Thief Boardgame?! - TTLG Forums

Sharga on 18/8/2014 at 20:23

Hi guys, whazzup? :D

As you may or may not know, I love Thief and boardgames (almost equally). But, to my knowledge, never the twain have met.
This, my friends, is a sad state of affairs.

Thus my questions:

1. Have you played a boardgame that was "Thief-y"?
a. If so, do tell!
b. What did you enjoy about it?

2. Were an actual Thief boardgame to exist:
a. What elements/mechanics would you want included?
b. What would you not want in there?

I must admit, in full disclosure, that I have some ulterior motives in asking such questions. I think I've come up with an idea for a great game that, while being completely unassociated due to copyright laws, could essentially be Thief: The Boardgame (but with an obviously different name). ;)

Twist on 18/8/2014 at 22:24

Funny you should post about this now. I just recently Googled around for a Thiefy boardgame. I found the following -- which I haven't played yet so I can't answer your questions -- but it looks pretty interesting to me:

(http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1484/clue-great-museum-caper)
(http://aboardgameaday.blogspot.com/2013/03/clue-great-museum-caper.html)

Quote:

As the thief, you secretly plot your movements around a private art museum. As you go, the detectives take turns trying to find you with their eyes, the video cameras, or motion detectors. You can deactivate the cameras, and you can even cut off the power to the entire museum to mask your movements. Another advantage is that the thief gets a turn after every detective's individual turn.

Anyone here try this yet?

Kolya on 18/8/2014 at 22:33

I would want to be able to play it alone. No joke. Solitude makes up a lot of the atmosphere of the original game. And if you end up with someone having to play the guards no one will want to anyway.

Thor on 18/8/2014 at 23:02

Hey man, good to see you here.

I happen to have played a lot of board games myself, but indeed I scarcely can think of any that involved any Thief elements. :erg:
"Dominion" card game had some thiefsy cards where you could attack another player and steal something from their stuff or something like that, but I'm not sure, it's been a while since I've played it.

What mechanics could be interesting to see in a board game? I think that elements from stealth games (Thief, Dishonored, perhaps NOLF 2 (it had some nice ideas), Mark of the Ninja and others) could actually be brought to life in a creative way in a board game. Consider a game, maybe with an idea similar to Robin Hood (to justify being a thief and being able to market it) where the player is a thief who robs from the rich. Ok, there are a lot of ways to approach this... Fundamentally I think that in a stealth game geometry would have to play a considerable role.
I'm gonna sketch this idea with more or less just Thief in mind:
You could have some manor (or alternatively catacombs, city, temples, ...) drawn on the map with spaces to advance from (windows, gardens or something else) and entering [phase 1] through a certain path would require certain skillset/attributes (climbing skills vs sensing people around you or something like that). That skillset could be randomised for a player, or something more creative.
Then inside the manor you have to have skills to avoid the guards by hiding in the shadows or using the geometry (or both) and also have to be quiet on the floor. But only when the player is inside the manor, he gets to know where the guards are, how are they patrolling and what kind of guards they are (perhaps some guard is drunk with low vision range and low danger in general, one is ultra fast, one has an eagle's eye. Those would be "special guards"). Player then must decide where to move based on his skillset (climb the rafters, sneak into a shadow, quickly run past a short hallway to hide behind an object) and/or use some skill/item (like a flashbomb analogue, water arrow, rope arrow). Oh, and the loot or prized item that he's searching for should also be randomized to some extent, probably (unless it's something glorious and could only be put on the most grand pedestal ever) and he'd only know where it is when it's within his line of sight. Ok, this is starting to sound far too complicated and convoluted, but hey. :joke:
Oh, and if player gets caught he'd have to use some special move to get away with minor injury and perhaps lose a skill or something.
This sounds like a 1 person game, but imagine it being a Mission X, an epic co-op where everyone does their part. A free-for-all competetive mode might work too. Edit: Or play it alone. Why not.

I just made this up now on the fly, but another problem I see (here is that the player would know how the manor looked like before the actual thief did. But I suppose the gameplay compromise is the randomized guard patrols n stuff. Also you'd have to have a lot of versions and really sophisticated ones to make the game replayable an interesting. So perhaps there's a simpler, better approach.

tl;dr I'm gorn to bed now.

