Concept: What if Arkham Horror, but skill tests are a mancala logic puzzle.
Similar setup as LOTR LCG, a scenario and you draw an event card and handle it as you make progress on getting through the chapters/goals of whatever event. Along the way, you’ll need to approach problems differently. What if every challenge had a value for every approach?
For example, say you come across a half naked guy who jumped out of the woods yelling at you. You can approach him with aggression (4), wit (2), humor (4), or kindness (6). you say humor and check his humor stat, (and maybe cards have a ‘speed’ stat that limits how many extra cards you can contribute to the situation, no time to use things at times) and then you check your humor stat on your mancala board.
If he needs 4 to solve with humor, and you only have 3, you would fail with -1. (and this would earn you a temp token for next time you humor, like you’re actively working on that skill.) then challenges will either have a failure/succeed event or even allow you x reattempts. after you do a mancala test, your energy spreads among the other skills. pick a direction, and pick up all the tokens (discard temporary ones) and drop them off one at a time on the other skills in that direction. the edges of your mancala board don’t wrap around, they act as a refresh step.
I had an idea I haven’t ported over here yet. I called it the Bi-directional Mancala TTRPG system. Instead of rolling dice, you picked a skill of yours and then see what happens. (essentially the same as the above, but you would reference a book/DM for results) Like you walk into a tavern, greet the barkeep, you can approach with 4 different social aspects; Kindness, Charming, Aggressive, or Comedic. and depending on your value the barkeep responds differently/offers different tasks, etc.
I should probably do something other than the MIRU story, but it has a ton of branching story potential. Instead of 60 events in a book, those could easily be cards. Shuffle and draw 1. Or separate by terrain. shuffle and draw 1 forest. that’s your event. how do you handle it?
in the BDMRPG system, I separated the board into 2 categories. Combat and Social. Social is divided into 4 aspects, described above, kindness, charm, aggression, and comedy. Combat is similar, with Weapon, Magic, Skill, Defense. and what made it interesting, is your mancala board only has 4 spaces. the social and combat aspects SHARE spaces. (so like comedy and Magic are the same space) and so your actions in social situations, changes what you can do during combat. That was the idea anyways. It used dice, but I like the idea of little disc tokens. Anyways the board ends were a big part of the system too. Think like ‘end zones’ of a football field. After you take an action, you pick up all the viable tokens and drop them off either left or right of that space. when you hit the ‘end zone’ you drop off the rest of the tokens. And as an action/during a rest period you can take the action of an end zone. My notes say I had left side helped with social skills, right side helped with combat skills. Translated here, because this would be a card game, would probably be where you reset your hand. Something like x actions, x is amount of tokens. and you can draw x cards, give an aspect x ‘temp tokens’, etc. as you spend these tokens you’re mancala-ing them back out on your board one space at a time, but this time it loops on actions, so once you hit the fourth action, it’ll come back to the 3rd, then 2nd, then 1st, then back to 2nd, etc. like a snake effect. There could be a lot to play with, in the end zone area. say you can play cards next to them. and those offer another passive ability. “When you take this end zone action, first rearrange the top 3 cards of your deck in any order, place any at the bottom of your deck” or “you may remove a progress token on the chapter to heal 3.” etc etc.
The mancala board makes for a great field divider. Say social actions on top, combat on bottom. and you can play cards in the 4 slots above the board and below it. and these could be special skills that say stuff like “When you use a weapon, add this card’s ATK when you test the social skill in this column” (the aspects are randomized when you begin the game. Humor could be paired with Magic, or Weapon for example, while Aggression could be paired with Defense or Weapon. ) so have 10 cards out and around your board will eventually make for a busy board state, keeping it to that instead of tucking cards and tapping them and so on, might be fine. especially if you’re only really adding 1-2 cards a turn. And maybe only a few effects would have you remove them.
The above image is an example draft of a full board state. (of player components) using actual sizes from our box. A 200mm x 80mm mancala board allows for 6 cards to surround it and things line up. Which is interesting. You have 4 card slots above/below your aspects and they touch 2 of them. So if a card says “test a skill with an aspect that touches this card to get +1” could allow for lots of options and fun combos. The dark orange spaces at the bottom of the board is a space for permanent tokens. Likely added due to your characters setup situation. or via campaign resolutions.
Took a second to consider some other aspects and spec em up.
The above image is an example draft of a pretty full board state (of player components). so Mancala action options on the left. Weather/Day tracker on the right. I like the idea that weather could be forecasted and change as you play out each day. Ways to reset the weather at the end of the 4 day week. Flip two of the weather tiles over (usually being like a rainy side and sunny side) and then you shuffle to see how the weather shakes out the next week! top of the board is to track time of day (if this ends up like MIRU, this acts more like phases in round.) Something like, at dawn you draw a card and move a token. Day is where you do most of the actions, play cards and so on. Dusk, perhaps an event is drawn and Night you reset/take your end zone actions if any. etc. Also on the weather side, I liked the idea of the deck separating the trash/discard pile. and for ‘spent spells’, i liked the idea of like an ‘exile’ pile that cards could manipulate.”endzone card effect: after you take this action, shuffle spent spells and draw 3. pick 1 to add to your hand.” etc.
