A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

Morti · 2020-03-04 19:07:58

of sorts...

I don't know where it came from, I think I made a comment about The Game of Ur, and was thinking about how Jason liked, in the past, to make a lot of games.

Originally, I had this idea, for the game to be very small, and condensed, but, overtime the board got bigger and to make up for it, I went from 20 tiles or so, traversed through an different biome on each tile, to 60 tiles, that each represent a year of your life, and are, at present limited to 6 biomes.

Before I get into too many details, this is a game I wanted to be able to play solo, but potentially, with other people.

Stages of life are represent by 6 die: A d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and lastly a d20.
Biomes you progress through, throughout your life are:
Age 1-4, Swamp
Age 5-10, Prairie
Age 11-18, Badlands
Age 19-28, Jungle
Age 29-40, Desert
Age 41-60, Tundra

I haven't decided what to do with the grassland biome or it's resources, either they are going to be free or included in every other biome's rewards, as you move through them, but I like the 6 biomes, 6 die, 6 stages of life and 60 years. The board is now a circle with 60 spaces and the 6*60=360, a reference to the circle of life, the board ends where it began, like a Monopoly board.

I may never work on this idea again. It was a one day exercise, more like 3 hours, and the more I tried to work out details, the less I liked it.

I wanted it to be simple, I even thought it would be as simple as rolling 6 die on their own, and the outcome of your life, would be spelled out before you, in the numbers; rolling bones. I thought it might be something you could do again and again, to see how many of your own lives it would take, for you, to, say, build a town, build a plane, get some kerosene, or just, if you could come upon the resources to build the tools necessary, to even start a farm.

You can see how these ideas are not just as simple as rolling die, or, they could be, but the board adds a visual element, it's a representation, of the clock, that is always ticking. The numbers on the die, if small, represent getting a lot done in a life, but when the rolls are large, that's when you go from 40 to 59 in a single roll, and wonder what you were doing for the last 20 years of your life. Whether it was really worth your 59 year old self's time, or, you just really get swept up with your work, and either it pays off big, or, your life passes you by and, that's it.

Think of the board, like every tile is Chance, Community Chest and Free Parking combined. The house rule version of Free Parking, where you basically win the lottery. Your first roll of the d4 sets you in the swamp, and where you land (and possibly what you rolled to get there) determines how many resources you get from that biome, to use later. If you roll 4 1s in a row on the d4, you have 4 rewarding experiences and probably leave the swamp with an excess of clay, reeds, and other resources that you can combine to get an oven, kiln, and prepare for forge. Then you're into the prairie, you get rabbits, and, well, I didn't really think about how food or temp play into it yet, but hey, that's why I'm posting here.

I want to throw this idea out there, maybe get some input from the few of you here that post and play, maybe give an idea to one of you, and you design your own sort of, One Hour One Life, themed board game.

Anyway, here is the most recent iteration of the board:

I started looking at onetech to get tile pictures
https://onetech.info/biomes/0-Grasslands
https://onetech.info/biomes/1-Swamps
https://onetech.info/biomes/2-Yellow-Prairies
https://onetech.info/biomes/3-Badlands
https://onetech.info/biomes/4-Tundra
https://onetech.info/biomes/5-Desert
https://onetech.info/biomes/6-Jungle
but then I started working on lists for chemical reactions, after looking at things like niter and alum.

I was thinking when you landed on a tile, you rolled again to see what you found there, and, everything would be in a giant spreadsheet, but, that got a little overwhelming pretty quickly, although, onetech really simplifies things, but telling you how many of x you will need, to make y. Like the sixteen iron listed here https://onetech.info/2365-Diesel-Engine/recipe to craft diesel engine, for instance.

Also, you don't even need a set of DnD die, there are a lot of emulators out there, google itself even has one https://www.google.com/search?q=roll+1d20

Also also wik, I forgot what else I was going to say...

Anyway, have a nice day, thank you for time, may you get laid in the near future.

o/ Bye Bye

Lum · 2020-03-05 07:27:11

If the dice are going to be digital, might as well make the whole game virtual. Wait, how is this more fun than the actual game?

I like it though.

