"X-Marks the Spot" Or the Pirate themed post

Nottice: I am feeling very piratey today and as such will be in character for this post.

Arrrrghhh mateys are ye bold enough to brave the seas to find the treasure?  Then ye must play me game "X-Marks the Spot" a race to the island where the treasure be burried.

The rules be very simple even for ye land lubbers and even simpler for a pirate.

X-Marks the spot game rules

1.       Roll a die to move ahead.

2.       Each player starts with as many map tokens as there are players. (ex.: 4 players=4 map tokens each)

3.       At the start of the game each player rolls the die highest number goes first then goes around clockwise.

4.       You can skip your turn if you want, but you must take your next turn.

5.       When you land on a space with another player a duel must commence.

6.       To duel each player rolls the die, highest number wins.  In the event of a tie just roll again.

a.       Loser must forfeit one map piece.

b.      Winner takes one map piece from the loser.

7.       The first player to reach the Goal Island is the winner.

a.       You must have at least your starting number of map tokens to get to goal.

8.       You cannot move backwards.

a.       You can’t move backwards in or out of the fog.

9.       Each space has a different effect except for blank spaces which are ordinary spaces.

a.       Got Lost space: go back to the nearest blank space.

b.      Ride the ride space: Ride the tide in the indicated direction.

c.       Troublemaker space: send any player back to nearest cove.

d.      Storm: Lose a turn.

e.      Doubloon: Get an extra turn.

f.        Navy Attacks space: roll a die and go back that many spaces.

g.       Whirlpool: Swap places with any player.

h.      Cove: safe spot, while you are in that space you cannot be dueled, switched, or sent back to start.

10.   While in the fog if you do not have enough map pieces you must circle through the fog until you have at least your starting number.

 

Now we shall resume normalcy.

Designing the game at the start was much harder than I thought.  I had so many ideas they got stuck and started bottlenecking on the way out.  It was mainly a matter of getting the idea from my head out onto paper but after a few hours of throwing ideas at the wall and recalling my childhood faveorites: "Candyland" and "Chutes and Ladders" I was able to at least scribble an idea out.  My idea was a "race to the finish" game with a little twist barrowing from my earlier tooth fairy game. 

The main requirment as stated in the above rules is that you need at least your starting number of map peices and if you don't you have to circle around in the fog until you do.

The first pass went fairly well and through play testing I was able to polish the rules and was a little less sadistic with the effect spaces and proved more normal spaces for players to land on and changed the rules to allow for quicker gameplay. 

Since it was a paper prototype I was more concerned about gameplay than how it looked.  In fact the color was added in at almost the very last second just to "brighten" it up a smidge.  If I go back to this game it most likely will undergo another total makeover and this board might get wadded up and recycled-or not.