Holly posted a cool set of Flickr photos called found board games, of which I think #3a is the most promising. Kevan suggested in the comments on that picture that it’s a bridge-building game, provide your own planks. Neat! But what’s the goal of a bridge-building game?

• Maybe it’s a race–try to get from the far yellow corner to the near blue corner first, but you can never have more than two planks on any given post, so your opponent can block or redirect your path. This seems like a recipe for mutual frustration, though.

• Maybe it’s a game of closing off loops to capture them for your own. You can try snag large cycles for big points, but your opponent might be quicker and cut your cycle in half before you’re done. You can play it safe with little squares, but your opponent might be roping in a lot of board while you do that. This seems awfully deterministic without some element of randomization to it.

The obvious answer is that this is just a grid, and there are a jillion games about edges on grids and I don’t think many of them are interesting. What interests me here is the color-coding and the specific way some of those blocks are shaped. It looks like it’s harder to reach the red blocks from the yellow ones; do those connections require special planks that could otherwise be used to make a diagonal connection?

From a discussion on focus over at Vincent Baker’s Ongoing Roleplaying Theory Open House comes this image from an old Dragon Magazine, very kindly dug up and provided by Jeff Rients. It’s a flowchart of how a typical second-edition Top Secret spy adventure was designed to run, and it might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

The chart itself is copyright Merle Rasmussen, of course, but I think the structure and format are excellent fodder. How can we play with this? What other kinds of genre games would make good flowcharts, and what would they look like?

I want to play a game called Imperious Gnomes. I don’t know what it does yet! I don’t know how you play it! I know it’s collaborative, working together against a common enemy; I know it has something to do with gadgetry or clockwork. I don’t know if it’s a collectible card game or a board game or a version of Nomic or what.

How do you play Imperious Gnomes?

What I think would be cool is a game whose main mechanics are bluffing and diplomacy.

I mean, there are many fine games like Risk, in which diplomacy, making alliances and convincing people to war amongst themselves rather than with you, is absolutely crucial, and some variants of them even have special cards so you can bluff having “Death Mines” in your hand when you only have a shameful “Colony Influence,” but that bluffing is never really central to the game. And most heavy-bluffing games, such as poker or perudo or such, don’t really have much of an opportunity to engage in strategic alliances and such.

I’m thinking vaguely along the lines of Risk, except that instead of dice, you get a hand of five or seven cards or so. When determining if you take over a territory or not, the attacker and defender both play a card facedown, and simultaneously reveal them, high card winning.

This would allow for all the normal diplomacy of Risk, with much stronger bluffing elements. Are you attacking with a good card to try and take the territory over, or a weak card to get it out of your hand and get the other guy to waste an king? Has that guy, with only one card in his hand, wasted all his good cards, and thus only has a weak card, or has he been saving his best card all along just hoping someone would make that assumption? (I imagine redraws would occur only when you empty your hand)

Any thoughts? Or other ideas on how to make a completely different type game where both diplomacy and bluffing play a large factor?

I want to play a game called “Dieslinger.” I don’t know what it does yet! I don’t know how you play it! I know it involves dice, big handfuls of them; I know it has something to do with either combat or magic. I don’t know whether it’s an RPG or a dice/card game or a gambling game or what.

How do you play Dieslinger?