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Thief Board Game "Beta"
   
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Game Category: Board Games, Original Games
Tags: Misc, 4+
File Size
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28 Jun, 2015 @ 6:09am
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Thief Board Game "Beta"

Description
This started life as a simple reskin of the Monopoly board before I quickly realised "What kind of thief BUYS property?" From that thought I've tried to carve out a derivative but hopefully unique enough board game. You don't need to be a fan of the Thief series to appreciate the sneaky, treacherous gameplay. Up to 8 players can play.

-- SETTING UP --

Shuffle both card decks and randomly add 4 loot tokens to the last four districts, one for each district. For each person that's playing, distribute a 'turn tracker' card and a counter, and place your player pieces at the "Hideout" square. Each player then rolls the two white die (referred to from herein as the move die) to dictate the order they'll take their turns (highest roller goes first).

-- CORE GAMEPLAY --

Move along the board by rolling the move dices. When you land on a location/property, you can choose to rob it or leave it alone. The location square will list the gold payoff you get and its difficulty, denoted by a padlock and a number. Well, no-one was going to let you steal stuff willy-nilly, were they?

When you attempt to rob a location, roll the dices you would normally use for moving. Then, roll one of the red die (referred to as Opposing Roll Die) relevant to the property's difficulty rating. A list of dice and difficulty ratings:

Difficulty 1 - D6
Difficulty 2 - D8
Difficulty 3 - D10
Difficulty 4 - D12
Difficulty 5 - D20

Once the opposing roll die has been rolled, compare its result to the result of your movement dice. If your value is higher, you win the robbery roll, and take the amount of gold stated on the property square and any loot tokens present on the property aswell.
If you fail the roll, then you have to pay a fine of 50g, multipled by the difficulty rating of the property. If you cannot pay this fine, you go straight to jail.
If your roll matches the opposing roll, then you roll again until a winner is determined.

Players can also rob each other! If a player lands on the same square as another player, they may attempt a robbery roll on them. Each player rolls the move dice and the player with the highest result wins and helps himself to 150g from the other player's gold pool.

Once all players have ended their twentieth turn, the game ends and the person who holds the highest amount of gold wins!

-- OTHER GAMEPLAY FEATURES --

PRISON: If a player ends up in prison, then they may spend their turns attempting to roll doubles to escape. After three turns they are automatically freed. If a player escapes by rolling doubles, they can then move that amount immediately.

LOOT TOKENS: Four of these are distributed at the start of the game and more may enter later on in the game through other means. These are found in properties and are obtained when a player successfully robs that location. A player holds onto the tokens he acquires until he lands on a "Fence your loot" square. When this happens, the player discards his loot tokens and earns 200g for each one he discards.

EVENT AND ITEM CARDS: When a player lands on a event square, they must draw the top card from the event deck and follow the instructions on the card. If a player lands on a Black Market square, they may choose to spend 150g to take the top card from the item deck, and (unless otherwise stated) keep it and use it as they wish.

GUARDS: If a player lands on the Shoalsgate Station square, then take one of the Guard tokens located near the board and put it on the square. After the player who landed on the square takes his next turn, the guard also begins to move, using a single D6; he then moves at the end of each player's turn. If a guard lands on a square occupied by a player (or vice versa), then that player is sent to prison.

== FEEDBACK ==

I've been steadily working on bringing this boardgame into fruition but there are some things I'm indecisive on. Thus, I'd appreciate some feedback on the following elements in the game:

Opposing Roll Dice: This is bothering me as I've used two different sets of die for these rolls - one feels too easy and one feels too harsh. I'd like to hear other people's opinions. Play a couple of games with these two difficulty sets:

Set 1: Difficulty 1 = D4, 2 = D6, 3 = D8, 4 = D10, 5 = D12
Set 2: Difficulty 1 = D6, 2 = D8, 3 = D10, 4 = D12, 5 = D20

Guards: I'm uncertain about the potency of guards. I want to maintain a feeling of danger and risk as you play, and the guards are a way of having this feeling. However, I've played entire games without one guard spawning and wonder if there should be another way of having them come into play, or make them more dangerous when they do.

2 Comments
Boweh 18 Oct, 2016 @ 11:12pm 
copied/pasted for length

The third thing actually kind of nullifies the second almost, and it's that if you struggle with rng control with two dice sets rolled against each other for robbery, you can easily reduce that to one. Instead of a roll, give each property a target number to reach and the player simply rolls the movement dice to check to steal. This way, you can have far more control over thievery odds, rolling low on movement is no longer a huge disadvantage in multiple ways, and you can make the progression match that of an original monopolu board (3/4, 4/4/5, 5/5/6, 6/6/7, 7/7/8, 8/8/9/ 9/9/10, 10/11 (or with enough rng boosting cards or effects at a player's disposal, 11/12)). Again this way, you have target numbers right on the board rather than a difficulty rating and a target number or target dice, which cuts out not one but two middle men.

Good luck with the project and all. I might take a closer look sometime, but it's kinda late right now to be honest.
Boweh 18 Oct, 2016 @ 11:11pm 
I would advise three things, just by reading the description on this workshop page.

Firstly, remember that rolling multiple copies of the same die is possible. If the d12 and d20 are giving a lot of variance, you can easily change them into bell curves with 2d6 and 3d6, and though 3d6 can be a challenge, it's more reliable to at least be below 12. As a side effect, it also means players get to roll more dice, which is a plus, and that less types of dice are needed for the game, also a plus.

The second thing I would reccomend is to print the dice required straight onto the board along with each property. If all cards or effects that interact with dc instead read "property with a difficulty of 2d6 or less", you could even remove the difficulty number entirely. Less things to check, less rules to try and memorize, far more straightforward casual gaming experience.