I’ve been thinking about some variants of a mechanic based on Action Drafting, using action cards.
ACT-02: Players select from an assortment of Actions in a shared pool. The available Actions are limited in quantity, and once a player has chosen an Action it may not be chosen again.
ā Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design
The idea is that actions in a game are controlled by a deck of cards. Each turn, a number of action cards are revealed (ie. one per person). Starting with the first player, each player draws one of the actions that round, thus eliminating it from selection by the other players.
Variations
- Variations on number of cards to draw initially (for N players):
- Multiple cards per round (š„N), ie. play 3N cards, so players end up with 3 actions each
- If š„ is a higher number, the number of choices could be overwhelming leading to AP; the standard card drafting mechanic would probably help mitigate this as it would limit the choice to a subset of the available actions.1 It would also mean actions could be drawn privately, leading other players unsure what a player had drawn until the selected actions were actually revealed/played.
- Draw an extra card (š„N + 1) so that the final player always has a choice, rather than just being stuck with the last card that nobody else wanted
- The last card could be discarded; alternatively, all players could get to perform the final action
- Multiple cards per round (š„N), ie. play 3N cards, so players end up with 3 actions each
- Bidding/auction: Rather than selecting in turn order, players simultaneously bid for an action; the player who bids highest for the action wins it.
- Tie handling:
- Advantage goes to first player that round
- Highest unique bid wins. The tied players take back their bids, all other players take the action cards that they won, and then the remaining players who don’t yet have an action bid again. Could be an interesting effect if, for example, 3 players bid on one card - two players bid 5, and one bids 2. The two tieing bids are retracted, leaving the player who only bid 2 to win the card.2
- Maybe have a larger pool of cards to draw from. Each turn, a player gets a certain number of tokens to bid with. Bidding high could guarantee you win an action that is particularly useful to you, however you’ll be unable to buy as many actions; conversely, bidding low will allow you to win more action cards, though the best actions may be taken.
- Tie handling:
- Evolving actions? Similar to deckbuilding, but with a shared “deck”, maybe there’s a way to thin the shared deck by removing certain cards, or to improve it by adding in stronger cards
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CAR-06: Card Drafting: Rather than placing all the cards face down in the middle of the table, deal each player š„ cards; they select one and pass their hand on to the next player (a good example of this is the game Sushi Go!) ↩︎
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In Building Blocks to Tabletop Game Design this is listed as AUC-05: Sealed Bid with Cancellation. The authors note that this mechanic can be unpopular with players since cancelling a tied high bid and allowing a lower bid to win feels counter-intuitive, and the random chance of a tie is overly punishing to the players. However it can be fun and dynamic, probably best applied in games that are lighter and more chaotic. So just take care ↩︎