Cadaver Claim - First Pass Rules

So this post is a bit of a big one (in terms of news), I have the first draft version of the rules of my game prototype up and running (and sent off to Dayna, scary). I guess some explaining (and filling in) is required.

From the material analysis, case studies, general research and testing I found out that if you want destruction that feels 'important' you really do need that whole 'deface your darlings', if the destruction isn't slightly sacrilegious then it isn't worth doing.

Creative input (especially if it can be 'theatrical') is fun, great fun in fact. If people can be creative, they get invested, if they get invested then destruction matters more. If destruction matters more vendettas are formed, it escalates quickly. This also touches upon another point...

Multiplayer - Traditional games with politics are typically better and more fun, as they often also build upon the creations of the players. But for their to be politics of any real depth, you need more that 2 players, you need 'at-least' a third party. (Otherwise you can't have alliances, betrayals and all the good stuff.)

Ties all these aspects together and you end up with a system where the creative side creates investment, the politics builds upon the creative and the destruction value (which is already quite high and scandalous) becomes involved with the politics as they now have truly permanent consequences.

Given that these were seen as 'necessary' I needed a material that would allow for defacing without being to difficult to replace. Given the wonderful solution Viking Funeral used I hopped on-board the Traditional Playing Card wagon and worked from their (technically I amalgamated some thoughts, concepts and ideas from throughout development into a more complete and playable prototype, but that doesn't read as well...)

Here is a link to the rules (this version):https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mJb5La9u4c2tY6akvfIoRGNv_CFLMNp9owp1k_lt4Z4/edit?usp=sharing

I'll try to be good and save updates as different files so these rules stay the same for development purposes.

A couple of things should quickly be explained, the setting/fluff is fairly early in development (or rather un-development...) and very surface level and without too much depth (ironic as the game takes place in sewers...) Currently the core concept is you and the other players are evil-ish, you have minions and you use these minions to fighter over dead bodies for you (its a tad morbid,but the tone is more Diskworld that truely dark.) I'll do a more in-depth post of the narrative, setting and tone at a latter date as their are good (honest) reasons behind them!

Other Auto-Destructive Games

So what other Auto-Destructive game are out and about?

Arguably a good number of games have Auto-Destructive elements (or can easily been adjusted to do so). Take for example survival games, if you made the number of resources finite (this can be good fun on Minecraft), as long as some of those resources are non-renewable and consumable that the game will have a form of Auto-Destruction where the amount of things the player can do reduces (a form of destruction of function). 

What about games that are truthfully Auto-Destructive? By this I mean the auto-destruction is an integral and designed part of the game, and is preferably both unavoidable and involved within the core gameplay loops.

One example that personifies this is Peter Molyneux and 22Cans's game Curiosity - What's Inside the Box. This 'game' involved a giant multilayers cube comprised of ~69 billion little cubes that players, globally could tap on to remove (all players shared the same mega cube). The only interaction and gameplay was the destruction of the mega-cube and the process was irreversible. People could spent time chiseling out images, buildings, etc... within the cubes, but nothing stopped these being tapped away but other players. Truth be told the game had little actually game play (literally all you could do was tap to remove cube which would give you coins that upgrade you 'tapping' for a brief while, so that it dug out more cubes), but was quite an interesting experiment, especially as the first player to break the bottom layer would be rewarded with a mystery prize (it ended up being they were involved with 22cans next game and gain some of its profits, not too shabby, oh and also the God of their next game, which ended up being Godus aka new Populous, would be named after them.)

Keeping the destruction integral to the core gameplay was an important factor I was looking to emulate within my prototype (to ensure it was actually auto-destructive), I didn't want the destruction to be just a narrative or thematic 'add-on'.