Author Topic: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures  (Read 2454 times)

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MilwaukeeJoe

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A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« on: October 15, 2008, 12:41:36 PM »
I'm thinking of adapting a computer game (www.popcap.com - Bookworm Adventures) into a table-top game for my (early grade school aged) kids. In Bookworm Adventures, you fight monsters by making words using scrabble-style tiles. The larger the word, the more damage you do to the monster. The game has magic items, such as a "Bow of XYZ" that grants more damage when you make words using those letters.

The video game is single player, but I was thinking of adapting it to be table-top, multiplayer. They players would work together to defeat the monsters.

Each player would have a 16 random scrabble tiles in front of them, 4x4 grid. When it's a players turn, she can spell out a word using those tiles. Then, she has to add up the points on the tiles to score damage against the monster's hit points (no rolling to hit). Used letters are discarded and replaced by new random ones.

I think this could be cool for my kids, making it fun to work on spelling skills as well as math skills. And the co-operative mode would be a nice change. Not sure how to handle the monsters attacks though. Just use dice? Hmmm...

Is there already something like this on the market? What do you think?

Thanks,
MilwaukeeJoe


Vidar

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #1 on: October 20, 2008, 06:39:20 AM »
Great idea for a game, I really like the idea of the original one. Instilling you minds with spelling AND fantasy, BRILLIANT! I'd give the creative team a nobelprice.

Your idea makes alot of sense too, but if you're going to make it into a boardgame, are you going to implement stories too? If yes, you need to have a DM and if you do, you could do the same type of attacking too, you probably having a richer vocabulary making up for the fact they can cooperate. You could always make levels on monsters which cap certain letters or size of words? Give the monsters types which make certain letters (or numbers?) weaknesses and strengths, like making a monster immune to acronyms but weak vs palindroms?

Anyway, I like the idea and am very curious which way you're going at with it.

j0lt

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2008, 06:58:34 AM »
That's great!  I may have to try that for my students!   :clap
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MilwaukeeJoe

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2008, 12:48:29 PM »
Great idea for a game, I really like the idea of the original one. Instilling you minds with spelling AND fantasy, BRILLIANT! I'd give the creative team a nobelprice.

I highly encourage the game Bookworm Adventures. It's a lot of fun. As a friend of mine called it, "Battle Scrabble"!

Quote
Your idea makes alot of sense too, but if you're going to make it into a boardgame, are you going to implement stories too? If yes, you need to have a DM and if you do, you could do the same type of attacking too, you probably having a richer vocabulary making up for the fact they can cooperate. You could always make levels on monsters which cap certain letters or size of words? Give the monsters types which make certain letters (or numbers?) weaknesses and strengths, like making a monster immune to acronyms but weak vs palindroms?

Yes, I plan on being GM and having some simple stories underlying the gameplay, much like Bookworm Adventures does. I like your idea of me (as GM) using the same mechanic (building words) to dish out damage to the players. No dice needed, keep it simple.

Some ideas:
1. Weaker monsters will have a smaller pool of letters to draw from... 3x3 instead of 4x4. Or, a cap on the word length, good suggestion!
2. I like your idea of monster vulnerabilities, would be a good way to teach my kids about things like palindroms and onomatopoeia!
3. Bonus damage can be for things such as.... words that rhyme between the two players...

I hope to work up some stuff this week and try it out on the kids next week.

MilwaukeeJoe

Vidar

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2008, 01:02:53 PM »
3. Bonus damage can be for things such as.... words that rhyme between the two players...


Oh, that's a good one. How about synonyms and homonyms between players? Ok, maybe homonyms are somewhat hard, as they'd need almost the same letters... But synonyms would be a nice combo for bonus damage. Consider all "sorts of rhyming" like alliterations, or maybe the thingymajingy, how's it called in english: when two words are almost always seen together, adding to eachother (eg. rank & file)?
And maybe opposites too (eg dusk & dawn) ?

Where will you be getting enough letters, btw?  :D
Keep us updated.

MilwaukeeJoe

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2008, 01:17:41 PM »
Oh, that's a good one. How about synonyms and homonyms between players? Ok, maybe homonyms are somewhat hard, as they'd need almost the same letters... But synonyms would be a nice combo for bonus damage. Consider all "sorts of rhyming" like alliterations, or maybe the thingymajingy, how's it called in english: when two words are almost always seen together, adding to eachother (eg. rank & file)?
And maybe opposites too (eg dusk & dawn) ?

And the fun part of it all is that when the kids get a bonus, they will have to use their math skills to add that extra 1 or 2 to their total!

Where will you be getting enough letters, btw?  :D
Keep us updated.

I have a bunch of old scrabble sets that I can steal the tiles from. I plan on shuffling the discards frequently and using them to replace the used tiles.

MilwaukeeJoe


emissary666

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2008, 09:26:36 AM »
Typing Of The Dead was a on rails shooter where you killed zombies by typing. The zombies could only be killed by certain words. Try making "boss" monsters into a hangman-esc game. Give them 3 letters or so and see how many words they can make out of them.
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ChristopherGroves

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2008, 10:56:03 AM »
My wife and I have been looking at our spare Boggle pieces trying to come up with something to use in her classroom.  Our working title was Mind Boggling and was a multi-player hang-man / count-down like thing where the person to make the least words had a big of their brain eaten by the zombie (based on a specific scenario card for that iteration).

emissary666

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Re: A kid's game idea stolen from Bookworm Adventures
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2008, 11:26:41 PM »
I would advise checking out Typing of the Dead just for inspiration.
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