Game Mechanics

Recently, I've been thinking about slightly changing the game mechanics for Dangerous Apples. This is largely in light of the situation involving Scrab...uh, Wordscraper, which recently re-launched with some significant gameplay changes to avoid copyright infringement. I can't help but wonder if Dangerous Apples will encounter a similar situation. Thus, I'm considering what types of rule changes could be made.

To start, let's take a step back and examine why Apples to Apples (the original) is so much fun. I think there are two main factors. The first is the sheer absurdity of the decisions that the game forces you to make. Many of the cards are intrinsically funny, but the juxtaposition of cards in ways that are unexpected but still make sense makes it even better. Are pirates more casual than Yankee Stadium? Which one out of Al Gore, San Francisco, and a dozen roses is the most tolerant? Is the concept of Hannibal Lecter being described as "cuddly" funny enough that you would choose him over bunny rabbits? There is no correct answer for any of these; in fact, there's not even a framework for you to evaluate these questions. Instead, you get to fill in whatever logic (or lack thereof) you want. The second factor is directly related to this; it's very helpful to know the other players well enough to guess what they are likely to enjoy and choose. The social component is what makes it such a great party game. So I think it's essential that whatever Dangerous Apples turns out to be, it must have these two elements.

In my opinion, the key to making Dangerous Apples better is to leverage the advantages that a web-based game can have over playing the same game in person. Ideally, Dangerous Apples should let players do something that Apples to Apples cannot do. Here are the advantages that I can think of:

• Freedom from physical constraints. Web games can do things that aren't strictly limited to the equipment that you can fit in a box. An example of this is how Wordscraper now allows you to play on a board with a randomized layout - you sure can't do that with your Scrabble board! In this case, unfortunately, there's not much that I can do, considering that all that comes in the Apples to Apples box is a whole bunch of noun cards and adjective cards. There's really not a heck of a lot that you can't do with that. However, there's basically no limit to the number of cards I can put into my database, as opposed to having to deal with thousands of actual physical cards. I can also provide a wild card that the player can fill out with something different every time he plays it. While this is not impossible with Apples to Apples' wild cards, it's unlikely and impractical. Or, cards could be dynamically generated, perhaps referring to randomly selected players.
  
• Perfect information management. This is admittedly a vague term, but what I mean is that a computer will always keep track of storing, calculating, displaying, and hiding the game information as necessary. (On a side note, this is why I'd like to see a computer-moderated version of Mafia, since players never have to worry about the moderator forgetting the assigned roles or game mechanics, or a role being revealed inadvertently.) I'm already leveraging this by showing exactly who played which card after the judge votes, which is something that rarely happens in Apples to Apples. Beyond that, most of the information management in Apples to Apples is pretty simple - cards are dealt randomly, then kept hidden in the players' hands, and players' identities are kept secret until the judge votes. The original game takes care of this very well.
• Connecting people. This is where I think the biggest advantages for Dangerous Apples are, even if the rules stay the same. It's tough to get more than 10 people together in a single room at once, but it's much easier over the Internet. In fact, Dangerous Apples can allow for games with way more players than Apples to Apples can, although I don't think that a game with 100 players would be as much fun.

So based on these ideas, I'm considering a few changes or variations in the rules. It could be that instead of a judge picking the answer, all players rank each card on a scale from 1 to 5, and the card with the highest score wins. It could be that there is no deck of red cards at all; instead, players must choose a noun by starting from a randomly selected page on Wikipedia and browsing through the links on that page. It could be that all players are shown the same list of red cards, and you receive points for choosing the same cards as the judge. I'm not sure I like these ideas better than the original game, but they're starting points.

Any thoughts?