(11-13-2023 05:11 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think most board games outside of ones dependent on preexisting knowledge (e.g. trivia, vocab games, variations of charades, etc.) need a baseline level of randomness and luck or else it isn’t an even playing field for all players. For instance, the sole purpose of the game of Life is to end up with the most money at the end. If you just allowed everyone to choose their profession, they would all rationally choose Medical Doctor because that’s the highest paying profession in the game. So, the only way to make it fair is that the profession that you receive in Life is based on random luck.

Similarly, it would seem that if you can just *choose* an inherently better Alabama/Ohio State-type team, you’d run into the same issue. I kind of like the idea of a snake draft of teams and/or players or Fighting Muskie’s auction draft. A core element of a board game is that everyone needs to feel like they’re starting on an even playing field.

That is a good thing to consider. It’d be no fun, as a Gator fan, if I had to choose Alabama or Georgia or Florida State as “my” team to have a chance at enjoying the game. I want to be able to cheer for the Gators but still have a chance at winning the game if they go 5-7. If each player did get “a” team, I wonder what cons would come from being the Medical Doctor/Crimson Tide.

I think that is, in part, why I am leaning toward players being some entity other than a “team”. The idea of a conference commissioner is intriguing, though realignment may be outside scope for this particular game, such as it is.

Competing TV networks seems to fit best, but perhaps there is a co-op game to be had with players working together as a single network to tell the story of the college football season better than that “other” network. Ha; if it is a good idea, maybe ESPN or FOX would license it.

(11-15-2023 05:11 PM)LeeNobody Wrote:  

(11-14-2023 10:18 PM)Crayton Wrote:  

(11-13-2023 12:29 PM)LeeNobody Wrote:  Hey Crayton I am huge boardgamer and I'd love to share my thoughts on your idea. I love the idea of simulating the narrative of season in a board game. You could even make a legacy game chaining seasons together.

I hadn't even thought of a Legacy game! That may be a next step. Step #1 make a generational board game classic like Risk or Catan or Pandemic. Step #2, turn it into a Legacy game. haha

I did have the thought that each year the next "season" could be packaged and sold separate. Not unlike Madden.

(11-13-2023 12:29 PM)LeeNobody Wrote:  Objective:
I think you were right to view it as the players being broadcasters. Each turn could simulate a week of games to broadcast. Players would bid cash against eachother to broadcast matchups.
Matchups are represented by a pairing of cards, with each card representing a school and each school having attributes of conference ( suit) fanbase size and fanbase affluence. Cards are separated by conference( Suit), each deck shuffled, dealt out in pairs, with a set number of non conference games a week. During the week most games are conference games( same suit) so players can spend to be first pick out of the each (suit). Players can even pay to add divisions to create more favorable matchups. The result is that players become more invested in different conferences as the game goes on. Each player would have a set number of broadcast windows to fill. Once all the games had been bid on for the week, the games are simulated ,and cash is earned based on game outcome(favorite wins, upset close win, blowout), viewing window( best windows get a multiplier), and teams participating(affluence and size combined) . Repeat for each week until the end of the season. At the end of the season the player with the most money wins.

Yes. My basic idea is 133 cards that can be paired. Right now they have the real schedule written on them. I have been exploring randomized schedules, but mostly with a single super conference worth of teams (to be able to rotate the matchups each week).

I like the idea of bidding on games. You get cash and/or VP for certain outcomes. I want there to be some sort of payout if you air teams that make the playoff. To get players invested in certain conferences maybe you can simultaneously bid on games as well as conference packages. If you land the SEC package you have the right to deny someone who wants to air Missouri-LSU... as long as you have the slot to air it yourself.

Maybe ~2 packages are available in a given week (shuffle conference rights and various bowls and postseason games as other packages you could bid on), and so there can be a strategic decision to spend cash to either outbid your opponent who wants to pick up the #1 First Round Playoff Game or use your movement point to shift a game this week to Thursday Night to pick up a little extra ad money from a new TV slot.

