Harem Anime: The Board Game

[DragonChild]

Note: I have no idea where this idea came from. I don't even know if it's salvageable, or usable. I post it here merely to get it out of my skull, so more fulfilling, useful things can be put in.

Harem Anime: The Board Game (HAB) for short is a game where 3-5 players play characters in a harem anime... in particular, the love interests. They fight over a single protagonist, and as in all good romance shows, only one love interest can win.

At the beginning of the game, a protagonist is chosen from a random deck of protagonists. They can be either male, female, or something else (there will be one robot, and some "indeterminate gender" cards in there). Each protagonist has a name, a short humorous description, and one or two lines of rules that alter the game state.

In addition, there is a deck of love interest cards. These are shuffled and dealt out to players - each player will have X (likely 2 or 3) love interests to choose from, and each player chooses them without knowing what the others are playing. The love interests include things like "Prissy Royalty", "Tsundere", "Rock Star", "Casanova", and other wild things. These characters don't have set names/genders, although they will have little art - it's up to the player to provide the name, making the game as slashy as you desire. Each love interest has one or two small abilities that effect gameplay, primarily to encourage them to play specific kinds of actions - and to give hints as to what kinds of actions they will be able to play, or are weak against.

Your love interest character also determines your two starting stats: Desirability and Love. Desirability determines what kinds of cards you can play, and acts as a sort of "fuel" for many powers. Love is your win condition, pure and simple, although many cards can reduce it as a cost. Whoever reaches X Love first wins, unless Y rounds pass first.

Your character also determines your hand size. At the beginning of the game, everyone draws up to your hand size from the Event Deck, then passes one card to their left. Every player then puts a card face-down, and once all cards are face down, all players reveal. Events take place starting with the Love Interest with the highest Desirability, and then proceed clockwise. After all events are dealt with, each player passes a card to their left, and then draws another card.

Events come in three types:


Group Events: These effect everyone. These happen in order, so there's a bit of unpredictability to them, and you have to be careful. Examples are:

Picnic - All players can choose to trade Desirability for Love on a 1:1 basis, up to 3.
Game Night: All players must spend 1 Desirability loses 2 Love.
Fashion Show: The character with the lowest desirability gains 1 love. The character with the highest desirability gains 2 love.
Birthday Party: Starting with the player who played this card, bid desirability, going around the table. Whoever bids the most desirability gains 2 love.


Solo events: These ONLY effect the player who played them. They always have a cost associated with them, but then have gains that make up for the cost. The cost is paid immediately after you flip the card over, before any other events are adjudicated. Examples:

Romantic Date: Pay 2 desirability. If succesful, gain 3 love.
"Alone Time": Requires 5 desirability, 5 love. Pay 2 desirability, 2 love. If succesful, gain 4 desirability, 4 love.
Stargazing: Pay 1 love. If successful, gain 2 love an draw an extra event card.


Interrupts are the last type of card. If you play an interrupt card, anyone who played a Solo Event gets screwed over this round. They still pay the cost, but don't get the payout. In addition, there's usually some benefit for you.

Tuba Practice: Interrupts Solo Events. For each Solo Event interrupted, gain 1 desirability.
Release the Spiders!: Interrupts Solo Events. Each player who has a solo event interrupted must show you their hand.



And so on. This is incredibly stupid, I know. But it still seems slightly compelling to me.

[ubernoob]

If interrupts both screw the opponent and benefit you, they are always going to be the best type of card and as such the person who draws the most interrupts will have a huge head start if I'm understanding this right.

I'd suggest that interrupts actually have a cost, but the only reward is screwing over somebody else. Basically, interrupts are the "Fuck you, if I can't have him, then you can't have him either."

Other than that, the idea seems fun.

Edit: Tokens. This game needs cute pink and purple tokens to keep track of both love and desirability.

[DragonChild]

If interrupts both screw the opponent and benefit you, they are always going to be the best type of card and as such the person who draws the most interrupts will have a huge head start if I'm understanding this right.

