Its the last night of the conference, and tomorrow I am heading to Indiannapolis to Gencon! I know things with the Game a Day series have been a bit haphazard lately, but I am still trying my best to juggle travelling and blogging regularly, so please bear with me! Today’s idea is a very brief game theme, inspired in part by the two Essen-themed games coming out later this year.


Day 43: Gencon Game

You are a game designer who is travelling to Gencon to try and sell your prototypes to publishers. The catch is, your opponents are designers as well, who are trying to beat you to getting their next game signed by a big publisher.

Each player would have a number of cards in their hand, representing their prototypes. Around a map of Gencon would be various publishers, each with a certain preference for different styles of games (your prototypes might belong to one or several types). On their turn, players move around the convention hall and try to schedule meetings with publishers who they think might like their games. Sometimes they might have to take an appointment at a later time (each game round is one hour) which means they have to plan to come back to that space at the exact time specified for the appointment.

Once a player is with a publisher, a personal preferences card is dealt face down to that publisher, representing their personal feelings from the meeting. A player must play cards from their hand, including exactly one prototype card, in order to try and exceed the value on the personal preference card. For each theme or type that the prototype matches with the publisher, you gain 1 point, and various persuasion and pitch cards can be played from your hand to boost your score as well. If you exceed the value, congratulations! Your game has been signed, and you gain an amount of fame and money depending on the publisher. That publisher is also now not available to any of the other players.

After a certain number of rounds the game ends and the player with the most fame wins!


Sorry for the slightly disjointed nature of this idea, I’m just really tired! Players might be interested in what being a game designer is like at these conventions, and there is plenty of scope to add more actions in to suit the theme. Do you think it would be fun?