Usually I talk design with many people, bouncing ideas and getting feedback. Some gamers are really good at expressing what they like in games and although the opinion of a few gamers says nothing about the general gaming public, it does help you get into the mindset of other individuals who enjoy games as much as you do. Find those people, they will help you progress.
The muse for making games can come out of thin air or be based on something you already know. You can't teach the "thin-air-muse" but you can poke the based muse until juice comes out. If you like a mechanic but think you can make it better or different in an interesting way, go ahead and fiddle with it. Take a look at my entry about dice drafting that turned from a barren land into a flourishing field of ideas and takes in one year if you want to understand my meaning here.
I get those thin air moments from time to time, but they are just like thin air, unreliable. Poke the muse by playing more games, watching playthroughs of games, reading or watching rules for games. Get inspired by other people's games and then create your own. As long as you don't just copy a whole game, you shouldn't feel ashamed of your muse. Read the back of the rule book of LaGranja to see how being proud of your muse looks like.
The last game that inspired me was Twilight Struggle (TS). It is a game I should have played a long time ago, but didn't get to play it until I bought a copy (and then funny enough played with a friend's copy!). The card mechanic used in this game can be found with different variations in many games by GMT games. Basically, almost every card has a number and a text, some cards refer to one player, some to the other and some refer to both. If the card refers to you, you may use it as the number or activate the text (or the event as it's called) and if it doesn't refer to you, you can only use it as a number and the other player carries out the text, if applicable.
I found this very cool, but I wanted to lower the luck of the draw. I found it very interesting, but the mechanic as it stands can work only for 2 players. The game is really one of the pinnacles of gaming, but it is very long (unless ended by an early win). My muse juices started bubbling.
This gave birth to a game I now call "Grandeur" in which every player plays a person that tries to gain control by spreading their influence across 4 kingdoms. You can think of yourself as a Petyr Baelish, AKA Littlefinger, from Song of Fire and Ice / Game of Thrones. Using the cards you can increase either your influence in different regions, kick out other players or improve your capabilities in one of three stats (intrigue, culture of prestige). Much like in TS, if a card refers to you (say you are the most prestigious player) you may use it as the number or activate the text, but if it does not refer to you, you use the number and the player it refers to gets to activate the text. Unlike the card mechanic in TS, this mechanic is scalable to higher player counts (up to 4 now, but 5 should also work nicely, I just need to be aware of dead time).
I also felt this kind of game needs to be matched with a drafting mechanic that will complement the action mechanic. Regular drafting (choose and pass) will not do, since for 2 players you will have too much information about your opponent's hand. So I developed an interesting new way to draft cards that includes discarding cards. This allows for hidden information, although you use the same set of cards each game. I love drafting although it is time consuming (going to write about that soon...) because it allows for self-balancing between players and also has a built in catch up mechanisms (take the cards that the leader probably wants to take).
The result is a mix between card drafting and area control that is going to be tested starting this week. The cards are numbered to take notes easily and my timer is ready.
Let the games begin!!!
In the picture is the prototype of Gradeur ready for testing.