While additional work on Winning the Peace has kind of stalled out because it turns out it's very difficult to organize playtests of TTRPGs with strangers in my area. However, it is much easier to get boardgame playtesters, so I've started working on a boardgame concept while trying to get Winning the Peace public playtesting organized.

Anyways, pic related for the boardgame idea. It is essentially Wingspan with direct conflict elements, wrapped up in a spy comedy aesthetic. The basic premise is that each player is a criminal mastermind, and while all working together they captured the Austin Powers expy, only one can claim credit for actually killing him so they are competing to build the best deathtrap to claim victory over their peers.

My basic idea is that players build deathtraps by creating a row of cards with various elements, (e.g. Traps, Animals, Goons, with different tags like Occult or Superscience) that either serve to increase their own score, modify other cards to trigger score multipliers, or fuck with their opponents. Scoring is done from left to right per row (so player 1 scores their whole row first, then player 2, etc), and whenever a card is scored, all of the cards that affect it also trigger which can modify scoring in the moment or further down the line. Players will also have access to action cards (Plots) that can be used to modify the layout of cards on the table or other actions, like add 2 cards to their deathtrap in a single round.

While the player who has the highest score at the end gets first place, there is a catch in that there is a minimum score needed to win, and as the game goes on, an additional deck is drawn from to represent the Austin Powers expy getting closer to escaping, with some of those cards preventing some deathtrap cards from scoring. So the goal is to make sure that you're at the top, but to not knock down your opponents too hard in case everyone loses because the spy escapes and they all get arrested.