More Mutation Musings

I tried a couple things out. Want to get some stuff down in writing.

Rolling 2 dice, using on on the board and one into the mutation pool seems interesting so far.

I tried a scenario where leveling up cost mutation points equal to the level attained.  Also you needed to roll a die pip that matches something in your pool to go up level.  If you miss then by definition you can add another die to your mutation pool and become even more likely next turn to level.  I put in an added "you can immediately legally place a number of die from your mutation pool equal to the Mutation Pool value - New Level attained" i order to try and mitigate getting behind from a bad roll not letting you level up at your first opportunity.  This seemed cool, but other players who DID get it on their first turn had a permanent lead on that unfortunate player and it wasn't good enough.

This led me to thinking about some sort of penalty for stacking, for instance paying a mutation point, but i'm worried that could really slow the game down. I am also thinking about possibly aiding the stacked player in some way, but "giving them a mutation point" seems odd and what value would it be set to? Perhaps they just roll X additional dice on their next turn where X equals the number of stacked die they had between turns.

A different Idea involves the Mutation pool collecting sets of dice with certain values.  For instance maybe you have to cash in X doubles from the mutation pool where X is equal to the new level.  This may have a bad effect of spreading out who has leveled based on luck even more.

Or perhaps you can always stack, but your level gives you a discount on mutation points for payment of the stacking?

Mutation Musings

This game is cool, it's just too simple. Thoughts:

• Have a pool where you can put dice to show your "mutation points".  Spend mutation points to level up your organism as a whole. You can't have two dice with the same value in the mutation point pool.
• Three overall levels for the organism.  The game always has the same 3 level up bonuses and then 3 random ones that are associated with each.  The 3 main ones are:
• Level 1 - No stacking (starting point)
• Level 2 - Can stack up to total height of 2
• Level 3 - Can Stack up to total height of 3
• "Random bonuses" are a stack of cards, three are dealt out at the start of the game randomly, they are associated with the three levels.  This means from the beginning of the game everyone will have a bonus that will likely differ from previous starting settings making each game start off feeling different.
• Take out "doubles = removal", they simply allow a reroll
• Possibly spend Mutation points (maybe die needs to match?) to do a standard removal action.
• Variable game end conditon, not sure what this is yet.