Dice that represent actions. Then you could combine them with other dice (maybe using some kind of poker hand mechanics) to do combo actions.

Forgot this was a thing.
Or rather, I thought I already made a post.
• Drafting of asymmetrical dice.
• Limited availability of expendable asymmetrical dice. (Use them wisely.)

How about customizable dice face on the fly?

Each player with have a board listing what his die do:

1: Deal 1 damage.
2: Something else.
3: Deal 1 damage again.
4:
5:
6:

Over the course of the game you can replace the effect.

Off topic...

A new friend of mine wants to design a new game with me.
But he seems to be quite negative at times and a bit over controlling.
He often seems to have some idea on what the game should be like but unable to communicate what he has in mind, yet at the same time he keeps veto-ing my idea, or anything that doesn't seem like what he had in mind. It's like i'm trying to read his mind rather than co-designing a game.

Would you keep working with him? If so, how do you deal with a designer like that?

Sounds like the kind of thing that will kill a project if left unchecked. He very likely doesn't realize that he's coming off as negative and controlling. You should sit down with him and talk it out -- ask him to be less rigid about his vision, and ask about the kind of game he's looking for. After all, you're a co-designer, not a beta tester for his game.


On topic: Let me spitball a few ideas, since the topic seems to be getting bogged down.

We've agreed that the game should use upgradable dice, and we're also interested in randomized events and leveling character classes. It makes sense for the die advancement to be rolled into the character advancement. Mown's also raised the idea of drafting dice and using them as a resource, which would give us a turn-to-turn resource pool that grows over time. TPmanW's idea of a combo system could be used as well.

What kind of game works well with an incremental resource pool, dice-based resolution, and combination moves? This might be low-hanging fruit, but I think our mechanics are a good fit for the theme of combat. I like the idea of a multiplayer turn-based combat game. It has a lot of potential depth, as we've seen in the many varied mechanics of dungeon crawlers and MOBAs. It's also flexible enough to be either cooperative or competitive depending on where we choose to place the conflict.

What, then, would our character dice translate to? What resource would fuel your various moves? How do we mash together all these disparate ideas? We have different kinds of dice and a way to upgrade them over the course of the game. We want to draft dice. We want to be able to use the dice in combinations. And this is just me, but I'd like the game to use standard dice, just as a concession to convenience. So let me propose this:

Dice in our game are six-sided dice that represent mana. There are multiple colors of dice, each with a different special quality, and you can also make specific combinations to perform extra powerful moves.

Our character classes are different types of magically empowered fighters. They each have an internal reservoir of dice, usually skewed towards a few colors, and which can be expanded over the course of the game. Meanwhile, the winds of magic blow randomly at the start of each combat round, and can contain any combination of colors of dice. Combat revolves around drafting the right dice from the winds of magic to fuel your moves.

What do you all think of this?

Ya, I sometimes forget this is here, too. I'll update it tomorrow when I wake up.

I like CKY's idea. If we're having different dice types and magically empowered fighters, we may as well answer the obvious question- do we want to make an MTG game?
I'm also not sure I understand where he's going with the "winds of magic" thing. Do I combine my dice rolls with dice from the wind roll to get the number my attack is based on (a la stud poker)? Are the wind rolls static bonuses for that element on that round?
I like the first idea. I'd like to see people cooperate by divvying up all the rolled dice amongst their team to make the best combos they can. Or maybe the dice could give static bonuses but whenever a die is used up, it is rerolled. That would add strategic elements of using up the dice other people want, even if you can't make best use of them, and it would support different play styles (and thus, team-building) for specialists and jack-of-all-manas.
In both cases I think abilities that let you reroll dice would be cool.

@atog: I'd tell your co-designer that you feel like none of your suggestions are being given a chance. How thorough are this person's reasons for saying no? If they can explain why well enough, then that's at least productive. Otherwise, they need to realize that trying ideas from outside sources is the best way to figure things out. Being too absorbed with the idea won't let innovation creep into the process.

@cky: I'm gonna come back to your large suggestion since I think it's good and progressive, but I'm gonna make a poll first since I said I was gonna.

@everyone: My new job has eaten my time in a way that I just didn't plan for. I apologize for being slow with this. I'm putting up the new poll now.

Step 11: Yet Another Vote!

1. Dice that represent character statistics

2. Dice that can be combined to form different moves

3. Dice that represent actions. Then you could combine them with other dice (maybe using some kind of poker hand mechanics) to do combo actions.

4. Drafting of asymmetrical dice.

5. Limited availability of expendable asymmetrical dice. (Use them wisely.)

6. How about customizable dice face on the fly?

Each player with have a board listing what his die do:

-1: Deal 1 damage.
-2: Something else.
-3: Deal 1 damage again.
-4:
-5:
-6:

Over the course of the game you can replace the effect.

The intention is that the winds of magic are a separate draftable dice pool.

