Game Designers here?

I've noticed that a few members have posted ideas for games that they have created.

I also design games now and then.

I think that it would be nice if everyone who has designed a game or is designing a game could post here their name and the kinds of genres that they are interested in. Maybe be can organizing game testings on AE.

Could you show them to us? Maybe the community can help you with it then?

This is my last draft: a Diplomacy game placed in early Anglo Saxon Britain. You may maybe help me with it (for instance, suggesting the Celtic name of Lancaster or a better allocation of centers, etc.)



It would have 8 powers (5 Anglo-Saxon ones and 3 native ones), which are shown in diferent colors. Brown named one-center powers are minor states that would be conrolled via alliances, decided by vote (or Influence Points' investment) every Winter season.

This feature is something I have been working on for some time and it is pretty well finished: each major power (player) has a number of IPs that is equal to the centers it controls. These can be invested (basically) in securing the alliance of other minor powers, which would then be fully controlled by that player for the whole game-year. Voting is secret. An aditional rule is that each minor power has a 1/2 vote for its former ally or overlord, preventing that way a tie and the subsequent fall in CD/neutrality of the minor power. You can stab your minor allies/vassals but that has a major penalty: you lose all your IPs for a whole year and half of them (rounded up) for the following year (minors distrust you). If a minor power reaches a number of centers (normally 3) it becomes a major power and a new player must be assigned to it. I mention all this because I will implement this feature in all my variants (or so I think now).

In this case, I may give minor powers an ethnical vote for their connationals, so native minors (most of them) would have a 1/3 vote for other native powers (Dumnonia, Rheged and Pictland) and the Anglo-Saxon minors (Kent, Lindsey, Mid Anglia, East Anglia and Meonwara) would have a 1/3 vote for the major Anglo-Saxon powers. In other cases I may also use this kind of ethnical/religious preferences.

Btw, I can't name it Heptarchy because the name is already in use (another, not very good variant), so I'm thinking on something on the line of Britannia. I am also doubtful on the starting year (601?), many names, initial army/fleet allocation (or partial builds in Winter 600, forcing one to be an army), wether Anglo Hwicca existed already or was it still a Celtic territory (Caer Gloui), as I put it in the draft map, etc.

So your help can be very useful.

Here there is another unfinished proyect: Pirate Diplomacy.



The main problem is that (even stripping Spain of some of its posesions - corrupt or unruly governors) and making most of its troops armies, it is still too powerful. The other problem is that France (blue) and England (red) are too close to each other not to be tempted to stab the other, while the one-center Netherlands (orange) is surely to small to do much with it.

It needs a total reconsideration, so I have it abandoned by the moment.

In any case, the pirate fleet/s (grey or black) would be controlled by secret vote by France, England and the Netherlands. Spain having no say in that.

I already posted about the tv-game in another topic.

Another game I more or less made, a few years ago, was a dictator card game. I made that game after I found dictator cards on some side on the net, intended as parody on another card game. There were no real rules for that game, so I created them, and also greatly expanded the number of cards.

Of the 2 games I made so far the tv game is definately the better.

Currently I'm also thinking of a game set in a banana republic, in which the objective is to become president. I have no real rules yet, it's still in a very early phase. Some ideas I had
* becoming president is possible in 3 different ways: control the parliament, controll the supreme court or control a large part of the army and stage a coup.
* The map will be the capital city (Colon). I was thinking of making the city out of cards, so you can have a new map every game. Special buildings will include the presidental palace, the parliament building, the supreme court building, several barracks, an airfield, police stations, embassies, the national bank and other banks. Also there will be enough cards to make industrial parks, residential neighorhoods, slums, etc.
* At the beginning of the game most characters (characters are people like mp's, generals, judges, mafia, police-officers, etc.) will be gray, which means they're not aligned to any player. It will be possible to get them on your side, o.a. by bribing. You can also bribe or kill other player's characters. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this (first I need to find out how players can get money and such). If, say, 7 out of 10 judges is on your side, they can depose the current president (who is unbribable, but perhaps you can kill him, I don't know that yet), and thus win the game. Other ways to achieve this is to control a majority of parliament or the army.

I think it has potential to become a nice game, but it's still all very vague. Suggestions are more than welcome.

It needs a total reconsideration, so I have it abandoned by the moment.

St. Martin and St. Eustins (sp?) were (still are Dutch), and they controled a few islands in the Bahamas at one point. So why not give them those?

You could add the Danes and give them the Virgin Islands (US Virgin Islands were Danish untill the US bought them in the early 1900s). Theres another albeit very minor power for you.
Maybe different pirate factions to spice things up?

From my own local part of the world:

What you have as Salisbury should then have been Sarum (or possibly even something older).

The Meonwara were a people (Jutes) rather than a place, and they settled in the area between Fareham and Emsworth, more or less where you have put 'Portsmouth'.

Where you have Meonwara is Winchester.

It's a bit awkward that you appear to have original Celtic names one side of the border, but are using modern English names on the other side. 'Potsmouth' was in fact 'Portsmutha' (with 'th' being a single character) - though I would have thought Chichester and Southampton* were probably more important at that time than Portsmouth.

I haven't been able to find a useful map with Anglo-Saxon place names on it, or even a list of them, but if you want to sweat it out you might try comparing the names in the original language transcription of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles available at http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/asc/a.h tml

with the modern English translation at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Anglo/part1.html

* But then I'm biassed in favour of Southampton (Clausentum to the Romans)

 

 

Edited by gcle2003

I notice the isle of Man uses the modern Welsh name in that map. Any reason for this?

Whilst its thought that at one point a 'Welsh' (perhaps better put Brythonic) speaking people did live on the island, they began to be displaced by Goidelic speakers from ireland from around the 1st century onwards, up untill the 800s, when the Norse took over the island for about a century.

The Manx Name is Ellan Vannin/Mannin (?), but that might be a later medival varient. In the 600s, it, together with Angelsey were known as the Menavian Islands by the Northumbrians.
The name is supposed to derive Mannanan (god of the sea). Not sure what would be the best name, depends on the time peroid, but a contemporary Welsh name seems a little off.

Eh, isn't Winchester the Saxon name then?
The Roman name was Venta Belgarum.