Boardy Games

Is there a specific reason why it's two separate but overlapping games, instead of a single game with orthogonal goals?

This isn't a suggestion so much as a request for more information. Why would you do it this way instead of another way?

Is there a difference? Or do you mean that the mechanics the two groups use are the same? To me it doesn't matter. I think it sounds more fun if the two groups are differrent, but that's hardly important.

Are there already games like that?

I like the idea of interdependent games, and can't think of anything that does this. I would quite like to try a game like this outside of a board game context (I know, the "board" is right there in the URL, sorry...), with some sort of running-around-outside element.

A related format for a game (in terms of encouraging alliances between people playing different games) might be to have a planet that's going to be destroyed, and a spaceship with four spaces left on it. Sixteen players - four groups of four. Each group has a different task to accomplish; it's quite a difficult task, but if they manage it they get control of the spaceship and they're all saved! More often than not, however, no group will accomplish their task, and the most successful player in each group will get a seat on the spaceship, while the others are left behind.

Deals between members of different groups would help both - so if you co-operate with someone outside your group, you decrease the chance of saving everyone in your group, but increase your chance of being the best in your group.

The main problem with this that I can see is that you could get three groups furiously wheeling and dealing and doing lots of exciting things, and feeling let down at the end if the other group has just diligently accomplished their Quite Difficult Task and made everyone else's efforts irrelevant.

No need to apologize--the "-y" is also there in the URL, and I'd like it if this site generated Ludocity-style games as well.

I think having two related but separate games is justifiable and interesting--for example, you could have two games that support completely different styles of play, allowing people who like auction games to be playing on one end of the table and those who like territory-control games to be playing on the other, but still interacting and having fun together. Of course, I suppose everyone involved should like the deals-and-alliances style of play, but that's not uncommon.

Simon, I like your tossed-off "directors and actors" idea, but it might be more thematically sound to have one game about being the "creatives" (trying to succesfully put together the movie) and the other about being the "suits" (trying to secure funding, merchandising deals, ads, etc). Helping someone make a good movie certainly helps with the marketing, but it's by no means necessary; conversely, it's nice to have an extra $10 million in the budget, but who can say whether that will actually make for a better film?

First of all, hello. There doesn't seem to be an intro thread, so I shall say that I like making and playing games, although I don't spend as much time doing that as I do writing stories and programs. I have played a number of games with Kevan of this parish, and it was he who pointed me in this direction.

Anyway.

The closest I have seen to multiple games in the same space is the kind of thing that tends to happen in Nomics: sub-games are introduced which are orthogonal to the goals of the Nomic. The example closest to my heart was Mornington Nomic, where the nomic mechanics were tool to create a playable Morningtonc Crescent rule set. So there were two game classes going on simultaneously: MC games, and the Nomic ruleset game.

However, this is not a close match to the original post just because the nomic portion stopped being a winnable portion of the game - the MC games became the primary goal-centred element.