Dung & Dragons as a Trick-Taking Euro Farming Game?

Dung and Dragons Vector Background

While I've been exploring the mechanics of trick-taking games lately, I stumbled across this odd notion of using the trick you win to trigger a cascading series of mechanics that you would normally find in a more formal euro strategy game. Usually about farming. (Looking at Agricola here, mainly.)

What if by winning a trick, you also acquired various resources and quests from that trick? It's worth exploring, if for nothing less than just pure giggles. Naturally, when I start thinking about a farming mechanic, my mind drifts back to a theme that has so far eluded a really solid mechanical framework.

Dung & Dragons is about a group of people raising dragons for their valuable poop. See, dragon poop has lots and lots of gold coins in it. (Smaug was absolutely filthy, by the way.) So these ranchers raise dragons, feed them their favorite foods, and literally rake in profits.

Here's a loose outline of how I think it could combine very fast trick-taking tactics with more strategic Euro-style engine building.

Click the diagram above for a better look at the components, but here's the details:

The game is comprised of a deck of Supply cards, Dragon tiles, and Power-Ups.

Supply cards feature three types of icons: The top icons are the egg clusters, representing how soon an egg will hatch. The middle icons are a type of dragon, which will determine which dragon emerges from the egg. And the bottom icons are food bundles you can use to feed other dragons.

Each Dragon tile features a unique dragon you can raise for their poop. Dragons come in three types and three hybrids. Dragon tiles are arranged in their own stacks in descending order, with the #1 card on top.

Power-ups are special equipment, like laxatives. Because poop.

Each player has a hand of supply cards.

INCUBATING DRAGON EGGS
Taking turns, each player discards a supply card into one of three piles in play at any time. Whoever causes the total egg clusters in a pile to reach 7 or higher takes the pile.

HATCHING A DRAGON
Whatever has the majority of middle icons in the pile determines your dragon. You may take your dragon from the top of a Hatchery stack or from another player. You may only take a dragon from another player if you have more of the requisite icon than your opponent had to claim that dragon in the first place.

FEEDING A DRAGON
You can feed dragons you already own with the food icons shown on supply cards. Divide them up to your dragons as you wish. Each dragon has a different diet, preferring their own favorite food. The conversion rate for various amounts of food to 1, 2, 3, or 4 poops is shown at the bottom of the card.

For example, Earth Dragon #1 requires 4 grain to make the first poop, 8 to make the second poop, 10 to make the third, and 12 to make the fourth. Different types of dragons get better conversion rates depending on whether they’re hatched later or earlier.

HARVESTING POOP
Each poop is a victory point or may be converted to gold. The gold value of each dragon’s poop is shown on its card. Gold can be used to buy laxatives, buy extra food, buy a dragon from an opponent, and other stuff.

POWER-UPS
When you buy a power-up, you apply it to a dragon of your choice. These are just a loose smattering if ideas so far.
  • Laxatives: Lowers the required food per poop by 1. So a 4/8/10/12 would then be a 3/7/9/12.
  • Treats: Counts as any type of food, but each type of treat can only be used once per dragon. (They like variety.)
  • Coop: Raises the cost of anyone else buying this dragon from you.
  • Moon Statue, Sun Statue, Earth Statue: Counts towards the middle-icon total so you have more control over which types of dragons you hatch.
  • Moon Prize, Sun Prize, Earth Prize: Grants bonus points for each of this type of dragon you have at the end of the game.
  • Scooper: Raises the gold value of each poop from this dragon.
And that's it so far! Kind of a weird idea, but it might work. It's just a lot of balancing to figure out between the various economies and conversion rates.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more