I'd suggest that interrupts actually have a cost, but the only reward is screwing over somebody else. Basically, interrupts are the "Fuck you, if I can't have him, then you can't have him either."

Interrupts ONLY interrupt solo events was my plan. Those are the high-risk, high-reward, bluff people into making sure you can get them off power. The intent is that they benefit the user so losing players couldn't simply play cards that benefit themselves, while the winning players have to worry about interrupts only. If you time an interrupt right, you're rewarded, no matter where you are. It also lessons the chance of a "kingmaker" situation where a losing player just tries to screw over the winners without winning himself - nail enough interrupts correctly, and you'll soon be the winner.

In addition, playing an interrupt on a turn where everyone else plays a group event not only wastes your turn, but wastes your interrupt card.

I'm thinking the majority of the cards will be group events. Not sure about the overall % - maybe something like 60/25/15.

Edit: Tokens. This game needs cute pink and purple tokens to keep track of both love and desirability.

Part of the plan.

[Username17]

I don't really see how this is a board game. There is no board as near as I can tell. Players are not in any "locations" and there is nothing to track except the size of peoples' token piles and the cards people have played. Really, it sounds like it would play very similarly to Red Dragon Inn. The big difference is that everyone is getting action cards out of the same pile and your character's unique traits are given to you by a character card instead of through the expedience of having a different action deck. But the Toughness/Drunkenness scale really appears to work pretty similarly to the Desirability and Love mechanic (save that it is count up to victory instead of a countdown to defeat).

As for the character cards themselves, I would suggest very strongly that you make the love interests mostly male and the harem characters mostly female. Having an occasional male character in the harem characters is way funnier than having the players given a card that says "Really Good Cook" and having them decide for themselves that their character is a homosexual man. Way funnier. It's not even close.

-Username17

[DragonChild]

I don't really see how this is a board game. There is no board as near as I can tell.[

You're correct that this is mostly a card game. My bad for imprecise terms - I mostly just call any geeky tabletop non-RPG a "board game". I'll edit that in later.

Really, it sounds like it would play very similarly to Red Dragon Inn.

I've never played Red Dragon Inn, though I've heard of it. Is it any good? I don't think I know anyone with it, unfortunately.

Having an occasional male character in the harem characters is way funnier than having the players given a card that says "Really Good Cook" and having them decide for themselves that their character is a homosexual man. Way funnier. It's not even close.

This is true. I did want to include one or two female protagonists, though, but... we'll see about that. Hm.

[Username17]

Red Dragon Inn gives each character an action deck and each player a pile of gold tokens. You start at full strength and zero drunkenness. There is a deck of booze in the middle. There are rounds and every turn you play an action from your hand and drink from the middle deck and pay money to the barwench. If you run out of money, you lose. If your stamina and drunkenness are ever equal, you lose. Last person to not lose wins. Various actions can push other players towards losing stamina, gold, or drinking more booze. There is a little gambling mini game by which one of the players can end up taking a fair amount of gold from the other players. The different characters lay differently by dint of having different stuff in their action decks.

All in all: pretty decent, but probably too expensive.

But there is stuff that you have to take home from that game. The first is that Red Dragon Inn marches inevitably towards someone winning. If you played no actions at all, people would still lose eventually and there would be a last person standing. You seem to be envisioning a game that is largely zero sum as far as Love accumulation goes. That is bullshit. You should probably have a "Date Deck" or something, where each player draws a card from it at the end of their turn and if it hasn't been ruined by the shenanigans of other players before their next turn, they gain some amount of love for that date. It doesn't have to be exactly that, just something that inevitably pushes the game towards victory rather than stasis.

