Dan (as usual, starting from A Position of Ignorance, and not often enough for my taste) is musing on some ideas for games. He has a fine idea for a central aspect of the game’s strategy, but is looking for a hook to hang it on. It is evidently insufficient to simply assume that Devil Bunny Needs a Ham and that he’s decided that knocking sous-chefs off buildings isn’t as likely to get him one as it originally appeared, and now he, um, whatever.
Anyway, Dan’s “looking for ... some sort of environment in which you might think of yourself (or your game position) passing through different states in order to accomplish something at the final state, and in which passing through a state makes it more difficult for you (and the other players) to pass through that state in the future.” More specifically (in the comments) he examples “A really straightforward example would be city traffic, where the more people take the good routes through town, the worse they become. Another literal travel idea I'm toying with is some sort of goal that requires players to move their entourages around a rural countryside, each pass draining the resources of the citizenry and increasing local resentment.”
Now, my idea of a pilgrimage game is insanely complicated (although I suspect lots o’ fun), and it isn’t actually clear to me that careening around the pilgrimage routes seeking absolution and cockleshells is going to be a backstory more appealing than the Devil Bunny one. What ideas do you have, Gentle Readers?
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.
Having spent as much time on Super Mario Brothers games as I have, I immediately think of rickety bridges. They get more likely to collapse if too many people are on them simultaneously, and they’ll get more and more rickety as more people traverse them, requiring later travelers to take more care.