Sanity Check My Card Game Idea? Trash Film Fest
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 12:12 am
I've been mulling over this idea for awhile. It's the same sort of partycasual game playstyle as Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, where people just play cards to satisfy the question posed by a judging player, who picks their favorite play, then the next player is the judge.
So, the idea of Trash Film Fest is that players are producers funding trashy movies and studios making trashy movies. Play goes in Rounds composed of Pitches and a Box Office Phase.
The player who most recently saw a movie is the first Producer, and draws three Tag cards, and selects two along with a Genre (freely chosen, either marked on a playmat or designated by a token), and says something to the effect "I'm in the market for a [Tag 1] [Tag 2] [Genre] movie."
The other players then play cards from their hands that satisfy the People, Places and Things requirements on the tag cards as their pitch, and the Producer picks their favorite, which gets $X (poker chips). The next player to the Producer's left then takes a turn as Producer. Pitches continue until every player has been Producer once. Ideally, everyone should then have at least one pitch with money behind it.
In the Box Office phase, each player chooses one of their pitches to put up, and each player secretly wagers some amount of money on the movie pitch or pitches they like best. The pitch with the most money wins the round, and players get the money that was wagered on their pitch.
There isn't an obvious terminus for the game, but I'll steal CAH's hypothetical terminus and say the game ends when someone has 10 winning pitches, with the full knowledge that people will actually play until a deck runs out, someone has to leave, or they decide to do something else. The person with the most money wins, just like in real life.
That's the roughly firmed up ideas, things I'm still trying to figure out-
-Number of decks. Tags is one, and I was thinking of Genre being one, but freely selecting genre means less decks. I'm debating how many decks People, Places and things should be, but I'm leaning towards two- People & Things, and Places (& Times). That makes three decks total.
-A part of me wants a random element in the Box Office phase, either just representing people showing up to see your movie (ie, you get a random amount of extra money for your pitches) or representing random stuff that can affect how your movie performs ("Random whiny group says people shouldn't see your movie, +$X because people are contrarian!" and the like). The former would probably be a die roll, the latter would be another deck of cards, probably a fairly small set of different stuff, just printed multiple times.
Is this too complicated? Is it manageable?
So, the idea of Trash Film Fest is that players are producers funding trashy movies and studios making trashy movies. Play goes in Rounds composed of Pitches and a Box Office Phase.
The player who most recently saw a movie is the first Producer, and draws three Tag cards, and selects two along with a Genre (freely chosen, either marked on a playmat or designated by a token), and says something to the effect "I'm in the market for a [Tag 1] [Tag 2] [Genre] movie."
The other players then play cards from their hands that satisfy the People, Places and Things requirements on the tag cards as their pitch, and the Producer picks their favorite, which gets $X (poker chips). The next player to the Producer's left then takes a turn as Producer. Pitches continue until every player has been Producer once. Ideally, everyone should then have at least one pitch with money behind it.
In the Box Office phase, each player chooses one of their pitches to put up, and each player secretly wagers some amount of money on the movie pitch or pitches they like best. The pitch with the most money wins the round, and players get the money that was wagered on their pitch.
There isn't an obvious terminus for the game, but I'll steal CAH's hypothetical terminus and say the game ends when someone has 10 winning pitches, with the full knowledge that people will actually play until a deck runs out, someone has to leave, or they decide to do something else. The person with the most money wins, just like in real life.
That's the roughly firmed up ideas, things I'm still trying to figure out-
-Number of decks. Tags is one, and I was thinking of Genre being one, but freely selecting genre means less decks. I'm debating how many decks People, Places and things should be, but I'm leaning towards two- People & Things, and Places (& Times). That makes three decks total.
-A part of me wants a random element in the Box Office phase, either just representing people showing up to see your movie (ie, you get a random amount of extra money for your pitches) or representing random stuff that can affect how your movie performs ("Random whiny group says people shouldn't see your movie, +$X because people are contrarian!" and the like). The former would probably be a die roll, the latter would be another deck of cards, probably a fairly small set of different stuff, just printed multiple times.
Is this too complicated? Is it manageable?