Brainstorming Board Games

Brainstorming is one of the most difficult but rewarding parts of building concepts and ideas and bringing them to fruition. There are numerous ways people go about the process, but I like good old fashioned writing and stream of consciousness. I've always found that letting my mind wander freely allows it to see things in a new light and hopefully helps come up with original ideas.

Over the past few weeks I've been stretching my mind to come up with both a game I'll enjoy making and a game that people will enjoy playing. The first and easiest step is coming up with themes, I have tons of them, and they always coincide with my personal interests. For example here's a short list of some of my personal favorite themes for games:

• Plants (growing, taking care of, etc.)
• Circuses
• Cottages and Pioneers
• Discovery! (vague, but enticing)
• Desert Challenges
• Challenging work places, challenging (annoying) customers
• Cats (I can never resist)
• Bar tending
• 90's Skateboarding 
• Fashion
• Simple Color Making
• Farming in France
• Becoming an Arsonist
• Monster Themed Bakery
•  Grocery Shopping Madness
• Clown Cars
• Leading A Jetset Life
• Sun vs. Moon
• Be The Best Bearded Lady

Well, those are all over the place so I need to find ways to narrow the themes down into a playable mechanic. Mechanics are a tough cookie to crack, too simple and a game might be boring, too complex and most people won't want to take the time to sit down and understand it. My goal is to find a mechanic that's simple enough to be easy and quick to understand, but is also varied enough to allow for emergent game play. Why is this important? Games should carry replay value, if my customer isn't willing to play the game a second, third, or fourth time then I've not made the game play out in an interesting enough way. Here I explored some generic game play mechanics:

Single Mechanics, player actions do not interact with other players:

• dice rolling
• random card drawing
• landing on random spaces
• choice between unknown variables
• points based earning systems
• rewards for strategy

Player Interaction Mechanics:

• secret sabotage
• sharing space with other players
• weapon cards/pieces
• non-aggressive interactions
• stealing
• evasion mechanics, players should be able to escape consequences through strategy

Methods Of Play (objects):

• positive and negative cards
• rolling dice for decisions
• bonus rolls (product of strategic decisions)
• begin players with equal or different abilities

How Can I Allow For Strategy?

• players can't impact each other, they can only impact gameplay
• giver players opportunities for informed decisions
• vary options enough so that players are making varied decisions
• numerous and small impacts as opposed to few but large impacts

While these are nowhere near expansive lists, they're a good starting point for developing some solid base mechanics that I can easily outfit with a theme I'm really interested in, or that I think will mesh well with the mechanic. So here I'll apply some of my mechanics:

Plant Growing (yea, super exciting): 

• stacking plant parts together, parts are both negative and positive, you may affect other players' plants (sabotage)
• magnetic plant pieces (just how they can fit together)
• positive: fertilizer, better dirt, larger pots?
• negative: over watering, no sun, drought

*Carnival/Circus Game:

• players are presented with jigsaw pieces
• they must earn the correct jigsaw pieces to complete their puzzle
• players may trade puzzle pieces
• upon completing the puzzle the player kicks the other circuses out of town and becomes the reigning circus
• OR it could be played on a town to town basis, slowly building up your carnival caravan

*Cottage Life:

• players begin as pioneers on separate plots of land
• each player must fight to start their farm, fend off beasts, and build their homes
• tool based game, all actions are complete through the building of and using of tools
• ex: build axe first ->able to get wood, can be burned for cooking or warmth, but houses made out of wood aren't as sturdy as a house made with stone gathered with a pick axe
• players are only allowed a certain number of tools (don't know why yet, maybe explained by lore)
• would like the game to be story based

Discovery!:

• players are researchers looking for the cure to a mysterious disease
• the game is set in the rainforest, researchers must gather plant and bug specimens
•  goes through month long cycles
• finding rarer bugs and plants lead to more discovery and better chances of finding a cure
• researchers may be sent home with illness, taking them out of the game for a round or so
• they may attempt to cure their illness and hopefully return sooner

Ad Lib Based Game:

• the goal is to form a story together
• or to create an abstract image together
• generate points through number of consecutive pieces a player is able to put down
• would have to have tons and tons of cards

Cactus:  

• you're a cactus!
• similar in mechanics to the discovery game
• survive from week to week
• make it through droughts 
• collect enough water to make it through 
• defend self from creatures, grow new kinds of quill things?

IT Mayhem:

•  game is based on helping customers with queries 
• each player is allowed a default response of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
• when using this response players are able to roll to see if they are successful (D&D-ish)
• players will earn points in order to learn more IT training, they will gather "response cards" that will help them resolve problems, without the right response card players are unable to help the customer 
• player can earn points through successfully helping customers (although this would only produce random outcomes in the beginning)
• allow players to bounce back from tough starts by offering odd jobs like cleaning, being a clown at birthday parties, and other lame jobs

*Elemental Cats:

• cats have been discovered to be the rulers of the known universe after cat wars have raged on in the skies above earth
• humans must prevent the destruction of earth and find a way to get the cats to go back to a passive ruling
• the game pits player against player, one playing as cats and the other as the humans 
• cats have god abilities, but humans have the entirety of the human race behind them (armies, nukes, etc.), the skills should be evenly balanced, and the cats are not invincible 

*Bar Tending:

• make it through the night as a bar tender
• earn tips, handle customer problems, drink (but don't get drunk)
• alternating rounds of bar tending, play as customers when you are not the bar tender
• the bar tender pulls cards that present problems
• the customer uses their hand of cards to decide how they want the bartender to handle their problem
• ex: the customer has just been broken up with, the bartender has the option to console the customer, give them a drink on the house, or hit on them. As the bartender places their decision card down (either an A, B, or C), the customer also places their card down to show what they would like to happen (A, B, or C card). When the two coincide, the bartender is awarded with a successful sale. 

90's Skateboarding Game:

• I actually have no idea, but if this isn't the best board game theme you've ever heard then you're a liar. 

(*: denotes a preferred idea)

There's a brief overview of just a few of my ideas. It's pretty overwhelming right now, but there are a few in there that I see as having a great deal of potential, especially when they get developed into more concrete ideas and mechanics. 

So long for now.