Carcassonne Central

This is an idea for a spin-off that I've had for a while... and several ideas I've gained from skipboris' 'the ocean' expansion.
Contains:
80-something tiles
6 meeples per player (2-4 players) One meeple will be scorer.
7 marketplace tokens
6 fish tokens
1 scoring board

There are only two multi-tile features; island and ocean, as well as four single tile features; fishing grounds, 'starter' isles, whirlpools and marketplaces (on islands).

You may not claim anything but a 'starter' isle. A piece standing up on a starter isle is called an 'islander'. On your next move, you may place another islander (providing the piece you drew had a starter island on it) or, you may lie the piece down and move it to the ocean area of the tile containing the starter isle. It is now a 'sailor'. Next move, you may move your sailor one square in any direction orthogonally. The sailor (who is lying down at all times) moves onto the ocean area of the tile you chose. A sailor may not move onto any tiles containing a whirlpool. Two sailors may share the same tile.

If the sailor is on a tile on which there is an island segment, on their next turn the sailor may move onto that island, stand it up, and it is now known as an 'explorer'. Explorers may not move from the island tile that they are on.

Sailors may not become explorers if the island they want to move onto is already owned; they must stay in the ocean section (a corner to corner join does not count as 'connected'). If two separate islands (each with their own explorers), then each player receives full points when island is completed, unless one player has more explorers on the island than the other, in which case they receive the points. Sailors may not move onto already completed islands.
If a sailor is completely hemmed in by whirlpools or islands that are unclaimable for some reason, the owner loses 10 points and gets the sailor back. If the sailor is not hemmed in but the owner of the sailor still wants it back, they may sacrifice 15 points to receive it back.

When an island it completed (fully finished with tiles), then the owner of that island gets two points per tile and the explorer is returned to the player.

Another feature is marketplaces: a player may place a follower (provided they haven't already placed or moved a follower that turn) on any marketplace provided that the player already has at least one explorer on the island. A piece on a marketplace is a 'trader', and doesn't count as being on the island (when comparing who has the most explorers on a joint island). If the trader remains even if the island is completed and explorer removed.
When the marketplace is totally surrounded on all 8 sides and corners, the trader returns to it's owner, and the owner takes one marketplace token.
Marketplace tokens stay with the owner, and give their benefits immediately, such as gaining 10 points, or an extra turn etc.
Islands with marketplaces do not gain any additional points.

Some ocean tiles have fishing grounds; these are represented by a fish and a pentagon shape. When this tile is drawn it is placed as usual and a fish token is placed onto the pentagon. The next sailor to move across the tile receives the fish token. Once a fish token is taken it is not replenished. At the end of the game, the player with the most fish tokens gains 10 points. In case of a tie, all players involved gain 10 points.

At the end of the game:
remaining Islanders are removed and get nothing
remaining Traders are removed and get nothing
remaining Sailors gain 3 point for each marketplace that is orthogonal from the sailor (regardless of islands in between)
remaining Explorers gain 1 point per tile of that island.

The player with the most points wins.

Playing Sequence:
Draw tile
Place tile
Place/ move ONE sailor, explorer, islander of trader.
Score points for that turn
Get scored meeples back.

Sorry for going on about it a lot. It has been playtested a fair bit and works quite well... feel free to tell me what you think:

EDITS in bold (last edited 8/2/09)

Heh, how much of this got incorporated into skipboris' Ocean? :)

I borrowed the moving sailors idea, and his idea for 'warp' pools was gained when he saw the whirlpool that i had drawn...

Well, as far as I understand, The Oceans is both an expansion and a spin-off.  It's a bit weird having 2 spin-offs with very similar mechanics (some of which are the same).

it's a spin-off too??
Mine is a bit simpler...

*shrug* I'm not against it.  I'm just saying it's weird having 2 spin-offs with the same theme and similar (if not the same) mechanics.

This is cool.  For mine, the spin off idea is really an afterthought, mostly because hardly anything needs to be changed to just play it like that.  The whirlpools will be used in a later expansion of the Ocean that will allow your sailors to 'warp' to other parts of the map.  Looks good meepleater!

Here is a board made up of about 48 tiles. They aren't really that bright, but photbucket is seriously stuffing up all my images:
EDIT: Used imageshack and got a picture the proper colour!
(http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7148/oceanstiled.jpg)

I'm seeing the dreaded red X.

???

It works here.  What are those pentagons in the image?

Excerpt from Rules: Some ocean tiles have fishing grounds; these are represented by a fish and a pentagon shape. When this tile is drawn it is placed as usual and a fish token is placed onto the pentagon.
The pentagon is just a place to put the fish token on... I know it doesn't look very good but I deemed it neccesary, so you knew when/ where to put the token as the actual fish doesn't stand out much...

I see that in IE, but it works in firefox. Not sure why though.

It's weird things like this why I switched to and have been happy with Mediafire.