(11-13-2023 12:29 PM)LeeNobody Wrote:  Extra spice
I think after all windows are filled, maybe each player is given a hand of event card that could impact the games. some ideas:
Hurricane: choice a game on your viewing windows and an opponents viewing window to not be scored
Rock star coach: double a games potential earning

You could have modifiers for national championship contenders if that could add value for teams that keep winning.

This is where the flavor comes in. Event cards! Make this not a dry bidding game, but make players feel like they are living through a college football season.

I was even thinking "scandal, lose your head coach" Heisman contender is another. I did not think of Rock Star Coach, something like Deion this year. For deeper strategy, make these "stories" you can spend cash to investigate and report on. I think that would require cash to be separate from VP; cash is there to be spent and to make more cash, but ultimately VPs (victory points, "Fan Memories"?) are what gives you a win in the game. What other media narratives do ESPN, FOX, et al use to drive the college football season forward?

(11-13-2023 12:29 PM)LeeNobody Wrote:  Making exclusive agreements (first pick, second ect) only stand as long as the player was the last to pay for that right and once that amount is exceeded the other player gains that right.

Conference championship round and national championship round could even be added to being a nice conclusion to the game.

How could I forget the potential for conference realignment. Pay enough and you can move a school to a different suit.

Game Title: Greatest Story Ever Sold

I legitimately think this is an excellent idea and would love to work with you on it.

Thanks. My next step is mocking up all 133 teams and play-testing the season a bit to slim that down to a quick-start model. [ex. You don't need to sim Eastern Michigan unless (a) you want to, or (b) they upset Minnesota in Week 2.]

If the nuts and bolts of a regular season can be simmed in 15 minutes (fast), my next step would be to add the player choices (tv rights + event cards + choose games to air) and try to play-test with my son.

I'd say realignment is out of scope for a game that goes from September to December, but that hasn't stopped real life realignment news. Could definitely be some sort of event card.

Crayton this idea has been burrowing into my mind. I have clever ideas about resolving a weeks worth of games with the roll of a few dice.

I agree that realignment would be out side the scope of the season but could be a bidding war with the money paid into each conference during the season used to bid on teams based on the TV network that put the most money into the conference during the last season! This is the legacy element

Well you have to decide whether you are focusing on games or a season. If its games, then you might want to simulate the games quarter by quarter and get scores and keep scoring statistics. If its a season, then you want to do it "a weeks worth of games" at a time. Alternatively, you could have both modes.

This thread spurred me to make some progress on making my board game idea a reality but I could definitely use some feedback and input from other strategy game fans who enjoy college football realignment.

PM me if you’re interested, I’ll put together a group message for the board game “think tank”.

(11-14-2023 10:18 PM)Crayton Wrote:  My next step is mocking up all 133 teams and play-testing the season a bit to slim that down to a quick-start model. If the nuts and bolts of a regular season can be simmed in 15 minutes (fast), my next step would be to add the player choices (tv rights + event cards + choose games to air) and try to play-test with my son.

Well, first try (over a month ago) was a 2 hour slog to get through 4 weeks of the regular season before I quit. Today, I went from Week 0 to CCGs in 20 minutes. This is just the sim portion, again. The actual game would sit on top of the sim.

I'm writing this post mostly because the sim portion is the part I most enjoy and, lamentably, that part is closer to its end than it beginning. This post is to bore you with how that runtime was cut down so dramatically.

(11-13-2023 06:12 AM)Crayton Wrote:  The simulation mechanics are pretty solid. You roll 3 dice and the sum tells you who wins a game

3 dice gives a beautiful normal distribution. If Alabama is a 9 and Liberty is a 5, you add 10 to one team and roll the dice to see if the other beats them and, roughly, how close or how much of a blow out the game was.

BUT, try to do that 60 times a week 'and' keep track on team-specific cards and it becomes a nightmare. I even ran analytics to "group" teams with their early-season non-FCS opponents to decrease the time it took to hunt down the loser to add a "L" token, and it hardly helped.

(11-16-2023 11:31 AM)bullet Wrote:  Well you have to decide whether you are focusing on games or a season. If its games, then you might want to simulate the games quarter by quarter and get scores and keep scoring statistics. If its a season, then you want to do it "a weeks worth of games" at a time.

