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## Sanity Check My Card Game Idea? Trash Film Fest

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Prak
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### Sanity Check My Card Game Idea? Trash Film Fest

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Post by Prak » Thu Mar 16, 2017 12:12 am

I've been mulling over this idea for awhile. It's the same sort of partycasual game playstyle as Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, where people just play cards to satisfy the question posed by a judging player, who picks their favorite play, then the next player is the judge.
So, the idea of Trash Film Fest is that players are producers funding trashy movies and studios making trashy movies. Play goes in Rounds composed of Pitches and a Box Office Phase.
The player who most recently saw a movie is the first Producer, and draws three Tag cards, and selects two along with a Genre (freely chosen, either marked on a playmat or designated by a token), and says something to the effect "I'm in the market for a [Tag 1] [Tag 2] [Genre] movie."
The other players then play cards from their hands that satisfy the People, Places and Things requirements on the tag cards as their pitch, and the Producer picks their favorite, which gets $X (poker chips). The next player to the Producer's left then takes a turn as Producer. Pitches continue until every player has been Producer once. Ideally, everyone should then have at least one pitch with money behind it.
In the Box Office phase, each player chooses one of their pitches to put up, and each player secretly wagers some amount of money on the movie pitch or pitches they like best. The pitch with the most money wins the round, and players get the money that was wagered on their pitch.
There isn't an obvious terminus for the game, but I'll steal CAH's hypothetical terminus and say the game ends when someone has 10 winning pitches, with the full knowledge that people will actually play until a deck runs out, someone has to leave, or they decide to do something else. The person with the most money wins, just like in real life.
That's the roughly firmed up ideas, things I'm still trying to figure out-
-Number of decks. Tags is one, and I was thinking of Genre being one, but freely selecting genre means less decks. I'm debating how many decks People, Places and things should be, but I'm leaning towards two- People & Things, and Places (& Times). That makes three decks total.
-A part of me wants a random element in the Box Office phase, either just representing people showing up to see your movie (ie, you get a random amount of extra money for your pitches) or representing random stuff that can affect how your movie performs ("Random whiny group says people shouldn't see your movie, +$X because people are contrarian!" and the like). The former would probably be a die roll, the latter would be another deck of cards, probably a fairly small set of different stuff, just printed multiple times.
Is this too complicated? Is it manageable?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Prak
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###

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Post by Prak » Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:02 am

Ok, here's a more composed, less stream of thought overview-
Trash Film Fest
Components

- Producer Tag Deck
- People & Things Pitch Deck
- Places & Times Pitch Deck
- Genre Tokens
- Trash Bucks tokens

Play-
Each player begins the game by drawing five cards from each of the People & Things and Places & Times decks.
The Pitch Phase
The player who most recently saw a movie is the Producer and the others the Crews. The Producer takes $1000 in Trash Bucks (1000TB) from the bank and draws three cards from the Producer Tag deck. The Producer then picks two of those cards and a genre, and says “I’m looking to back a [tags and genre] movie.”
Example: The Producer draw Sexy, Space, and Science, and decides they’re looking for a Sexy Space Thriller.
The Crews then choose from their hands cards which satisfy the requirements of the Tag cards to create a movie pitch. Any number of cards may be played, so long as they satisfy those requirements.
Example: Sexy requires two people, Space requires a place. Each Crew must create a pitch that involves at least two People and one Place card.
Once each player has crafted a pitch, they then deliver their pitch to the Producer, starting with the player to the Producer’s left.
Example: Val creates a pitch with the cards Cowboy, Hooker and Spaceship, and pitches a thrilling space western about outlaws defying the Space Union, where the cowboy and the hooker routinely wind up in close quarters in their daring adventure.
Once all crews have pitched a movie, the Producer decides which one to put their Trash Bucks into. They do not keep any Trash Bucks not invested in a movie, so it behooves them to invest them all. They may split their investment between multiple movies if they wish.
Players refill their hands up to five cards from each Pitch deck, and the next player is the Producer for a new play. Once each player has been the Producer once, move to the Box Office phase.
The Box Office Phase
Each player chooses one of their pitches to put up as a completed movie. Players then secretly wager which movie they think would do best, and reveal at the same time. The player of the movie with the most votes gets 200TB per wager. In the event of a tie between movies, each player gets 100TB per wager. If no movie has more wagers than any other, each player gains just 100TB.
The player with the winning movie should hold onto the pitch cards, other pitches are discarded.
Ending the Game
The game ends once one player has 10 winning movies. The player with the most Trash Bucks wins.
In Consideration
The Production Phase
In the production phase, each player chooses one of their pitches to film. They set their other pitches aside, and can now spend Trash Bucks to add Actors and Props to make their movie more attractive. Spending 100TB allows a player to draw one card from the Actors & Props deck. Not all Actors or Props need be used, but any which are not will be discarded at the end of the Production phase after the one in which they were drawn. Players may also trade or sell Actor & Prop cards amongst themselves in this phase.
Once all players have decided they are done filming, move onto the Box Office phase.
--Actors and Props could share space with Places and Things as split cards. In this case, players could add actors and props from their hand at a cost of 200TB.
Fortunes and Failures
During the Box Office phase, after wagering, each player draws a card from the Fortunes and Failures deck, then reveals to the group. Each card describes an event that modifies the wagers or payout of wagers for that round
Example: Public Outrage- Moral Guardians have decided that your movie is sinful or offensive, and decide to boycott it. All wagers count double for your movie, because there’s no such thing as bad press.
Genre Base Wagers
Different Genres could have base wagers to represent general popularity of the genre. +1 Wager for action movies, -1 Wager for romances and fantasy, etc.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Blade
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###

