The Portable Patented Plastic Building Brick Bot Building game - P3B4 for short ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the first draft of a Lego game called P3B4. It was born from a Lugnet discussion started by Jon Palmer about using a small tackle box to carry small lego parts for portable building pleasure, specifically to build little robots. Shaun Sullivan then suggested that it would make a good format for a Lego game that people could carry round with them, play at cons and so on. This is my starting off point for such a game. Give it a go, let me know what you think - email me at waferthinninja@hotmail.com. Overview -------- The aim of the game is to have the only surviving bot factory. This goal is achieved by building Bots of Destruction and using them to attack other factories. Setup ----- Each player starts with 50 lego pieces, plus a 4x4 plate. The 50 pieces must be built onto the plate to form your bot factory. The way you build your factory is important, as you will only be able to take pieces from the top of your base to build your bots. The area in front of your base is you Active area where you place completed bots, and the area behind your base is your Construction Yard where you build and repair them. The box you brought the lego in is your Trash heap, where detroyed parts are put. Parts types ----------- These definitions are guidelines at the moment, as I certainly haven't covered every suitable part. There are also many ambiguous parts which could be used in different contexts - for example a 1x1 cone could be a propulsion jet if placed at the back of the bot, or a death ray if placed at the front. For now, I say let people use them in either context, as long as they make it clear which it is when they build the bot: Close combat weapons: chainsaws, claws (1x1 plate with clip), lightsabers, swords, axes etc. Ranged weapons: guns (control sticks, cones, 1x1 rounds, space guns, taps, loudhailers etc), lasers (1x1 transparent round plates or bricks), missiles (those finned cone things) Motive devices: Wheels, legs, propulsion jets (cone placed on bottom or at back of bot), Hover pads (small radar dish placed at bottom of bot) etc. Defensive devices: tiles, small radar dishes placed anywhere but bottom, shields, boat studs, 2x2 round plates etc. Chassis parts: Anything not covered above, generally used only to hold the robot together. E.g. bricks, plates, brackets, hinges, etc. Turn Sequence ------------- Each player completes the following actions, then play passes to the next player 1) Parts Allocation 2) Building 3) Sortie 4) Deployment 5) Regenerate 1) Parts Allocation ---------------- You may move up to 5 pieces from your Factory to your Construction Yard. Pieces must be taken one at a time, and only from the "outside" of your factory - you cannot remove move other pieces to get at the bits you want. You may then move up to 5 pieces from your Construction Yard to your Factory, adding them however you wish. 2) Building ----------- You may use parts in the Construction Yard to build bots. A completed bot must have at least one motive device. Note that Completed bots may not deploy until after the sortie phase. Bots must be connected together reasonably sturdily. Once Deployed, parts that fall off bots during normal handling are considered destroyed and put in your Trash heap. 3) Sortie --------- You may send your bots on a sortie to attack another Factory. You can choose not to. a) Assign attackers Decide which of your bots are going to attack, and whose Factory they are going after. Only Active bots can attack. b) Intercept The defending player can try to intercept the attacker with one or more of his own bots. The attacker can either fight the defending bots, or try to outmaneouvre it. To outmaneouvre, each player rolls a D6 (a normal 6 sided die) and adds the number of motive devices on their slowest bot. If the attacker is higher he has bypassed the defender. If the defender is higher or equal, the bots fight. c) If the attacker destroys all motive devices of the interceptors, he may continue to the Factory with any of his own bots which still have motive devices. He will do 1 damage for each weapon on the bots that reach the factory. Bot Fights ---------- To determine the outcome of the fight, each player simultaneously rolls a D6 and adds the number of weapons on his bot, minus the number of defensive devices on his opponents bot. The result is the amount of damage done. This is repeated as long as both sides wish to continue. Bots with no weapons do not roll D6 - they do only 1 damage (through ramming). Damage ------ Damage is the number of parts which are then removed from the opposing bot. The first part is removed by the bots owner, then it alternates between the opponent and the owner. So if my bot has just taken 3 damage, I remove a part, then you do, then I remove the last. Parts must be taken from the extremeties of the bot (i.e. I can't choose to destroy a part in the middle of the bot). Damage to Factories is handled in the same way. Bots whose motive devices are destroyed are capable only of limping back to the Construction Yard. 4) Deployment ------------- You may move any completed robots from the Construction Yard to the Active area. Note that the turn sequence means you cannot use these bots in your sortie this turn, but they are available to defend against other people. You may move bots from the Active area to the Construction Yard for repair/recycling. Bots moved to the Construction Yard may disassemble themselves at will. 5) Regenerate ------------- You may return one part from your Trash heap to your Factory. (This is to prevent stalemate in the event that all weapons are detroyed!) Ideas ------------------ The following are ideas in the works to improve the game, either to counteract problems or increase the game's depth. If you have any thoughts, let me know. * Points system. A points system would make the game more balanced: - Certain parts are in almost all cases better than other parts. For example, the 1x1 brick with studs on all the sides is better than the "headlamp" brick which has only one extra stud. This gives an unfair advantage to people with a large lego collection. With some sort of points system it would be possible even things like this out. - A points system would allow the introduction of more varied and interesting parts, with new game effects - different types of shields, cloaking devices, teleporters, disruption beams, Really Big Guns and so on. - on the con side, a points system would require players to think a lot more when creating their factories. The game would lose that "grab some parts and play" feel. * Elemental dominance. This would give meaning to the colours of the parts. e.g. White would be ice, red=fire, blue=water. Elemental dominance would give advantages. E.g. a white ice gun would do more damage to a water based robot. - not sure exactly how/if to add this at the moment because a) there are absolutely *loads* of colours now, and finding meanings and easy to remember relationships between them is hard. Damn you Potter! Damn you!!!! b) Certain parts are hard to find or simply not available in certain colours. c) gives an advantage to those with large lego collections. * Game length. Shorter or longer games can be achieved by decreasing or increasing the amount of parts, or by allowing the factory to regenerate less/more/no parts from the Trash heap after each turn. * The Sortie phase could be reworked to allow more than one sortie, although I think this would complicate things unneccesarily * Possible new parts: - Factory only parts which increase regeneration rate or part allocation rate. Could not be used to build robots. - Cloaking parts - increase the chance of bypassing interceptors - Sensors - increase chance of intercepting - Turrets - allow creation of tough defence only bots that need no motive devices - Missiles - one use weapons which do more damage These new parts could be specific parts in specific colours - e.g. cloaking devices would be black 1x2 slope bricks or something.