Edit: Yeah, my ramblings were far too ambitious. But hey, whenever you can't think of a good mechanic, just replace it with a rolling dice!

R Soul on 18/8/2014 at 23:15

I used to have a pop up board game called (http://cobwebbedroom.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/ghost-castle-board-game-1980s.html) Ghost Castle, but I didn't play it much because either I didn't understand it or I wasn't interested.

Starker on 18/8/2014 at 23:23

Quote Posted by Twist

Anyone here try this yet?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11pcPpDePLs)

Sharga on 19/8/2014 at 01:47

@Twist- That actually looks fairly Thiefy, and pretty cool. Also, from the video, that box is huge (or the guy is small)! It is a bit complex, but not too bad, I think most people could understand the concepts and play in a reasonable amount of time. It does share some similarities with the game I had in mind, but I think I'd have enough of a difference to still justify making it.

@Kolya- I think that's possible. The guards would need some kind of programmed movement that also had an unpredictable element (such as a dice roll). However, I'm not a huge fan of solo boardgames. I feel like computer games cover that all too well and they even have plenty of digital boardgames you could play solo. Though perhaps an app version of the game I have in mind with good ai would be fun. But when it comes to cardboard, plastic and paper, I prefer having friends around. I don't think playing the guards would have to be boring. There are plenty of co-op boardgames where everyone is against one person and it's highly enjoyable. A couple examples that come to mind: (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20963/fury-dracula) Fury of Dracula and (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36648/pyramid) Pyramid (which is semi, co-op but there is one "enemy" against everyone else. Fury of Drac is actually a fairly good one since Drac is hidden for most of the game with people using deduction to determine his location and hunt him down before he wins.

@Thor- I have played Dominion and Ascension (similar mechanics) but neither are really very Thiefy. I think the idea you propose could work, though it would be fairly complex with a lot of rules to cover and remember. Very RPG-ish. Something like (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-dark) Descent I think. That could be very fun, but would appeal to a limited audience. Not necessarily a bad thing. I'd still like something that more people would be able to play. I think, similar to Descent, if you had a randomized and modulated board, the game could be more replayable and interesting. So the map would be assembled from smaller pieces at the start with some structure to how you put them together.

@R Soul- Ghost Castle certainly has a lot going for it visually. I wonder if the gameplay is actually good, hopefully more than just a roll and move.

Othere games I think have good elements to draw on are (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard) Scotland Yard (for it's find the thief/hidden location) and possibly (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21763/mr-jack) Mr Jack for the same reasons (though I haven't played that one myself).

SlyFoxx on 19/8/2014 at 14:38

Haven't ever played a thiefy board game but in honor of your return I'm firing up Mansion of Chaos.

Sharga on 19/8/2014 at 17:45

Quote Posted by SlyFoxx

Haven't ever played a thiefy board game but in honor of your return I'm firing up Mansion of Chaos.

I knew I liked you ;)

Careful for that water room that kills you. I never got around to fixing that one...sigh. :tsktsk:

Sharga on 19/8/2014 at 22:39

A few other games I thought of:

(http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9220/saboteur) Saboteur
Sure, it's about dwarves in a mine, but you do have path cards that make an interesting map and one team is trying to acquire gold while the other is seeking to prevent them.

(http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22278/thief-baghdad) The Thief of Baghdad
This one for obvious reasons, but one thing that is interesting is that every person plays a set of thieves and guards. The idea is that you have certain corrupt guards that are in cahoots with your thieves, allowing them to steal treasure from the palace.

(http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15364/vegas-showdown) Vegas Showdown
A bit more removed perhaps, but I like the use of different shaped pieces to build a map, which must have paths leading back to a certain point. Could be a good idea for building a manor-style map.

Edit:

Also (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65515/nuns-run) Nuns on the Run is a great game with mutiple people playing the "thieves" aka novice nuns trying to obtain certain objects without detection from the guards (elder nuns). The one major problem I see is that it's not all that fun playing the nuns.