Board Game Design

I have only a passing desire to ever design a board game. There is a lot of work and it seems like something that most definately requires a team.

There is a two fold reason why board game design occurs to me. First, I do have a game in mind. I have the concept but not the mechanics (or much). I doubt very much whether this will even see any work on my part beyond the concept but who knows.

The idea was to create a semi co-op game that could be played with 4-8 players. Players pair up with a partner, one of which is the monach of a country, the other which is a Archon of a god. The land as a whole is under siege from the forces of darkness, which is represented entirely by the game itself (much in the way that Shadows over Camalot runs it's evil). The idea is that you must lead your nation to victory.

The concept was a way to bridge a bunch of ideas. First, boys like to play with little army men, but when you have them in a game, the lady-folk often dismiss the idea of playing. So I would see that the monach would typically appeal to the lads. That would leave the role of the Archon to be focused to the hands of the women-folk. This leads into what the role of the Archon serves in the game.

The bad guy of the game would be undead and their undeadness causes some sort of blight. This blight plagues the lands and spreads from the central area. This blight can only be fought directly by the Archon who can clean it up. Now I know this is a generalization but it's been brought to my attention (a few times from a few of the ladies) that girls tend to like the war stuff less and but the 'cleaning up' part more. It's not meant to be sexist so much as appeal to a psychological desire. Women do not like to clean any more than men do. But I think women appreciate a clean place way more than men do in general. Therefore the idea of contributing, fixing, repairing, etc allows the women to feel like they are making a significant contribution to the game. The role of the Archon would be more involved but their general power lies not in fighting but in acts of divinity and cleansing.

The only other idea that I've worked out is that, if you work together, your nations will have an okay chance to win, if you manage to conquer other nations first, you will stand a better chance to beat the evil at the end. Do you work with or against the other players? I would want the option to be yours.

One of the reasons to make this type of game is because I've found that there are not enough games that support up to 8 players. Another reason is to have a game that supports and encourages boys and girls to play a stategy game together.

Why am I struck with all these board game thoughts? Marvel Heroes board game (MHBG).

See, the MHBG is an example of a convoluted and poorly balanced game. MH is a 4 player team based game where you take the role of one of the teams of super heroes and battle villains that are controlled by another player in the game. The poor balance occurs when one of those teams, particularly the Fantastic Four, is so much better than the other three teams. Partially because their villain (Dr. Doom) is such a puss compared to the other villains. So efficient team + weak Archvillain = Big advantage. Fortunately this is not to say that they will always win. Luck plays a HUGE factor in this game.

When I look at MH I see so much potential. I also see a totally different game hidden within. I see a semi co-op game, where up to 4 players take on the role of a single hero (not a team) against another player who runs the villain. Have 1 Arch Villain and have all the villains run by the villain player. How could this not be an awesome game?

So I set out to modify MH to this co-op style. And this is where I've come to realize just how frakin' hard board game design is. Now keeping in mind my goal was to utilize everything in the game (and not make changes to how card text was written) so maybe I shot myself in the foot. But damn! It's all but impossible.

The game does not seem complex to me, until you look at it from a game design point of view. Then you start asking all sorts of questions: Why did they do movement like that, why did they have Ready vs. Support actions, why did they have Story cards, etc?

It makes me start to wonder how you ever design a board game in the first place. Why is this handled with a card? Why this rule has a token used when another does not? Why the icons on the dice were chosen?

I'm sure board game design is like other type of game design. You start at one place and work your way from there. So maybe it's much harder to reverse engineer a game out of the tools that are available with MH? But I still can't help but wonder where they started and why they ended up with MH, a middle of the road board game.

Can I ever 'fix' MH? I've no idea. It's a interesting challenge but one I may never have time for. Which is sad because it's a really great piece of IP that I would hate seeing it go to waste.