Basic Intro/Concepts

Graffiti is a game based around ... graffiti. Each player acts as a "crew" of 3 graffiti artists.

(please see the "graffiti game" tagged entries at phoning it industries game design blog)

The board is an illustrated city. There are 5 zones to the board. Ascending at the bottom from Zone 1 to Zone 5 at the top. Each zone has rectangular grids to place graffiti tiles. (2 high by 3 long)

There are cards that have multiple functions:

1) Movement - each card has a foot icon with a number in it, representing the number of zones they can move in a turn. They can pay any amount of cards to move a given amount.

2) Paint - Each card has a circle in the center with a color. This represents the color of the paint that can be painted - in another corner, there is a paint-can icon with a number indicating how much paint the card is worth.

3) Mitigation - Another corner will have an X icon with a number. This will indicate how many dice a player can roll to attempt to mitigate detection by the detection phase/dice.

Tiles

There are colorful graffiti tiles of various sizes to represent the graffiti that can be painted on the walls of the city buildings.

These tiles have dots on them indicating the required color and amount of paint needed to play the tile. There is also a time (number of rounds) element (whether this is indicated by the paint-dots or a separate time/clock indicator on the tile is to be discovered).

Players spend cards to move into position on a specific wall that they want to target (using the foot icons and numbers on the feet to indicate how many spaces can be moved), then they pay the proper number and color of cards to play the tile.

For every given round that they are required to play (as indicated by the time icon in the upper right hand side), they must roll the proper number of catastrophe dice (indicated by the current zone they are in) to find out if they are caught by the cops.

If a player plays a smaller piece that only requires one turn, they can then move their pawns to another region to paint after the piece is completed. If a pawn is in a region that requires a longer time to paint, then they leave their pawn there until the number of turns/rounds is over, or until they run away due to detection via the catastrophe dice. If a piece is not finished, and the pawn isn't there to work on it, they slowly lose chips from the piece if they don't return and must permanently abandon that piece if all the tokens are taken off and they don't return in time to finish it.

If they are in Zone 1, they will only need to roll the first die. Zone 2, 2 dice, etc.. up to the full set of 5 dice if they try to paint in zone 5. They have to do this for each round that their pawn is at that space. If they succeed, a round paint-chip (token) is added until the full number of tokens are added.

Mitigation

I will try to implement a mitigation strategy, either using a separate set of dice, alternate symbols on the catastrophe dice, or some other thing. Most likely, these dice will be purchased with the same cards that act as movement and painting. Different cards have different numbers on them indicating their ability to mitigate detection, to indicate movement (some allow only movement to 1 zone adjacent, others might allow travel up to 3 zones away)...

UNIQUE BONUSES:

I think that I need to have a unique bonus to each region as well, in order to attempt to get players to "bid" on a zone (as opposed to just painting graffiti for a score and then not caring which surface since all surfaces of a given level would provide the same benefit -- making each wall a "scarce" resource since they're unique in some way).

How it would be implemented:

Bonus board - Each player has a board in front of them to keep track of all the bonus abilities they've collected (via completing a graffiti on a specific region and getting the associated benefit). Once a piece in a zone is completed a player places a token on the board that represents they can use the given ability. They can have any number of tokens on the board at a time, but everytime they use the ability, they pay a token to "the bank". If they run out of tokens on a space, they can't pay for that ability.

Potential Bonuses:

MIXMASTER - Player can "mix" two primary color cards (red, yellow, blue) to become a secondary color card (orange, green, purple) -- I think to find the amount of paint (as indicated by the spray can icon) you add the two numbers of the primary cards, and then divide by 2. So say you had a Red 1 and a Yellow 3. That would give you 2 orange ( (1+3)/2 = 2). If a player wants more of a given color, they can pay more paint of one of the two colors... This is used at the time you need the color - You do not obtain some equivalent number of cards to hold onto until you need them.

Trade 2 - one concept I'm thinking of doing is during your turn - you can trade one card from your hand to obtain another one from either the tableau of cards or from the top of the deck. A possible ability would be to allow for a player to trade 2 cards to obtain 2 new ones. (in addition to the normal draw phase or whatever I decide for mechanics to obtain cards).

Permutations for tiles:

1 dot of paint: (6) {r} {o} {y} {g} {b} {v}

2 dots of paint: (15) {r,o} {r,y} {r,g} {r,b} {r,v} {o,y} {o,g} {o,b} {o,v} {y,g} {y,b} {y,v} {g,b} {g,v} {b,v}

3 dots of paint: (20) {r,o,y} {r,o,g} {r,o,b} {r,o,v} {r,y,g} {r,y,b} {r,y,v} {r,g,b} {r,g,v} {r,b,v} {o,y,g} {o,y,b} {o,y,v} {o,g,b} {o,g,v} {o,b,v} {y,g,b} {y,g,v} {y,b,v} {g,b,v}

4 dots of paint: (15) {r,o,y,g} {r,o,y,b} {r,o,y,v} {r,o,g,b} {r,o,g,v} {r,o,b,v} {r,y,g,b} {r,y,g,v} {r,y,b,v} {r,g,b,v} {o,y,g,b} {o,y,g,v} {o,y,b,v} {o,g,b,v} {y,g,b,v}

5 dots of paint: (6) {r,o,y,g,b} {r,o,y,g,v} {r,o,y,b,v} {r,o,g,b,v} {r,y,g,b,v} {o,y,g,b,v}