This post got me wondering if, instead of going game-by-game, I was able to simulate an entire slate of games all at once. I tried different iterations, 6 conference games at once, a whole week of conference-TV-owned games at once, all of FBS at once.

I settled on the last (though of course there is room to pull out some games to be simmed individually). Instead of 3 dice there are 2, creating 36 possible scenarios each week. Every game has certain outcomes that are wins and certain ones that are losses. The dice are non-numerical, so there is no universal axis by which the same teams benefit from "high" or "low" rolls.

The other thing that sped the game up was a quick start of the 32 top-ranked teams (I routinely subbed out Liberty for Florida). While there is a chance a team like Minnesota could go 11-2 and snag a playoff spot, the Gophers won't be in the basic/quickstart version. If a player wants to include a favorite team, like Florida, they can, all 134 teams will be there. In the actual game there might be mechanisms to enhance mediocre teams.

(11-13-2023 06:12 AM)Crayton Wrote:  BUT, a board "game" should be more than a simulation if you want non-psychopaths to play it more than once. What type of decisions should the players/observers of this simulation make? Decisions (with their cost/benefit analysis) have the potential for making the game a "game" and not just a simulation.

First, I had a lot of fun with simming through the season a total of about 10 times while play-testing. While the Gators never made it past LSU (a 4th loss removes a team from the sim), they did beat the Bulldogs twice. It may not bode well that that was the most-exciting part of the sim, but I have to remind myself the game hasn't been built yet.

On my last play-through, I added a game for my son and I to play. Each week we picked 2 games to air on our networks and placed a colored "chit" on the team we were hyping. This extended the play-time to ~45 minutes. My contrarian scion picked FSU>LSU out of the gate and I gave a hearty laugh when the Seminoles lost.

At the end of the playoffs we counted up how many chits had gone to playoff teams. 1x for those bounced in the play-ins, 2x for those that made the New Years Bowls, 3x for semifinalists, 4x for the runner-up, and 5x for the National Champion. Both scores were paltry because we weren't really playing to win; I won 33 to 24. LSU ended up 10-2, lost to 11-1 Georgia in the SECCG but with 3 losses hung on to the last at large spot and then went on a tear in the playoffs before losing to Penix and the Huskies in the National Championship Game. Neither of us ever aired Washington. Oregon got a lot of love and beat Washington twice, but the Huskies clawed back from #8 to get to Houston.

The "best" part of this sim was only quasi-related to the point competition between he and I. Clemson also beat the Seminoles and both rolled into the ACCCG with 2 losses, a defacto elimination game. In the previous non-game sim we did, FSU ran the table until the National Championship Game, and so he thought they'd be unstoppable. This time he had cooled off investing in his favorite team after that 2nd loss, but got plucky as the calendar rolled to November and they still had a puncher's shot. The post-season games are simmed individually, with numerical dice. The roll for the ACCCG was the bare-minimum the Tigers needed to defeat the Seminoles! Haha! ... I simmed the remainder of the playoffs silently by myself and let him know the final outcome.

The experience let me know that while a Seminole fan would enjoy rooting for his team because they are so very good, Florida Gator fans such as myself might enjoy the game a bit more if there were a mechanism to make them competitive too. 9+ wins and a Top 25 finish should at least be a 50:50 proposition. That mechanism will have to be added.

(12-04-2023 07:44 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  PM me if you’re interested.

It is fun to see all the various ideas on this thread. I'm able to commit about 0-4 hours a week to personal projects like this, so I'm not in a position to regularly collaborate as many have offered here or in PMs.

My next step now is actually to review all the ideas from this very thread. While "TV execs" has been my default idea, I found it difficult to put too much game-level detail (which conference owns which game) onto the cards. It is do-able, but I will want to re-explore other ideas. The basic game my son and I played where we count points for playoff teams might be the kernel of a real game. But I would like to add more linear story elements.

If folks have more ideas, thanks for sharing.

(01-21-2024 09:32 PM)Crayton Wrote:  ....
If folks have more ideas, thanks for sharing.

Just an idea for a game name. Coach Carousel.

All rights waived. Have at it.