Lots of ideas and things to play with here. Needs a theme to center around. The Aloraverse has a few options (all of my games take place in the same universe) I’d like to move away from MIRU and leave that as it’s own thing and explore some other ideas. I’ve really been wanting to make a village builder. Might not be exciting enough for folks to pick up with this kind of system. Could take place in the PONDUS setting. You’re a wandering wyzard on the hunt for the orbs of power…
If this were a color, I’d put it under Indigo.
Theme idea:
Space. You’re on the run from the empire, planet hopping and heisting to survive. Has a variety of settings (mostly cyberpunk / solarpunk / alien weird / alien scary / low fi magic?)
In the LCGs I’ve played so far (LOTR, Arkham Horror, Marvel Champions) there’s a location/scenario/scheme you’re aiming to add ‘progress’ tokens on in some fashion. When you hit the card’s goal, the scenario progresses (in MC, it’s the opposite, you’re trying to prevent it from progressing)
I wonder if there’s an alternative way to show progress in a scenario besides stacking tokens on a card. Might be more interesting, if, when you complete a card (say you got the treasure or tool you need for the job) you attach it to the scenario, and once it’s conditions are met, you can move on to the next chapter. Say a scenario goes like this: You’re in the house of a wealthy elite. You’re after jewel they’ve hidden in a safe. Setup will have you add 2-3 types of cards to an ‘event’ deck. shuffle, place the jewel card in the 4th slot from the bottom of the event deck. (It’s always in the last place you look ha) and you’ll have to make your way through the house dodging security guards and locked rooms without setting off the alarms to ‘win’ the chapter. There could be other cards/measures at play. like a noise meter. Say every time you hit an enemy, add a token to this card. If you ever have more than 3 tokens on the card, you’re making too much noise and events start escalating (instead of revealing 1 at a time, perhaps 2 start showing up as you rush around this house)
more ideas:
2 event decks. Enemies and Locations. Both are established/adjusted during setup for that particular chapter. A noise measuring card. After you hit an enemy, they yell. add a noise token to the card. if it ever hits 3 tokens, instead of drawing 1 enemy, you always draw 2. if it hits 5 you draw 3. each time you skip an attack on a turn, the noise goes down 1 token. I can see this being relevant across several scenarios, being quite during a heist has to come up often.
‘enemy’ and ‘location’ trigger cards. these could be generic cards that get added to your deck during scenarios. when drawn, they’re a dead card that you set aside and they reveal an enemy/location. clearing/defeating locations/enemies may have you add more generic trigger cards (and previous ones set aside) back into your deck. (basically simulating, the longer you stay in a place, the more likely for trouble to find you)
One end of your mancala board could be ‘focus’ which lets you redistribute the tokens on it anywhere you wish. and if you have x or more tokens on it this may trigger you passing through a location/enemy. You’ve picked the lock, you’ve evaded the enemy, etc. I kind of like the idea that you’re ‘saying’ things while you fight, kinda like how spiderman is quite comedic during fights. You take the ‘humor’ action when facing an enemy, sure you take a punch, but you got to move your tokens in the right direction to move past them in the next turn.
first scenerio for sure, but maybe others, adding an ‘alien sludge’ card to your deck. if it’s drawn, it’s a dead card you set aside. after the chapter, you gain another and add both to your deck. when you gain your 5th one, you remove them and add an giant alien sludge to every enemy deck in future chapters. a problem to deal with in the future. I can see having several of these type of trigger cards in your deck. resulting in a lot of ‘dead’ cards. You’ll need to use your ‘admin’? space on your mancala board often to dig through your deck. Sometimes some chapter cards will want you to play a certain tool/action card to move past the chapter.
Could be interesting if locations/enemies were revealed/placed with some spatial relations. Say you’re in a jungle. There’s sludge pit in your way. but you draw an enemy trigger. maybe it could be revealed before (next to you) or after the location card. So depending on which direction you move in, you can handle your problems in a certain order.
I really like the idea of using a small board to map out your situation. might get wild if there’s a ton of enemies around. Would need 2 tokens for them, one to mark the card (say a 1) and that token on the map (matching 1) this would give them some movement opportunities and things aren’t always popping up right next to you without being able to prepare for them. and there could be some interesting strategy with some scenarios if you can place/rotate location tetris pieces anyway you wish. So say you reveal a location card, it has a T shape piece. you find that and put it on the map adjacent to your token. this might block enemies on the other side of the map from getting to you for a moment. (locked behind a door) might be interesting space to play in.
