Initial concept for assignment 1: design a traditional format game

(This is pretty much a narration of the thought process, so there'll be rambling, and recollection)

Right after learning what the assignment was, Ahmed and I discussed in the bus on possible game ideas. I *joked* that perhaps we can have the game setting to be in NUS, and all the lecturers in the game shall be bad guys. Of course, the second part of the joke was thrown out of the window, because implementing it would be the worst of all bad ideas. The first part, however, was put under consideration. Ahmed talked about the possibility of adding the ability to question fellow players and of bluffing (if I recall correctly), but we didn't really go very far into the discussion.

The next few days, I'd think about two very separate thoughts that were related to the assignment. The first would explain why I thought of NUS as a game setting, and the second was about a board game I drew up in Primary school with a classmate from foolscap.

In JC, I'd sometimes imagine that the school itself was suddenly taken over by monsters and demons, and that the classrooms would contain treasure chests with potions and weapons to be used against those monsters. I'm quite sure it had to do with playing Diablo 2 Hardcore mode. Somehow the thought of the school corridors, classrooms and halls being used for something other than studying seemed appealing. Since I'm now in NUS, the logical thing to do is to use that as the school setting. If the RPGish idea were to be used, the following "classes" might be used - the tech-wiz student from SoC (or Engineering), the chemical test tube-weilding science student, the medical student (who's really a walking first-aid kit), and the smooth-talking arts & social science/law student. Kinda like the modern day versions of the wizard, the alchemist, the healer and the bard. It's just a thought and I haven't really decided *how* they'll fit into the game yet, or if it's worth implementing.

As for the second thought, I nearly forgot about it until I read Joshua's post about designing board games. I remember how my classmate and I had nothing to do in school because a teacher was absent, so we started designing a board game, which was heavily influenced by Mad Magazine, but no money was involved. I think it was called "Treasure Hunt", where players had to race from the starting point to the finishing line. Along the way, you'd land on certain squares and pick up a card from the deck, and it always had a ridiculous instruction for you to do, which was where the Mad Magazine element came into play. Once, a player even had to run around the table before she could go back to her seat, which caused the relief teacher to come over and stop us from playing. I remembered how we all enjoyed the game and were disappointed that we had to stop. The thing about this game that made it fun was that it never took itself seriously, so with that in mind, I decided to try and marry the parody aspect of Mad Magazine with the RPG/fantasy aspect of D&D.

I thought through what elements of D&D I could make use of without bringing in the whole complicated structure as well. The important things to remember were that the rules should be easy enough to learn, and there must be a quantifiable outcome. I decided that it'll be a board game, with a starting line and a finishing line, and the winner wins by getting to the finishing line. Dice will be used in this, mostly for moving, though possibly also for combat during random encounters and other possible challenges. Most likely the focus will be on competitive play rather than co-operative play. There would be squares that players can land on, like "Random Encounters", "Traps" and "Treasure Chests". The "Random Encounters" and "Treasure Chests" squares will have their own deck of cards, which the player will have to draw from in order to see what he gets.

A "Random Encounter" is where the player meets a certain obstacle, like some cliche evil wizard, or maybe pineapple demons. (No, the player will never meet a lecturer during a random encounter). The player will have to try and win that random encounter, but the means of doing so hasn't been decided yet. Perhaps here is where the Risk factor comes in, as Weiwei brought up later on. Success would be rewarded with the player being able to advance forward much quicker. Failure will result in some sort of penalty, though one hasn't been thought of yet.

If the parody idea gets implemented, there'll be far more useless "treasures" than useful ones, though I'm not sure if it works well on paper yet.

When a player lands on a trapped square, s/he will have to either try to avoid it, or disarm it. Failing either will activate the trap, which will force the player to fall back a few squares, like in Snakes and Ladders. Weiwei pointed out that there was a Minesweeper aspect to it, which was pretty cool as I didn't realise it then, even though I've been playing that game rather frequently the past few weeks.

Weiwei then talked about implementing Risk elements into the gameplay, and the possibility of having challenges.

Well, that's all there is for now. Hopefully we'll be able to mould something from all this.