variable player powers

Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

Game description from the publisher:

"Crossroads" is a new series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside.

Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first game in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world where most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition — but for each individual player to achieve victory, he must also complete his personal secret objective. This secret objective could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Certain games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group's goal, but don't get walked all over by a loudmouth who's looking out only for his own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games. It's a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony's morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily- thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what is best for the colony and what is best for themselves.

Collateral Damage

In Collateral Damage, you play a Gang Boss trying to take over cities in Neo Japan in order to win the game. Your gang is made up of typical characters from romantic comedy anime, with a unique set of statistics and a Special Power to distinguish each one. You move your characters around the board from city to city, and you ultimately win the game by taking over cities. You as a gang boss get Notoriety Points by having your characters fight and hurt other players' characters. If you miss in a fight, you do Collateral Damage to the city (thus the name of the game). However, as is typical in romantic comedy anime, your characters might fall in love, usually unreciprocated, and will then ignore your orders to instead follow their love around the board.

Each turn in the game has 9 phases, most of which are brief.
1) Initiative - Figure out turn order, based on player strength.
2) Libido - All characters gain Libido, which they can use to move and fight.
3) Voluntary Movement - players move their characters, then 4) Automatic Movement - characters may be dragged towards a Love Interest or Rival.
5) Love - Characters may fall in love based on the Looks and Gender of other characters in that city.
6) Combat - Characters in cities fight, gaining Notoriety for the player.
7) Domination - Players can try to use any characters still conscious to Dominate cities, spending Notoriety Points to better their chances.
8) Firing & Recruitment - Players can fire characters and recruit new characters, spending Notoriety Points to do so.
9) Mutual Love - Characters in love with each other and alone together in a city lose all of their libido. We're not saying why...

The game contains:
20 city tiles which are used to make up the game board
6 sets of sliders, token stands, dice, and Gang Boss cards in 6 colors
Over 55 different characters, each with his or her own stats and unique Special Power
45 Training cards
1 Grease pencil
A 4 page custom manga
Complete instructions
and more

Claustrophobia: De Profundis

Claustrophobia: De Profundis is an expansion for Croc's Claustrophobia that adds more components and more choices to the game without adding many new rules.

New components include a 55-card deck with new talents for the Brother Redeemer, new demons, new events, new objects; ten new room tiles, with six new types of rooms (sanctified zone, demon pit, tomb of the ancient warrior); four painted figures and additional markers; and twelve new scenarios with playtimes ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.

As for new rules, the demon player's hand size is reduced to three (due to powerful new event cards), Siccaria skills are now permanent, and a new beast is introduced.

Candamir: The First Settlers

Here's a description of the game from AllGames4you:

With the new Catan-game "The First Settlement", Klaus Teuber distances himself the most from the well-known game mechanics of the Settlers series.

Players take on the role of newcomers to Catan and learn how the adventurous life in the first settlement played itself out. They explore, using a new movement mechanic, for the raw materials they need to build the settlement. Along the way, they discover useful natural products - but also encounter wild animals and are confronted with adventurous situations. Those who survive these encounters obtain the raw materials they sought as well as experience points that improve the abilities of the player's character. Over time, then, the player becomes stronger, smarter or more charismatic and is better and better suited for the dangers of the wild.

Back in the village, the natural products can be used to brew beverages while the raw materials are used for building. Through this building, the settlement grows and players obtain victory points.

The main attraction of the game lies in the exploration of the island and the development of the individual player characters. But trading and interaction between the players is also important.

Belongs to the Catan Series.