DestinyCall · 2020-03-05 08:24:39

Lum wrote:

If the dice are going to be digital, might as well make the whole game virtual. Wait, how is this more fun than the actual game?
I like it though.

Imagine playing the OHOL board game inside OHOL. It would be so meta, I can't even.

And dice are quite cheap to buy and fun to roll. Definitely get real dice, if you have the option. Good components are an important part of a proper board game.

....

Morti, have you ever played a Legacy board game? I think the OHOL concept is well-suited to this style of game. Each game could be one life, but future lives build upon past lives and unlock new options ... new branches of the tech tree ... new decks of cards, etc.

Personally, I would not link age to biome. It doesn't make sense to me that you would be gather reeds and clay as a two year old. At that age, you are still a baby, too young to do such things.

Perhaps biomes could be decks of cards filled with raw resources. You "spend" years of your life to visit a biome by rolling the appropriate die and draw resource cards based on the roll. Those cards can be combined to craft survival gear. Crafting consolidates lower value resource cards into higher value item cards. When your time is up and you die ... you can pass on a limited number of cards to the next generation ... either anyone still alive in your village or yourself, if you are playing solo.

It sounds like your design is single player, but I think OHOL would need to be multiplayer and cooperative (but maybe not entirely co-op). I would like to incorporate some way to allow players to get sky babies, but I'm not sure how to make that work in a card game. Most board games are designed to play 3 to 6 players. A very small village.

Perhaps at the start of the game, half the players start as Eves and the other half will roll a die or draw a card to decide who their mother will be. Each time you die, you will need to find a new mother to keep playing. If everyone is too old, to young, or too male, you stay dead until a valid mother is available. When the last person dies, the game is over.

...

Also, if you like board games and survival games, I recommend playing Ravine. It is a fun survival themed card game that includes starvation, insanity, and cooperative play. My family and gaming friends love it. It is best played with a group, but if you are short on people, the rules are simple enough to allow a dog or cat to join the game. As a house rule, animals only get half health and their owner determines if they will forage each day.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UeONZswpxNo

Morti · 2020-03-05 14:24:36

Lum wrote:

If the dice are going to be digital, might as well make the whole game virtual. Wait, how is this more fun than the actual game?
I like it though.

The board game is a condensed version of the game, with, it's own metaphors, challenges and goals.
It's a game, about a game, about life.

The ideas I had, were simply reflections, of what playing the game is. Some of the subtler things, that we don't really talk about.
Originally, it wasn't even about getting anything at all. I just like rolling die and seeing what happens; where I wind up.

That was why I liked the initially random appearance of tiles, the path really should be the same, but it should appear, to those, that move into it, to have always been there, waiting for them. Fixed tiles don't convey discovery, very well. Not the way you felt it, the first time you got lost, in a house, a neighborhood, or your hometown.
But once you'd been there, and rebeen there, you start to recognize things. You make the connection back home, or to the most familiar places you know.

It's one of the qualities of playing OHOL, that we that use zoom mods and coordinate savers, probably don't appreciate as much, as we once did; map the landscape, in our mind.

That is just one small example, of an element, I'd like to recreate. To distill, down to something even simpler, than Jason has, with the real game.

Just look at a Game of Ur board

What is there to make of that? What is represented, by it?
Well, with my brain, so entrenched in One Hour One Life, I see biomes and resources. I see journeys. The version of Ur I see most often, is a competitive one, but it doesn't have to be, it can be one of cooperation. Imagine how special it was, for people, who thought they were alone, to come upon other human beings. That sometimes happens to me in game, I think, "I am going to go in the least obvious direction, for 10 years, before I decide to stop and make a home. Where new rabbits, pop out of their holes, to greet me."

Maybe the board, could be tiles, like, Settler's of Catan, that are flipped over, only as they are first traversed. The, playing area, could be like a game of memory, with an entire deck of cards, upside-down. Maybe it's 60 cards, spread out in a 10x6 grid, shuffled, before being put down. Then the first player, rolls to see which tile they land on, with a d10 for x and a d6 for y
I rolled a 2 and 1, not great, but it means the far northeast corner, would be relatively less explored and exploited, for future generations. Or maybe it will just remain a mystery, for the rest of this game.
I then rolled a d7 to see which biome it would be, but, it would already be there, underneath the card. I got a 2, and so, turned out to be swamp.

