except one piece is a double agent, and they can make up the rules for it as they go, and contradict themselves if it suits them. This may altogether not be rare enough: there are plenty of deduction games, and plenty that involve lying, but is their combination a unique mechanic unto itself?
Every rule is subject to change in Nomic.
Hopefully this thread quickly reaches the depths of Metal.
ROLL YE DICE LOOK YE MIGHT…S
Magic Realm has pre-decided victory conditions.
you have five points to distribute between scoring areas. Treasures, spells, fame, notoriety, and gold.
you can weight them all to one area, or spread them out. this is kept secret, even though the scores you actually get are mostly public.
similar to deciding victory conditions during play like Nippon, but decidedly different, since it happens even earlier and private.
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Space Alert - Time tracks for threats. Have X, Y, and Z. Threats activate abilities as they cross each. Some tracks have extra of a letter, some don’t have any. I feel like this was overshadowed by the real-time puzzle, but this could be a great mechanic to show up in other places.
Wallenstein - Most mechanics are fairly common in this game, but the cube tower is fascinating. I actually don’t care for it for conflict resolution. I think it has great potential for a market-based economic game. Production throws cubes in, what comes out adjusts demands. Abstractly simulates frictional forces in markets, where you have an idea of how much should be there, but can never be quite certain what the final demand will be.
Ares Project - Playing a simple game behind a screen. simple so that mistakes and cheating should be easily caught. you know i’ve done eight actions since you last looked, so you can get an idea of what i could have done, but the details are hidden. I think this is avoided because of fear of cheating, but if you play with cheaters, find better friends.
Spyrium - Worker placement where the placement doesn’t block, but increases the price of the action when taken. I get that people who want hard blocking may not like this, but increasing the price significantly enough is blocking, just allows for a continuum from free to prohibitively expensive.
Ingenious - uses the tigris and euphrates scoring thing. Lowest of several categories is your final score. Don’t see this often enough.
Forbidden Stars - The pre programmed actions where the resolution is dependent on where other players programmed their actions. several of my favorite games use programming, and while other players may make your plans not work, you still execute in the same order. here, your planned last action may come out first turn just because its your only one not capped by an opponent.
Mini Rails - you have two actions. if you take the build action first, you will take the invest action next. every set of two turns you will use those two actions. I like the idea that you have a list of actions, lets let it be more than just two, and you cannot do one again until you’ve done all other actions. I wish this happened more.
the world of smog - rotating pieces and the board itself. costs and movement change based on orientation of the board. not in absolute terms, but in relation to you, the player. dungeon twister turns the board, but the game is the same for both players. In world of smog, your prices change depending on orientation.
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I once designed and playtested a game I called “Orbital Decay” which simulated a space battle between satellites. You could attach rockets to your satellite to boost into different orbits. Also use the rockets to shoot other satellites. Also attach rockets to rockets, to boost other satellites into other orbits, either orbits that decay and hit the planet, or that flung you off into space. Which was pretty funky.
Turn order relied on longitude, which meant, depending on how fast you orbited between turns, the order changed each round. Also you could get two turns if you boosted forward in your orbit. But that meant going into a lower orbit, which is a pretty dangerous place to be. If you hit a mountain, there’s no coming back, while being flung off into space was recoverable if you could boost back.
It had a few mechanics I’ve not seen in other games, so one day I’ll make it again to see if it still holds up.
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I think all of Chudyk’s games stand in a category of their own. We can debate how rare his mechanics are, but his multifunction cards seem to be on such a different level compared to, say, San Juan or GtR that I consider it a separate thing.
Since I’ve been working on making less-shitty Impulse, I’ve run into a mechanic that I’m not sure I’ve seen elsewhere: a multi-state token.
For the unfamiliar: each player gets 12 ships, and they’re physically limited. Each of those ships can exist in one of two states: a Cruiser or a Transport. A Transport stands on end, a Cruiser lays on its side, and both states interact with different parts of the map and have totally different rules.
It effectively gets more utility out of fewer pieces, while doing so in an efficient, streamlined way.
Anyone know any other games that have something like this? I haven’t been able to come up with any.
A die is a multi-state token. The most basic ones have six states, not two. Plenty of games use dice in this fashion.
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