I would prefer not to use MTG flavor. I was actually thinking more along the lines of wuxia or Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I've obviously been slow with updating this, so I'll open that part up as well: where should we go from here? How should we make decisions? I don't want to abandon this, I just forget about it from time to time.

It depends on how much control you want to put in the hands of the community and how much responsibility you want to take. I usually find that things get done quicker when there's a clear organizational structure and a team leader who has the final say.

Strategy.

Oh, I wanna be paid in beer.

Oh, and on the dice thing, how about drafting dice options? Six rounds.

1. Draft for roll of 6
2. Draft for roll of 5
...
6. Draft for roll of 1

I'm fine with letting a groupthink take over in every way other than that groupthinks never get things completed online. I'm off of all obligations today, so it's a good chance to do real work. I think we have enough to possibly get to actual design work. Any opinions are most welcome.

Okay, since my idea about magical battles seemed to go over well, here's another spitballing session.

Goblin Tournament is a game about tiny cute Japanese spirit goblins beating the snot out of each other. It's a free-for-all multiplayer game where the objective is to be the last goblin standing. The basic turn mechanics look like this:

• Draft Phase: The Winds of Magic blow, and the players take turns drafting dice from a shared semi-random dice pool.
• Aura Phase: Each player secretly forms a hand of 5 dice, representing their Aura. Out of the Elements among dice in their Aura, they choose one to be dominant, and secretly choose the target they want to attack. Then all Auras and attacks are revealed.
• Damage Phase: In draft pick order, the attacks are resolved. The effectiveness of the attacks depends on the result of the dice and the matchup of Aura against Aura. Damage is dealt against Life Points.

The Elements are Fire (red), Earth (yellow), Metal (white), Water (blue), and Wood (green). Each die is affiliated with one Element. They are connected in two cycles:

• Cycle of Creation: Fire --> Earth --> Metal --> Water --> Wood --> Fire. If in your Aura you have dice of one Element as well as the Element it creates, the second Element is empowered. If you attack a player whose dominant Element is nourished by your dominant Element, your attack is weakened.
• Cycle of Destruction: Fire > Metal > Wood > Earth > Water > Fire. If you attack a player whose dominant Element is conquered by your dominant Element, it's super effective! But if in your Aura you have dice of an Element that destroys another, the second Element is weakened.

If you have one of each Element in your Aura, you achieve Zen and have a small bonus to everything.

Character cards have a number of Life Points, unique Techniques that give you more power if you use a specific combination of dice, and may have other abilities that change the flow of the game. They also have a Mana Pool that give you a fixed pool of 2 dice from which to form your Aura, in addition to dice from the Winds of Magic. Not sure how to work character progression into this -- maybe some kind of super meter mechanic where you can store drafted dice and unleash them as a super attack?

Thoughts?

CKY: These ideas sound interesting, but they're a bit complicated in practice. In particular, you seem to be implying that the dice are rolled at the beginning of the Draft phase, then hidden in the Aura phase, while their results are used in the Damage phase, but that would encourage cheating. The required amount of secret information to be represented, along with the complications of the Damage phase, approach Diplomacy levels of intricacy, and that's on top of the drafting.

Quite a bit of that would be simplified by drafting the dice themselves, not their results, and taking turns to attack. The former might be what you mean, given that you mention that each die is affiliated with an element, but I'm not at all certain of that.

Meanwhile, I think there's a major element we need to address, which can shape the next step: What kind of dice should we design for?

1. Standard cubic d6
2. Standard polyhedral sets: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100
3. Customized cubic dice
4. Customized polyhedral dice
5. Modifiable dice, such as Lego dice
6. Other easily purchased dice

I mean the former. You draft the dice rather than the results.

I was thinking of d6, but varied polyhedral dice could add some interesting decisions to drafting, and give us a way to work in character progession by upgrading the dice in your Mana Pool. I'm for polyhedral dice.

@CKY: When you say "Out of the Elements among dice in their Aura, they choose one to be dominant", do you mean that we will have dice to represent aura types as well as dice for numbers?

I think that communal dice should be drafted at the start of the round. Then players take turns rolling their own hands of dice and matching them up with communal dice to perform their actions. Then maybe we reroll any communal dice used this way. Then players take turns until everybody's had one and we start a new round.

Crazy idea- maybe everyone's goal is to have the communal dice be a certain way at the end of the round?

I say polyhedral dice. It gives us another knob to turn (more options for balancing and shaking up gameplay).

What I mean by that line is, you draft dice, form a hand, then choose one of the elemental types among dice in your hand. For example, you could draft Wood-Wood-Fire-Fire-Metal, and pick Fire to be dominant. Then you would roll the dice to determine damage dealt, adding modifiers for the double Fire dice and double Fire-creating Wood dice.

For your suggestion about matching communal dice, that could be rough because of the luck factor. How do you envision that working out? Also, how do dice progression, character classes, etc. fit into your proposal?