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Post by Blade » Thu Mar 16, 2017 1:09 pm

I like the concept.
If you want to stop there, you should just have players do the pitch, and then the best pitch is decided (either by a vote or by the producer) and you move on.
I think the Production Phase would make the game too complex for a "party game" à la CaH. But if you want to go that way it could be interesting to add more details and strategic options: cheaper actors who have bad tendencies that make some Failure worse, add trends that affect the base wagers but can change in some circumstances (special F&F cards, exceptional success of a movie, etc.), maybe actors could get tags attached to them during their career, making them money makers or troublemakers, etc.
These would not only add some strategic elements to the game, but they would also give it more personality.
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Thu Mar 16, 2017 6:45 pm

I like the theme...but I think Snake Oil beats you on simplicity and your current notes look very likely to run into similar problems as Cheapass Game's The Big Idea (1st ed).
In that game, regardless of how good or bad a pitch is, the mathematically correct play is to always promote your own project over anyone else's -- that's a fail state for the design of this sort of game, where the point is to come up with the best pitch.
Also in that game it was entirely too common for a player to get stuck with a hand of "all adjectives" or "all nouns" and be unable to play. Your current mapping of cards to requirements as People, Places, Times and Things mean that it is very likely for players to have hands which do not meet the requirement of the current Producer Tags -- and you're going to have to do something about that. You could allow being locked out of a round to be a massive hand replenish (ala Cosmic Encounter), you could allow trading of types between players, you could have wildcards which count as multiple tags and/or allow you to ignore one requirement.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Thu Mar 16, 2017 8:52 pm

I'm looking up videos of Snake Oil and The Big Idea to get some idea of how they work. I only really had Wits and Wagers as a game sort of similar to watch, but didn't get much take away for the wagering part.
One thought I had talking to a friend about it was that the Production phase could be entirely optional, so people who want a simpler game can do just the Pitch and Box Office phase, and people who are just hanging out for the purpose of actually playing games can add the Production phase.
The problem of having "all adjectives" or "all nouns" could be avoided by making every People & Thing card a Person and a Thing. So instead of Scientist and Gadget being separate P&T cards, there could be a single People & Thing card- Scientist/Gadget. And then the requirements just tell people "X People & Things, Y Places & Times" cards, and what the focus should be for the pitch.
In the Box Office phase, the hope was that "If everyone is tied (ie, just voting on their own movie) then there's minimal reward" would dissuade that play, since it means everyone gets the same amount of money each round. Thinking back to Wits and Wagers, what the Box Office phase needs is a way to get rewarded not just for having the most liked movie, but also for wagering on the best movie. I'm thinking having two kinds of votes- Views and Screens. Maybe everyone has two Screen tokens and three View tokens, and they can be the same shape and size. In the box office phase, people distribute their Screen and View tokens face down. The pitch with the most View tokens wins, and everyone who put a Screen token on it gets money, as does the person whose pitch it is.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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ETortoise
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  Location: Brooklyn

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Post by ETortoise » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:42 pm

Have you heard of Shmovie? https://schmovie.wordpress.com/about-2 It's not the same, but it is very similar.
Snake Oil is more fun, but Snake Oil is the best of any of the Apples to Apples-style games that I've played.
Last edited by ETortoise on Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Blade
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Post by Blade » Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:51 pm

> Josh_Kablack wrote:In that game, regardless of how good or bad a pitch is, the mathematically correct play is to always promote your own project over anyone else's -- that's a fail state for the design of this sort of game, where the point is to come up with the best pitch.

In party games, players rarely care about who wins. They play for fun and might not even keep track of the score. But maybe that's just the groups I play with.
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Starmaker
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Post by Starmaker » Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:12 pm

> Prak wrote:In the Box Office phase, the hope was that "If everyone is tied (ie, just voting on their own movie) then there's minimal reward" would dissuade that play

Just ban voting on their own movie.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:14 pm

> Blade wrote:

> > Josh_Kablack wrote:In that game, regardless of how good or bad a pitch is, the mathematically correct play is to always promote your own project over anyone else's -- that's a fail state for the design of this sort of game, where the point is to come up with the best pitch.

> In party games, players rarely care about who wins. They play for fun and might not even keep track of the score. But maybe that's just the groups I play with.

Yeah. Cards Against Humanity technically has a win condition of "get 10 Awesome Points" but whenever I've played, people have just played until most people had to leave. Scores of 15-20 are the norm, rather than unusual.

> Starmaker wrote:

> > Prak wrote:In the Box Office phase, the hope was that "If everyone is tied (ie, just voting on their own movie) then there's minimal reward" would dissuade that play

> Just ban voting on their own movie.

I had thought about that, but was trying to avoid it. Thinking about it now, especially if I do the Screen and Viewing tokens, it actually makes sense if people can't put view tokens on their own movie.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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