Well I gave this a bit to much thought.
I figure that a DF board game would be quite different from the other board games. For one, the amount of randomness in it. I know that it's not needed, but randomness in it would really allow for the feeling of DF.
I guess that this would be allot like DF, one of the games that people have allot of treble learning, but once they understand it, it's quite easy.
First of, for the random name generation, I figure that you could use some sort of slider and dice combination, or a card and dice combination. Just cards would be too hard as you have far too many words in dwarf fortress to make a deck of cards with one word on it. Can't have the elves eating us now, can we?
I figure that you could pile I bunch of words onto one card, then roll I die or two to get a number, this is simple and probably the best choice.
The slider and dice combination is slightly more complicated. Basically you have a large packet with two open ends, and a large sheet with the different letters, and numbers. You slide the sheet through the packet, and you can get a name with that. I'd prefer the cards method.
Next is the world. This would be extremely complicated unless you use a computer somehow. I can think of a few ways to do this. A computer that generates worlds then displays it on a screen above it, thus becoming the game-board. The only problem with this is that after this, you might as well put the rest of it on the computer, and this nullifies the whole purpose of it being a board game.
The next way is obvious I'd guess, you have a program to generate a world on the computer, which you then print off.
Another way is simply to just give the player a few pre-made boards.
And finally would be to allow the player to get different boards for the game. since they are boards, you would have to buy them. Unfortunately, they’d be either being cheap, and poorly made, or over-priced but better. I dislike the idea of having to pay any more then 10 cents per board. I guess it could work out with something like 10 boards in a pack for $1, then relying on your vendor for such boards to allow sale of a custom number of boards.
As for playing, I'd guess that you could get tiles to put in-place with the boards acting as squares. This would have some problems, like placing the tiles, and remembering to have them grow and what-not. I guess that you would have to have multiple people acting as the computer on this one; unfortunately this would lead to boredom on their part I'd have to think. Maybe if you got 5 friends together, and rotated positions, kind of like a succession fort. As for moving the tiles I'd guess you would assignee the people each a job. Like one person is in charge of the trees, some others with the wildlife.
Even with that, moving the dwarves on a turn basis would be deadly boring. I mean, when you get to many dwarves, how are you planning on taking your turn? I'd have to think you would go around and move each dwarf individually.
That's another problem, moving stuff. Where obviously not going to go on a one frame to one turn basis, we would have to find some sort of measurement that would work.
Back to moving dwarves, you’ll also need to worry about tracing their skills, sounds like fun. For this we would need lots of extra information on how exactly the skills and what-not are calculated. Like after X many tiles, your miner levels up in mining. Not to mention communication.
Another take on moving would be where you round up a group of friends and each take responsibility over one dwarf, allowing for a leader and a few control people.
For the control people, like before, you'll need different people to control the different growths and movements of the multiple animals. Playing with other people is key here. I'd also suggest switching around control of stuff, kind of like a succession game, where after a year, calculated with some sort of measurement, and then decide on switching. I'd think that unless you want to, the dwarves would be allowed to keep their character and not switch, but the controllers would need to switch, and I'd assume that the leader would switch with them.
As for a person to dwarf style, the movement would handle with a per turn basis, where everyone is in charge of themselves on each turn. Trust is key here, remember that Loosing is Fun. With turns, I'd have to think we would need to split them up into sub turns.
With turns, there's the main turn, and the multiple sub turns. The main turn would have X amount of frames in it, and each sub turn would count as a frame. Now I hope that you would realized that the sub turns are used for calculations rather then actual turns. I'd also think that at the start of a game, you would pick the amount of sub turns per turn.
For example, as I don't know the exact values;
Let’s say that a dwarf move 1 spot every 100 frames
If a turn has 500 sub turns, the dwarf can move 5 tiles a turn.
If a turn has 1000 sub turns, the dwarf can move 10 tiles a turn.
Now if said dwarf increases in agility, and they can move 1 spot every 50 frames;
If a turn has 500 sub turns, the dwarf can now move 10 tiles a turn.
If a turn has 1000 sub turns, the dwarf can now move 20 tiles a turn.
With stats, like I said, it's all handled on a per-player basis with paper and pencils.
With the actual maps themselves, I've already said the basic idea of how they could work, split into a grid in which you can insert tiles.
Tiles would be the biggest pain to do. For one, you have loads of them, and for two, you have to keep track of them, and you have to worry about running out.
I figure that tiles would be simple cardboard cutout squares with ASCII on them, and different sets that allowed for different characters. Obviously this is all bought in bulk. i.e. 100 tiles per bag, and buckets of a random amount around X. I'd guess that the bags would need to be functional, or they would need to sell something for storage, unless you want to be cheap and buy some random shelving unit for this stuff and not a DF shelving unit for this stuff. Moving tiles would have a problem where either it's easy to remove them allowing for less pain in your fingers, but they would shoot out of their spot with the slightest bump, or a simple locking setup, but giving you trouble getting them out. Also with anything in-between, leaning to the easier to move side.
Next up is the Z levels; I'd guess that this would be a simple, black, board that you fill with ground tiles. Laying them out might be a pain that is if you want lots of Z levels and a large space. I'd guess you need to add them as you go, I doubt anyone would play this long enough to get to where this is a really large problem. But if they do, I'd say tied be more fun to see your large world set out in front of you. The layout of the Z levels would be your choice, I'd guess a simple line would suffice, [] [] [] [] [], sort of thing.
Z level boards would be simple, fully black, or light blue boards. You would then just put the tiles onto them.
As for setting them up, I'd guess you would go about and preset the boards up with different veins of random minerals using ground tiles.
Ground tiles would just be double sided tiles with a solid black back, or one of the different ground tiles.
Mining would be a small pain because you have to flip over the tiles around you, and then find a proper ground tile. But I figure you're ready for this if you want to play a DF board game, or play DF at all.
I don't think that I have to much more to add, the rest seems relatively self explanatory.
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress Card Game (Read 3378 times)