Board Games (TWOK)

[littlemag126]

SEMI SPOILER: DISCUSSING SETTING OF The Way of Kings

 

So in TWOK you have a long drawn out war against the parshendi.  The war has been treated like a game by the high princes, a sort of competition over gem hearts.

Coincidentally this setting would be really easy to turn into a board game.  Each player would play as a high prince of a major house, and the game would center around a competition to acquire the most gem-hearts. You have in place a classic war/competition with other players theme.  There is also tons of room for other elements such as:

 

-political intrigue: vying for the favor of the throne

 

-management: managing everything that goes into the war camps

 

-arena fights: pitting your shard-bearers against each other for honor and fame

 

 

I am a big board gamer and think this could be a lot of fun.

 

Thoughts?

[Blaze1616]

I think it is definitely doable. When I first read about Alethkar, I thought that a detailed and well thought-out map would make for a good board to play Diplomacy. Same could be said for the Shattered Plains, if more of the plateaus were named.

 

For the game you mention, you could bridge in some of Diplomacy's rules for battles (such as taking of plateaus and whatnot). You could also go with Risk rules instead, though I prefer Diplomacy and its lack of chance and luck.

 

Acquiring gemhearts would give you money to purchase more troops, bridgemen, better weapons, etc.

 

I think it would be fun!

[Dunkum]

definitely seems like you could do a reasonable board game with it. Off the top of my head, I'm imagining a game where each player (up to 10, why not?) is a highprince with a war camp, and maybe a couple of nearby plateaus. There would be some sort of pseudo-random generation of gemhearts/locations, dice rolls to determine movement speed (so someone further away from the gemheart could still get there sooner with good rolls) plus some kinds of bonuses available based on either which highprince you choose (e.g. sebarial gets bonuses to speed/movement rolls, sebarial probably has lower upkeep costs or something, dalinar gets bonuses for combat) or based on how you run your camp (so you could choose to slack off on discipline for a cheaper but less effective army, or go sebarial's route and become a farmer/market hub for bonus money, but fewer soldiers). Maybe give everyone a turn in between gemhearts to do various stuff like purchase units or upgrade their camp. Depending on how you wanted to run it, you could add in the Parshendi (with some pseudo-random way to determine their strength on a given run) or just make it so that 2 players arriving at the same time (or a second player arriving before the first has finished harvesting) would fight each other over the gemheart; maybe also require a minimum strength required to take the gemheart so someone with huge losses to the parshendi/other player might not be able to capture it in the end.

all that is just top of my head though, no idea how well most of it would actually work in practice

edit to add: goes without sayign that the board would just be essentially a map of that portion of the plains, based on Nazh's map in SA

Edited February 10, 2015 by Dunkum

[traceria]

Has anyone ever played the game Tobago?  There might be some non-fighting elements of that game that could be incorporated.  It's a treasure hunt on a desert island, and you use logic clues to determine where different treasures are buried based on the clues played by each player.  This might be a cool way to incorporate scouts under each Highprince's camp into the game play.  With Tobago, there is also the chance that treasures can be located quickly back-to-back, which could definitely happen with spotting Chasmfiends.  

[Argent]

I could also maybe see a Forbidden Island / Forbidden Desert kind of game where the players race against a highstorm / Everstorm. It's not a perfect fit, but it comes to mind.

[Dunkum]

Has anyone ever played the game Tobago?  There might be some non-fighting elements of that game that could be incorporated.  It's a treasure hunt on a desert island, and you use logic clues to determine where different treasures are buried based on the clues played by each player.  This might be a cool way to incorporate scouts under each Highprince's camp into the game play.  With Tobago, there is also the chance that treasures can be located quickly back-to-back, which could definitely happen with spotting Chasmfiends.

Haven't played it, but that does seem like it would fit right in, though you do still have to deal with the difficulty of actually harvesting the chasmfiend