But now what?

I liked the idea of working your way up the dice, from the d4, to d6 on up to d20. I liked that those 6 dice, added up to 60.

I like things, about all these ideas. But I want their roll, in the game, to make sense to us, as representations of things in the game.

Maybe if, it were done with a deck of cards and only 6 sided die, it could be a game played, within the game. I hadn't even thought of that, but something like it could be played, with rolls and cards, but I'm not sitting in jail, with only cards and 6 sided die, to make up a game. I'd rather make up something relevant, with numbers and references, significant to me; significant, in terms of the game. The age of 3 and the age of 14, are pretty significant. But I am compelled to make the dice, growing in sides and complexity, to represent stages of life; my own take on age brackets. I really liked having that idea.

I know the adage "If it's not fun for you, don't expect it to be fun to others." I anticipate some of those sorts of comments.
I want it to be simpler than the game is, though. Like I said, it'd be nice if one person could play it, with as much effort as it takes to roll the 6 dice.
I want you to be able to live a full life, but to be able to work, within a set of limitations.
To be able to reflect, on real life, and what we can make- what we do make, of what we find.

Maybe another time, another state of mind, and I'll be more in the mood to work on it.
Coming up with something, is easy, it's being happy with the way it works, that's hard.

Morti · 2020-03-05 14:43:17

Morti wrote:

10x6 grid

Yeah that grid, in the picture, is actually 11x6. Don't worry, I've stopped the presses, before it was too late.

Also, imagine the confusion, caused by the words die and dye, as in, the casting of the die, used to print text, and the dye used on the die.
It'd be no business for a Goonie, that's for sure.

DestinyCall · 2020-03-05 15:01:21

Have you ever played the boardgame Mage Knight? It is widely considered one of the best single-player boardgames (although it can also be played with friends). If you love deep puzzles and elaborate board games (like me), but sometimes struggle to get enough people to sit down and play a game together, it is definitely a great game to add to your collection. I mention it because the board in Mage Knight is unlike a traditional fixed play-board. It is formed from a set of hexagonal tiles that are revealed (by flipping them over) as you explore the world around you. The tiles are shuffled and laid out at random each time you play and you can arrange the board in different shapes or entirely at random.

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1134333 … board-game

The basic rules have you start with a simple triangle of three tiles and add new tiles onto the board depending on how the players choose to explore the world around them, so in one game you might end up with a "board" that looks entirely different than another game. A system like this could be used to represent your movement through the open world to gather resources and build a village, with different resources being available in the different biomes depending on the roll of a dice or drawing from a deck of cards. If you find yourself in a swamp, next to a grassland, with a spring, that sounds like a great spot for an Eve camp. If you reveal some badlands and there's an iron vein, you might want to come back here later, when you have the proper cards or whatever to build an iron mine. The tiles could contain information for the players - not just the biome that they would be entering by moving to that hex, but also if there are unique resources, like cactus fruit, duck pond, or rabbits available.

It would also be fun to have little meeples that look like OHOL characters that could be moved around the world. And of course, only one item can be place on each tile, in classic OHOL style. Obviously, there should also be bear caves and the ability to spawn deadly bears onto the game-board that are moved toward the nearest player at the start of each person's turn. It wouldn't be a true OHOL board-game without bears.

...

And speaking of Mage Knight, one of the cool things about that game is that when you play it with other people it is actually an unusual combination of competitive and co-op, similar to OHOL. You and the other Mage Knights are working toward a common goal, but you are not actually on the same team. You can even attack other players, if you choose, although doing so is not required. But you can also work together to achieve common goals or form alliances with other players as you seek to be the best at what you do. There are also variants available, if you desire a more traditionally co-op experience or a more heavily pvp focused game.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-03-05 15:07:27)

DestinyCall · 2020-03-05 16:05:47

I had a thought ... what if the boardgame was designed to take exactly one hour to play?

I mean that when you are ready to begin the game, you start a 60 minute timer and when that timer runs out, you have died of old age. Perhaps you get a new die at regular intervals to represent the aging process, so you start off with just one of them when you are "born", but you accumulate more as you get older and hopefully wiser.

