Simple, Cardless Game

[Mbwa]

Hi there.  This may be the wrong forum I'm at.  I just thought some of you here may have some thoughts.

I'm trying to design a game that can be played with only a piece of paper and a pencil.  I've been thinking of some of the ideas I want as far as gameplay and such goes and here's what I've got:

-Each player starts off with the same amount of money.  Money can be used to purchase units.

-Units are used to attack the opponent's fort.  When your fort is destroyed, you lose.

-Units can be flying or ground, ranged or melee.  Flying units are always ranged.  Only ranged units can attack flying units.

-Units have hit points and attack points.  To attack, a coin is flipped and heads means 1 point of damage is done, tails means it misses.  A units attack points tells you how many times it can attack. (I'm pretty sure this is similar to another game, although I don't remember which one.)

-One unit can attack per turn.  You can buy as much as you can afford in one turn, however.

-When a unit is killed you earn the money that unit costs.

There are probably going to be other special abilities that units can use.  This is very bare bones right now.  All unit types will be recorded in a notebook.

What I'm asking is, do think I could get this game to work?  Not commercially, my plan is to play it at lunch with my friends.  A drawback is the lack of art.  Do you think it's possibly to create a fun, playable game with only pencil and paper?

Thanks for reading.

[Tokimo]

Yes it's possible to create fun games that are played only with a piece of paper and a pencil.

I think you have some major holes in your game as right now it sounds more or less like an overly complex rock paper scissors.

[Mbwa]

Thanks for replying. 

Rock paper scissors?  When I asked about this game at another place, somebody replied with an old saying that said all games come down to that.

What sort of things do you think would make it more interesting?  I'm glad you think a fun game is possible with just paper and pencil.

[Tokimo]

Chess is not rock paper scissors, regardless of assertions along those lines made by Mark Rosewater.

I think fundamentally you're trying to design a board game, not a card game. What makes this interesting is that your design space is asking for a board game with an additive board state, no toggling, no moving, just one directional changes. Connect-4 comes to mind as a decently complex game that could be played in this manner.

Now if you're playing with forts and military units, I think you're going to have a hard time making a system that's simple and not overly complex from an accounting standpoint while still being functional from a strategy standpoint. Personally, I can't think of a way to do this. I would just look at pen and paper RPGs if I were you. Notecard character sheet and some D6 with a really simple rule set will let you do quite a bit of dungeon tromping.

[GnKoichi]

Since this is a card game forum, my instinct here is to put cards back in the game to represent the units, etc. They just won't come from a deck. They'll come from a bank. There are plenty of card games (talking Poker-deck card games) that are played additively (like Connect 4). Look into games like Sevens or Solitaire for possible play mechanics that are extremely simple.

[Mbwa]

Thanks for the replies.

I think fundamentally you're trying to design a board game, not a card game. What makes this interesting is that your design space is asking for a board game with an additive board state, no toggling, no moving, just one directional changes. Connect-4 comes to mind as a decently complex game that could be played in this manner.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your terminology, but there's no movement involved.  The characters can attack one another, but their position doesn't matter, aside from the flying thing.

Now if you're playing with forts and military units, I think you're going to have a hard time making a system that's simple and not overly complex from an accounting standpoint while still being functional from a strategy standpoint. Personally, I can't think of a way to do this. I would just look at pen and paper RPGs if I were you. Notecard character sheet and some D6 with a really simple rule set will let you do quite a bit of dungeon tromping.

I have looked into pen and paper rpg's, and if this doesn't end up working out, I'll probably make a simplified version of one of those.

Forts and military units makes it sound very complex, when it could just be the terms.  Say, 5 direct hits to the 'fort' and you lose. 

I was planning on keeping track of any units in a notebook.  This may be like the card bank GnKoichi referred to.  Since there are only 5 things to keep track of on units (HP, ATK, $, ground/fly, ranged/melee), this would be rather simple.  There would probably only end up being a couple dozen unit types at most. 

I'm starting to see how this game deteriorates into a chess-like thing.  The small unit possibilities and whatnot.  I guess it's back to the drawing board.

I appreciate the feedback.  Since my idea doesn't involve cards, I may join a more general game-oriented forum.  I just joined this one as I had already heard of it.  CArd games are cool and all, they're just too hard to make.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[Tokimo]

The reason I figured it would have complexity was less because of forts and more because of the strategic style of the game. In my experience strategy games using non-deterministic resolutions tend to have heavy emphasis on positional play which is complex. To remove that position information would make games like BattleTech or WH40K trivial.

My initial thought for how to achieve something that had no pieces and was non-trivial was to emulate the style of gameplay of tic-tac-toe but with a much larger solution space (connect 4 comes to mind immediately). If you aren't interested in that path a little bit of record keeping and I'm sure that what you're trying to achieve can be completed. It's a unexplored (as far as I know) game paradigm though, so there's not a lot of prior art for reference.

[Ripplez]

i dont understand the game sorry. how do you purchase units?

[Monox D. I-Fly]

Since this is a card game forum, my instinct here is to put cards back in the game to represent the units, etc. They just won't come from a deck. They'll come from a bank.

Like in Heroes of the Realm?