Moon Drop

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Early draft of a replayable roll-and-write dice game based on The Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Kevan, as discussed on the Slack channel.

You will need

  • Four white dice and one blue (or any five dice; you'll just have to roll them in turn)
  • A 9x9 grid on a sheet of paper, for each player
  • A pen for each player

Gameplay

Block shapes

The game is played over seven rounds. Start each round by generating a block:

  • One player rolls all five dice
  • The blue die determines the block shape (per diagram to the right)
  • The white dice should then be shaped to form that block, placing the lowest white die on the 1 square, the next lowest on the 2, and so on

Each player then copies that block onto their grid, in any location and rotation they wish. It can't overwrite existing blocks, and blocks can only be rotated, not mirrored. The white dice values correspond to six types of module:-

  1. Corridor. (drawn as a dot, players can add lines to adjacent Rooms if they like)
  2. Corridor.
  3. Life Support (drawn as a triangle) or Hydroponics (drawn as three circles in a triangle)
  4. Quarters (drawn as a Q)
  5. Dock (drawn as an arch)
  6. Research (drawn as a square)

Continue placing until seven rounds have been played, then proceed to scoring.

Scoring system #1

Some keywords:

  • A Room is a module that's not a Corridor
  • A Building is a group of contiguous modules that do not have any other modules contiguous with them. (Adjacency is always orthogonal.)
  • When a module is crossed out it still counts as a module, but is a module of no particular type. You can't cross out a module that's already been crossed out.

Crewmembers can "reach" a Room if you can trace a path from a Quarters to it. This path can only be along Corridors and Docks, and crew can also move between any two Docks as part of a path.

A Safety Check is the following set of actions:-

  • Check Routes: Cross out any Rooms which your crewmembers cannot reach
  • Life Support: If a building has no Life Support, cross out all Quarters in that building
  • Check Routes again
  • Hydroponics: If a building has more Quarters than Hydroponics, cross out Quarters until it has as many as Hydroponics
  • Check Routes again

Crises and Goals

Trying something new for the final scoring. At the start of the game, deal out three Crisis cards face-up from a deck and two Goal cards from another deck. (Narratively, the Crisis cards are problems you've been warned about during the moonbase's construction - that the corridors you've been supplied with aren't vacuum-safe, that a terrorist group is angry at the moon, etc.) Each Crisis has a "Safe" criteria, and an "If failed" effect that you must apply if you fail it.

  • Crisis: Fire: Safe if: Every Building has 1 Life Support. If failed: Cross out 2 Rooms in each building which failed.
  • Crisis: Breach: Safe if: No corridors are adjacent to empty squares. If failed: Cross out 1 Room for each such corridor.
  • Crisis: Plague: Safe if: You have no Quarters adjacent to other Quarters. If failed: Cross out all Quarters which are adjacent to other Quarters.
  • Crisis: Quake: Safe if: Every Module is adjacent to at least two others. If failed: Cross out each Module which isn't.
  • Crisis: Fungus: Safe if: Every Hydroponics is adjacent to a Life Support. If failed: Cross out each Hydroponics which isn't.
  • Crisis: Sabotage: Safe if: Every Dock is adjacent to a Quarters. If failed: Select your largest group of Rooms and cross it all out.
  • Goal: Research: +1 for each Research Module which has not been crossed out.
  • Goal: Mining: +1 for each empty square which has no path to the edge of the grid.
  • Goal: Efficiency: +1 for every square in your largest corridor.
  • Goal: Population: +1 for every Quarters which has not been crossed out.
  • Goal: Security: +4 for each Building with Life Support beyond the first

At the end of the game, everyone performs a Safety Check. Then shuffle the three Crisis cards and resolve them in a random order, performing a Safety Check after each one. Then score the Goal cards.

Variations to test

  • Allow blocks to be mirrored: this requires only five faces on the blue die (and could bring back the 2x2 block), so the sixth face could be some kind of free placement.
  • Allow players to overwrite blocks, but destroying that square in the process (scribbling it out).
  • Have corridors function based on how they're drawn: you can choose not to join a corridor to an adjacent block.

Playtesting tool

I've put a dice rolling tool up at https://blognomic.com/tools/moondrop.php to allow easy online playtesting. --Kevan (talk) 09:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)