The Hunt for ... something other than the Hunt for the Ring

Many years ago I had an idea for a chase-the-fugitive game in the spirit of Scotland Yard or Fury of Dracula, about the pursuit of the Frodo by the Nazgul.  But there was a twist:  this would be a three player game, with the third player taking the role of Gollum.  Gollum knows where the ring is at all times, but the Nazgul know where Gollum is at all times, so he has to carefully dance between leading the Nazgul right to it and staying so far away that Frodo is able to easily avoid him.


More recently I had the thought that you could implement this with a new kind of physical component:  a circular board with three screens, emanating from the center of the board to the edge, at 120 degree angles to one another.  So, each pair of screens gives a view of a section that is 1/3 of the total "pie".  But these 'pie slices' you can see are all redundant.  However, you only place your pieces on the slice that you view.  We're all moving on our own pie slice, and we don't know where the other people are.  Except that, at certain times, or perhaps in perpetuity, the board rotates by 60 degrees, such that each player has information about one other player's position.  So in the LotR, Gollum sees himself and Frodo, Frodo sees himself and the Nazgul, the Nazgul see themselves and Gollum.


Of course, a new Hunt for the Ring game just came out so my take on this idea will never go anywhere.  But could the idea be used in some other way?  I don't know but maybe it's worth thinking about.  Divorced from the original restriction of the LotR theme,  I like the idea of a divided circular board that can be rotated by 60 degrees in either direction, so you can get information about what either of your opponents are up to.  Call it the "lazy susan" mechanic. 


The thing is, a cat and mouse game has two participants, so the third participant has to have a well defined role that makes thematic sense, and by which that player can win outright; he/she doesn't simply choose to take the side of one or the other.  This would also seem to preclude a three-sided game.  For example, maybe it's a heist or caper game, and we're the crew, but we don't trust each other so we can 'use the building's security camera' (rotate the lazy susan) to see what the others are really up to.  This is an ok idea perhaps, but there's nothing intrinsically three-player about it.  But maybe that's ok.


A totally weird idea that just popped into my head was Hamlet, with the three players being Hamlet, Claudius, and King Hamlet's Ghost.  This isn't a perfect three-sided game because Hamlet and the ghost are nominally on the same side, but perhaps victory conditions could be defined that let them technically function independently. 


Another different idea could be that the three pie slice sections aren't redundant, but in fact the board is all one big board and we're only seeing (and acting in) parts of it at any one time.  In such a case part of the game would be controlling the 'rotation speed' of the lazy susan; you'd be trying to keep the other players from being able to interfere too much with the things that you set up in that other part of the board there.  The biggest problem with a game like that, I think, is probably memory.


Yet another weird idea, in this case a deduction game.  Say we spilt the board into quarters or fifths, however many suspects there are.  Each pie slice is a redundant map of the manor, and you use each slice to track the actions of ONE suspect.  There are a set of discs, in each character's color, that represent the whereabouts in the mansion of each character at a given hour of the night.  Additionally there are cards that correspond to rooms and times.  We are detectives who perform interviews (get cards) which authorize us to learn the whereabouts of the interviewee by placing a token on the map in that person's slice of the board.  You can rotate the board to get information about different people's whereabouts as well as to interview suspects and be authorized to place additional tokens.  Obviously as more and more tokens are placed the picture becomes more and more complete. Taken comprehensively you are trying to piece together the crime.  Who was in the room, alone, with the victim, when?  And who else did that person talk to, and might those people have been accomplices?  And whom can you place in the room that originally, or subsequently, contained the murder weapon?  It's not certain that this idea strictly requires the lazy susan but maybe it provides a useful framework to think about a mystery from the standpoint of reconstructing it from the testimony of the suspects.