...

It is also worth considering that dice in games need not represent numerical values. They can also be used to randomize abstract concepts or actions. For example, in the board game Escape: Curse of the Temple, you and other players explore and interact with the game world by rolling dice, in real time.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/qu … pe-big-box

Each game only lasts ten minutes, because after 10 minutes, the temple will collapse, crushing anyone who has not managed to escape in time. The majority of the game revolves around rapid dice-rolling. The cool thing about this game is that it is completely cooperative. Players must work together and they can help each other by sharing the effects of their dice on players in the same area.

Each die has symbols that represent different actions, like movement or interaction. You need different combinations to do different in-game actions.

I could see adapting this system to an OHOL board game, with more dice giving you greater flexibility and the ability to accomplish more things before the timer inevitably runs out.

In the Escape game, there is a certain symbol that locks down the die until it is "uncursed" by using a different symbol. In a OHOL board game, you could use a similar system to represent hunger and food.

Morti · 2020-03-06 14:16:03

DestinyCall wrote:

Personally, I would not link age to biome. It doesn't make sense to me that you would be gather reeds and clay as a two year old. At that age, you are still a baby, too young to do such things.

The biomes represent two things to me.
For the player, their items represent stages of life.
The reason I named the first stage clay was because of the way children at molded, and shaped, by the world they find themselves in. Later we become fired, and made what we are by those first two stages. The clay represents, the cohesion, the community, you are brought into the world with. It sticks together, like a family does.
The egg, was a close second for the name of that stage, but it was a little less... relevant, since we aren't born with hard outer shells, we're born vulnerable. We're not like a lot of other animals, in that we more time, after we're outside. We still need more work, like the clay. We need a lot of oxygen, to finish. Swamps are known for trees.
The boar... I don't know, I don't really like the boars for any reason what-so-ever, but they are a fair representation of the sort of accidents that can lead to a short life.
Lot of bad memories of my children encountering boars, but you do start to get a little numb to it. Not because you don't care, but because you are continuously reminded of when you made the same mistakes, and what you learned, early on, from those encounters. "Don't go full sprint through dense swamps, and the more dead boars you see, the safer it probably is... but never assume things are all clear." So, because I think more and more about the need for that lesson, like, dying in Super Mario Bros. on that first goomba, I feel bad, in a different way. Not because it was so much my loss, but because it was their gain, of a tough lesson.
I'm not sure I want to represent the boar in this, but who knows how much I'll put into it.

The other thing the biome represents, is the stage of the civilization.
The resources there represent the laying of the foundation, of the city. The reeds and clay for the adobe, for the oven and kiln. That is when you really say, "This is where things are going to be." and, if you've thought about it, you get a good flow of work through the town, as the berries, the carrots and the wheat, flow around the sheep and into the kitchen. Between the kitchen and forge, is where the fire is kept, and the fire flows from the kitchen, to the mothers and kids, to the smithy, and out into the tools, which work their way back out to the farmers and crafters. I mean, it's called work flow, for a good reason. If your flow gets all tied in knots, you get odd things in odd places, like needles in the berry patch, and that causes frustration, as the spaces we've sort of, agreed, are ideal for different areas, begin to litter, onto each other. Then you begin clearing your area, moving stuff out of the way, push it into some other area, and one players distraction, becomes a week of everyone's problem, to pass around.

A good foundation, is important. That why the swamp biomes represents the begining of life, for the player and the home.

I wont go into as much detail as to why each of the other stages are named what they are, but I'' try to sum it up.

The rabbit
For the player: It's about moving faster, and preparing yourself for the life ahead; gearing up. The fur clothing and the back pack.
For the town: same, bellows is the real focus. Making that pouch (and, that nozzle) are big steps. We've done them a dozen times a day, when every life was a new home, and the bulk of the players had zero ideas about what it took, to turn a kiln into a forge. Now those, were days, the game was really a juggling match. Your family was starving, YOUR supply of food, within an acceptable range, was being devoured, you could teach people how to eat or about temp, you could try to grow some food to buy time, or you could just all out on the iron and the forge, and get the real tools you needed, before everything was too far away, the branches, the food... the people. Even if someone hauling in branches would have got the work done four times faster, how were you going to find the right person in the crowd, to get to help, when they were scattered out in every direction, spreading like a blast wave through the food around you.

