Meeting Notes: 2/1

Okay, so Al, Ryan and I met at Burger King (excellent idea...three dollar double cheeseburger meal = WOO!) and here's what we came up with. Sorry if this seems to go a little out of order...I'm basically putting things in as I remember them/find them in my notes:

• Our basic premise is that you are one of the Egyptian gods. The life force under your protection is either plants or animals. Your goal is to control the Fertile Crescent by placing your species on the board, traveling through time to affect the evolution of the present, and working to sabotage your opponent.
  
• We'll be using a two board system (one is the past, one is the present). The layout is a hex system that represents the territory of our map.
  
• Our location is Africa, specifically Mesopotamia (the Nile River valley). Time periods are based around humanity's development: in the past, they're tribal Neadertal types, in the present, they're early Egyptians. The present is where the win condition occurs; the past is a means of changing the present, but is not in itself used for "scoring".
  
• Humanity is our chaos factor. Our chaos cards are basically events in human development, something like "humans discover fire: lose all trees within x area" or "humans invent the spear: lose all lions within x area" or "humans start farming: clear all plants/animals within x area"
  
• If you play as animals, your species will all be carnivores. If you play as plants, your plants are all harmless (trees, fruit, etc).
  
• Interrupt cards come in the form of species. Meaning, if you're playing as plants, you may periodically draw a "poisonous plant" card, at which point you can place a poisonous plant on the board and wipe out the animal species within a certain radius. If you're playing as animals, you'll draw a herbivore card, and that species will eat all the plants within a certain radius.
  
• There are two time periods in which you can play: the past and the present. Getting to the past takes one turn (see turn breakdown) and you may only stay there for two turns. Anything you do in the past will be multiplied and reflected in the present (so if you plant one tree in the past, you will have a copse of trees in the present). The patterns in which various species expand over time will be particular to each species. (see Diana's future entry on this).
  
• Turn breakdown (go through these steps in order, skipping 1 and 2 where appropriate): 1. If you are in the present, draw cards. If you draw a humanity card, it is played immediately. 2. Move back or forward in time (doing so ends your turn). 3. Play cards in your hand (put resources on the board, or evolve species). 4. Move pieces. Battle where conflicts arise (see Al's future entry on the battle system.
  
• Because the game is taking place in Africa (and effectively, Egypt) we'll use an Egyptian theme. Your player avatar is an Egyptian god, the people you encounter are Egyptians (or proto-Egyptians), the graphics all follow an Egyptian motif, etc.
  
• There are two decks: one for plants, one for animals. Each deck contains resource cards (units of plant or animal), interrupt cards (poison or herbivores), chaos cards (humans), and evolution cards (see evolution system).
  
• Evolution System: as we discussed in class on Tuesday, we want a system whereby existing species can be upgraded, or "evolved", by giving them new traits and abilities. These traits and abilities are dictated by cards drawn from the deck, and can be added to any species at the player's discretion.

Things to work on for next meeting (Sunday at 2p in IML):

• Diana: Decide which Egyptian gods to use as avatars for the plant and animal sides. Choose three plant and three animal types, and lay out their basic attributes (expansion patterns, base abilities, etc).
  
• Al: Obtain "pieces" (tokens, Legos, etc) that can be used to represent elements on the board. Work out a simple combat system (likely D6). Email the hex pattern file to Ryan.
  
• Ryan and Lily: Design the board(s). They should have the exact same grid, but the art can vary slightly (for example, if you put a settlement of humans on as decoration, in the past they would be primitive huts and in the "present" they would be pyramids).
  
• We need a win condition! Obviously, "control all the territory" comes to mind, but if we don't want this game to last forever, we might want to consider coming up with some win conditions that would happen sooner (ie. you have twice as much territory as your opponent).

Goals for Sunday:

• Solidify the first set of rules.
  
• Create cards.
  
• First round of playtesting.

Things to consider for future versions:

• A three-board system. The earliest time period contains no humans, but has the most opportunity for your strategy to be disrupted later in history. The second time period has primitive humans, is affected by what happened in the previous time period, and changes what happens in the third time period. The third time period has somewhat sophisticated humans (early Egyptians), is affected by both previous time periods, and is the basis for winning or losing.
  
• Change how chaos cards happen. For the first round, we'll mix them into the deck and they will occur randomly. For another round, we separate them as their own deck, and one humanity card is played per turn cycle (ie. after each player takes a turn, a humanity card is drawn and played).

Whew! That should keep us plenty busy over the next few days. Al, Ryan, feel free to add anything I've forgotten. Everyone, as you get things done, go ahead and post them here (this includes images) so we can just pull this up on Sunday and get going. Looking forward to what everyone comes up with; see you Sunday!

-Diana