WRT naming of kids: One vision of the game has meeples for the various tokens. Possibly even meeples of different sizes, some with little names printed on them. Cute little familiar names, Billy, Joey, Alice, Beta, Chuck, Sally etc, or maybe even things like Boopsie and Pudge. Smaller ones could even be carved with diapers or some such. Whatever. How you then treat them is up to you.

Remember, you get more food from the UN/charities to feed the rest of your family the more they die or are injured, so you’ll want to plan and schedule that to make sure you have the right quantity of food when you need it and no more.

All else aside the first problem is to define the scoring method. The game definition, mechanisms etc are a logical extension of the scoring system. The early posts below specify variable turn order and other mechanisms. That’s silly. Until the scoring is defined there’s no reason to define mechanisms.

As currently described this is a two sided game: the military against the patriarchs. Additionally the patriarchs compete to be the highest scoring patriarch. It is tempting to make the win-state a trinary and allow both the military player and the lead patriarch to both win together. The result would be novel and assymetric: The military player can win or lose against the patriarchs, the patriarchs can win or lose both against the other patriarchs and against the military player, and possibly both the military player and the a patriarch can win together against the other patriarchs. The key characteristic of that broad brush-stroke appears to be a mix of cooperative and competitive play.

The military player’s metrics are fairly clear: slaughter and injury rates versus escapee rate. The better he does at impeding the genetic survival of the families the better he scores. This suggests a simple linear scale with a zero centre point. The better the families do the more the military player’s score tends to the negative. The more mayhem the military player causes the more his score will tend positive. Add in a central zone of scoring where the military player has to share the win with the lead patriarch and the cooperative play elements are extended to include the military player. Simple enough modulo the exact numbers.

The patriarch’s scoring system is a little more interesting. They must cooperate with each other and value each other’s survival and escapee rate, while also valuing each other’s success less than their own. There’s already the concept of each player having another player’s family as their “relatives”. Given the cooperative focus this presents an opportunity for a pretty simple scoring model that emphasises the combination of cooperative and competitive play:

• Players score for their own survivors
• Players score half as much for their relative’s survival
• Players lose score for their deaths by starvation? (probably not)
• Players do not lose score for their deaths by military? (probably not)

The tempting model is to make each player’s relative the patriarch to their left. Thus a patriarch’s score is roughly:

(survivor_count * 2) + (left_hand_player’s_survivor_count)

Thus each patriarch is directly motivated to ensure the survival of their left hand neighbour, just not at the expense of their own family survival.

I’m quite aware of the indigestibality of the theme. This is deliberate. I expect few publishers would welcome the theme as described. Possibly the game never will be published. I don’t design games for publication, I design them for my own amusement with possible publication as a pleasant bonus. My first interest as always remains designing an interesting game.

I can also see a whole host of ways to tone down the presentation of the theme without changing it structurally. It doesn’t have to be about children. It can be simply “family members”. In fact it doesn’t have to be about family at all. It could be about disease: the military player can be the immune system and the other players can be diseases attacking a host body. That’s irrelevant thematic window dressing. I like and am amused by the minefield theme and so am using it as a working assumption up until it no longer applies well to the design — then I’ll discard it and put on some other theme that fits the logical design.

Given the level of feedback plus how poorly blogs support commenting (nobody is alerted to comments or their replies) I’ve opened this blog to general posting. Y’all can now post to the blog directly.

New rules link.

Several sections of the rules slightly re-ordered (moved advanced game text lower in each section. Some wordings tightened. Nothing significant.

Oh, and I submitted ‘Ohana Proa to Hippodice.

I’ve been toying with this game design for a few weeks. The primary thematic element involves running children across minefields. Those that survive the trip get to escape to presumably live good lives. Those that don’t, well, don’t. The players effectively take the part of family heads determining which and how many of their own children to send out when for potential slaughter or safe passage (they have lots of kids). Key elements are that the game is semi-cooperative, explicitly zero-sum, inferential deduction of likely landmine locations, setting up other player’s kids to clear the path by stepping on and blowing up the landmines for your kids to then follow safely, deliberately sacrificing your own early kids in order to determine and secure a path for later stock etc. The goal (scoring) is simple maximal genetic survival, primarily of direct family then extended and then remote family.

A minor goal of the game would be to provide an opportunity for discussion and education on topics ranging from landmines to exploitation of children, sacrificial costing, personal versus family/group survival, lose-lose decision structures, the meaning of personal sacrifice, relativism etc.

Basic premise:

• Hex map
• All hexes contain tokens. Tokens are either mines or dummy mines. Tokens are face down.
• One military player against the rest. This player plays the side of the military. (In a large player count game there may be two such players?)
• Players have two types of tokens (direct family and indirect family)
• Players start at locations along one edge of the hex map.
• Two types of locations: locations exclusive to each player and locations which start out with a mix of tokens (lids) for different players.
• Initial allocation of tokens to locations is done round-robin during setup.
• After setup players round-robin give each other relationship markers for in-laws and cousins (one of each)
• Each location has a token pool and a queue
• Turn order is variable. Details TBD.
• On their turn a player may do one of 3 things:
  • Move one of their kids already on the minefield N steps across the minefield, or move one of their kids at the front of a location queue N steps into the minefield. (N/2 if injured kid)
  • Acquire more kids
  • Move a token in a location (their’s or other’s) from the pool to the queue
• Each action may be chosen a limited number of times. Once two actions are exhausted all actions reset their use counters.
• When two actions exhaust their use counters military player gets to (secretly) add more mines to the minefield
• Initial mines are placed secretly.
• Mines come in two types. Simple kill mines and scatter mines (kills and scatters half-kill mines in surrounding hexes. The player’s stock of mines is public.
• Player also has dummy mines.
• At the end of the turn the player must feed their kids. Food resources are proportional to family death rate: the more die in your family the more food received from charity organisations
• When a kid moves on the field the military player states for each hex entered whether a mine there explodes. If a mine explodes the military player must reveal the mine, deliver the appropriate damage, and distribute new half-kill mines as applicable.
• Military player receives new stock of mines proportional to number of kids killed
• Game ends when all of one family has been eliminated or made it across the minefield.
• Players score points for members of their (extended) family that made it safely across, less points for cousins and less again for in-laws (the other players). Player with the most points wins.
• Kids behind the minefield do not score.

New rules.

New player aid.

Brand new game player introduction (with pictures of the game in play).

Most of the many changes are due to the generous help and commentary of Scott Russell.

Additional playtests have put the game time solidly around 150 minutes with new players, a little less with experienced players.