You had to work quick, the town had to think fast, that's why the rabbit and prairie follow the swamp, your source, for initial water and clay.

Badlands, Iron, Sheep, Wolves, Big Hard Rocks to represent permanency, perseverance, and strength, via our adamant declaration to the Earth "This is our home! We are not going to die, because of your limitation, we are staying here." You bring in the stones for the well, you reach deep into the earth, and you pull out what you need, to feed, your home; the water and the iron, the blood and the meat of the earth itself. And our towns sustain themselves from that, while we subsist off the fat of the lambs, that we have reeled in from the wild and tamed, like their berry and carrot, distant relatives before them.

The badlands, represent the first highlight, of civilization. It would seem, there is no way but down, from there.

Latex, is the part of the jungle we need to bounce back; to rebound, and have another go.
For us (I'm not going to say it's a sticky situation) it marks the transition, into industry. As the new component, at the smithy, the Newcomen requiring rubber, means a new way to run things. We have to work with steam, the jungle is hot and humid, seems appropriate. There is also the conflict between water and latex, represented in game by that period where the deep well is dry, and you have to choose, make new wells and travel, or use those buckets to get latex, potentially throwing your home into a death spiral, as it uses the last of it's water in an attempt to grow milkweed. Interestingly, another plant that produces latex, something like 10% of all plants do.

The horses of the desert. Probably about as hard to choose between water and clay, as it was sulfur and the horse. Sulfur get's a pretty bad representation, for it's smell, the association with volcanoes and, the underworld, but it's an important ingredient in a lot of biochemical reactions; it's a necessary part of life, as we have incorporated it into many biological functions. As much as it's necessary to make the transition from latex to rubber, sulfur loses as an icon of the desert, to our noble steeds. If you want to make real changes, across a large town, between the wild and a town or between multiple towns, the horse is a must for upping your game.
It means a quick adaptation for both the player and town, which is key for maintaining those biological and technological requirements necessary for life support.

Oil versus Gold, may be another good argument for some, but without those bells, it doesn't matter how much oil the town has, but even with all the oil, and all the bells, it really just comes down to people. The tundra is the last biome for the technological level it represents, but also, because death is cold. It has no pity, there is no pleading with it, it's job is to return you to nonexistence from whence you came and it never fails. Maybe only the penguin, knows the secret to immortality, and it should be his stage, but not for us, not yet.

Thank you for all these ideas Destiny. An idea is coming together. Maybe because of you, I've gone from about 5% of the way there to 10%, or maybe it's 1% to 2%... we'll see.

I'll address some of your other suggestions, as I playtest a few ideas.

Maybe you won't only traverse through those 6 stages in the game, limited by the biomes, but some representation of them will surely be there. The paths and turns of the game of Ur, with it's stages for the pieces

Getting on the board.
Moving into position.
Making the run down the board.
Getting off the middle track.
Returning home.

those stages, probably had names, lost to time, that millions of people over thousands of years, would have known, from culture to culture.

Just as they are important steps in Ur, we have our important stages, in our lives as towns, characters and players.
Those associations are pretty important to me, that were one of the things that clicked, when I thought "I could make a game of this."
It was like pushing in on clay for the first time and realizing that the shape I lent to it, stuck around after I'd removed my hand.
Maybe Jason had a similar experience, with this same, order-of-operations, many years ago.

Maybe I've overly simplified it, maybe we overly complicate things by not seeing it, I don't know.
But I like both, simple representations, and the chaos, the fractal beauty, that comes from people, from life, mucking it up.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-03-04 19:07:58

A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#2 2020-03-05 07:27:11

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#3 2020-03-05 08:24:39

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#4 2020-03-05 14:24:36

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#5 2020-03-05 14:43:17

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#6 2020-03-05 15:01:21

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#7 2020-03-05 16:05:47

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

#8 2020-03-06 14:16:03

Re: A One Hour One Life-like Board Game

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