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I'm looking for inspiration about mechanics for a game I would like to design for a course in education.

I'm juggling with the idea of a board game related to calligraphy. The theme is exploited in smartphone apps to a certain extent but they don't teach the actual tool. My main issue is with envisioning how players would decide who wins each round.

Calligraphy has certain types of drills that are done on paper, sometimes with models to trace over (example, and another example). The idea is to do it as clean as possible. My initial thoughts is having multiple players doing a certain drill like a race against time. But then the players would have to reach consensus about who wins this round, based on precision, cleanliness, speed of execution, etc.

I've seen this type of game done in phone applications with some scoring associated to the end product, but I've never seen a game that uses consensus among players for deciding who wins a round and it seems like it would be too fragile to make any sense but I'm curious... Are there such games?

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  • Do you need 100% consensus games whereby all players (except maybe for the one being chosen) must vote the same, or will simple-majority games suffice?
    – MirrorImage
    Sep 6, 2017 at 3:00
  • I thought about this after posting, I'd be interested in finding games using vote mechanisms as well...
    – curious
    Sep 6, 2017 at 3:25

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For starters, you cannot objectively have the scoring based on precision, cleanliness, etc. Players will vote however they want, which - depending on the system you use to collect votes - can allow for votes in bad faith, votes in error, and random votes. To compound the situation, more players voting on a single set of submissions will result in fewer and fewer unanimous votes.

For voting, you should look at Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity for one person judging all the other submissions. Bad Medicine has each player submit and judge each round. Dead Last is a different sort of voting system, but it could be very cool to implement this system in a more subjective context (e.g. All players secretly and simultaneously vote on the single best of several entries. After simultaneously revealing the votes, all players who did not vote with the majority lose).

You could also look at the video game "Quiplash", as part of the Jackbox party packs.

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  • This answer pretty much covers it I think. A game where the winner should be determined by objective criteria should not allow the players to make that decision because there is no reasonable way to enforce that objectivity. If Player A wants to ensure that Player B wins, they'll vote for Player B, even if Player C clearly has the objectively better play. Games like Quiplash or Superfight are the closest you could probably get via "Vote for the best" style criteria and scoring based on the majority (which helps to reduce the impact of non-objective votes).
    – MirrorImage
    Sep 7, 2017 at 3:13
  • @MirrorImage One way to mitigate kingmaking is to randomize the submissions so that when each player votes, they don't know whose submission they are voting for.
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Jan 9, 2018 at 15:00
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In "The Big Idea" players vote simultaneously for a winner, while nobody can vote for himself. Every vote you get gives you one point. After a couple of rounds the points are tallied and the highest sum wins.

It's basically everyone internally choses a winner and if he has one raises a finger. When all players raised a finger, one counts 3, 2, 1 go and everyone points to his "best but mine" choice.

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