-Username17

[DragonChild]

The first is that Red Dragon Inn marches inevitably towards someone winning. If you played no actions at all, people would still lose eventually and there would be a last person standing. You seem to be envisioning a game that is largely zero sum as far as Love accumulation goes. That is bullshit. You should probably have a "Date Deck" or something, where each player draws a card from it at the end of their turn and if it hasn't been ruined by the shenanigans of other players before their next turn, they gain some amount of love for that date. It doesn't have to be exactly that, just something that inevitably pushes the game towards victory rather than stasis.

My thought was to have one of two possible victory conditions:

-First player to X Love OR after Y rounds (with event reshuffling)
or
-First player to X Love OR after the event deck is entirely empty (with no reshuffling)

I imagined the second, "time out" condition to be more likely in any case, and the initial condition just to call quits from a runaway victory.

[Username17]

Winning because time ran out and it became time to tally points is bullshit and no one likes it. People like to win because they got the victory condition.

So basically you need to have some progressive manner in which to accumulate towards victory. Red Dragon Inn is one way to do that. Chez Geek is another. Thinking about it more, this idea is a lot like Chez Geek. But whatever, the game has to march towards actual fucking victory so that someone can win and you can play again or go home.

-Username17

[DragonChild]

What if there was no way to lose Love, only gain it? I'm trying to avoid a "player loses, sits out" situation. I also want to play up the bluffing/timing angle as the primary "catch" of the game, as I feel it's interesting mechanically and fits the flavor.

Or maybe at the end of each round, whoever collected the most Love gets a gold heart, or one each to people who tie.. Whoever gets X gold hearts first wins, and they can't be removed. Love can then be removed as a slider, and merely as a "keeping score in an individual round" thing.

[JonSetanta]

Dear Frank;

Love usually ends as zero-sum.

Love, Sig

[Username17]

Off hand, I would do it either Chez Geek style or Red Dragon Inn style:

• The Chez Geek Treatment: You get a hand of cards and can take some limited number of actions per turn. Possibly different characters have different resource schemes, like in Chez Geek. And in any case, different characters have different special abilities (the cook can play food cards without limit), and different victory point needs. Most cards you play cause victory points to accumulate, and when you reach your total you win.
  
  The Red Dragon Inn Treatment: You have two decks of cards, and your draws from one deck only increase victory points, and you draw from it every turn. The other deck is full of hijinks that can among other things try to stop or redirect victory gain, but the general flow is always towards someone actually winning.

Personally, the second one sounds better to me. In part because the first seems too much like Chez Geek, and in part because the second one actually needs tokens, and collecting love tokens is part of the charm of the enterprise. Anyway, I would see it as having a turn progression that looks like this:

• Go on a Date: If you have a date in front of you, you go on it, and collect the requisite number of Love Tokens. Then discard that date card.
• Play Intrigue from your hand. You can play one card inherently, but your special abilities may allow you to play more.
• Discard down to two Intrigue Cards.
• Pass one of the Intrigue Cards in your hand to the player to your left.
• Draw Intrigue Cards until you have 4 in your hand.
• Plan a Date: Draw two date cards. Put one face up in front of you, and discard the other.
• It is now the next player's turn.

And then each character card simply has special abilities that affect how they interact with Intrigue and Date cards and a Love Requirement to win.

-Username17

[gozergames]

This game sounds similar in some ways to Collateral Damage: The Anime Board Game. While in your description there is no board, the love aspects, including Desirability and Love stats, sound similar to the mechanics in Collateral Damage (where they are Looks and Libido). The special powers which affect game play also sound like something found there.

This isn't a complaint, but you might want to be aware that a published game that contains some aspects of this already exists. Your idea is definitely more of a card game than a board game though.

[DragonChild]

I've seen that, actually. Someone brought it to club, attempted to play it once, and then it was put away to never be played again because people considered it a gigantic overcomplicated mess. I wasn't involved, however.

And yeah, yeah, "board game" was a bad description.

For a name, I'm thinking of calling it: "Love Love Panic!!!", because that is suitably engrish. Working on a few different ideas, will post when I decide on better mechanics.

[Josh_Kablack]

Don't forget about this