Mystery of the Abbey - should I try it?

This means that, yes, revelations play a part in strategy, but, no, they do not provide an alternative way of winning, you still have to find out who is the culprit so that you can actually end the game.

In a game where the object is to determine who the killer is, I would say that "finding out who is the culprit so that you can actually end the game" a perfectly good game-end condition.

I think the confusion here stems from imposing an attempt at an alternate win condition onto this scoring system, which may or may not be intended.

Also, there's one more thing that's not being considered. All of these arguements assume that all players are very smart- so smart in fact that even if they themselves have not determined who the killer is, they know for a fact whish revelations are correct and which are incorrect, they know for a fact how much information each other player has gleaned from their questioning, and they know for a fact weather or not an accusation made will be correct and will end the game.

In practice I presume these facts will not be so obvious. Suppose a player believes they know the killer, looks at the scores and determines that a correct accusation will make him the winner, and therfore accuses someone. Now suppose they had overlooked something, or misunderstood a piece of information. The accusation turns out to be wrong, and that information alone may clue someone else in on the correct murderer.

Let me liken this to Puerto Rico for a moment... the first few times I played PR, we thought the scoring was open information. This led to long-ish games, with people counting and re-counting each other's score to determine if they should try and end the game or prolong it. When we found that the scoring was in fact supposed to be hidden, the game became very different, as we then had to make an educated guess about our score relative to other players'. And lo and behold, sometmes we were wrong. Sometimes people would end the game only to find that they had lost by 1 VP.

This analogy may not be perfect when applied to Mystery of the Abbey, as if you are correct in your accusation, then you know weather other peoples' revelations are right or not. The point is that when you hide some of the information, the game gets a lot more complex. In PR it's possible to track how many points each opponent has receieved from shipping, but somehow it still doesn't always happen.

- Seth

Well, tonight I finally played the game- it came via fed ex on Friday which made me happy, but there was noone to play it with until tonight.

I took the game over to my ex-roomate Tyler's house. Tyler's roomates are Duncan and Jacob (who I'll often call Stirler), looking for a good 4-player intro to this game. To give you an idea of the people who I play games with, here's a little synopsis:

Tyler: Tricky and cunning. Even when he's not bluffing, Tyler is in some way bluffing. He loves mind games, and therefore excels at games which involve Diplomacy where he gets to get inside peoples' heads and convince them of things. Tyler's also very good at finding loopholes and exploits in rules, so I consider him a valuable resource in playtesting... the trick is to corner him into playing a game, which isn't always easy.

Stirler: Jacob is probably the smartest (or most analytical) of the group. He always performed the best at Magic tournaments- attending many Pro Tours- so he obviously is doing something right. The good thing about him as a playtester (in addition to being good at stuff) is that he'll really put himself into the game, even if he doesn't enjoy it too much. He'll play to win and he will keep at it until the gae is over.

Duncan: I don't know too muh about Duncan, really. He likes games, and I get the feeling he gets more intot he theme of the game than the rest of us.

Seth: That's me :) I never know where to place myself. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I tend to be bad at sticking to a long term strategy, so I am better at games where I can be tactical and continually re-think my strategy as the game goes on. I hate that by the way...

Ok, so tonight Duncan was more interested in Dark Ages of Camelot, but Stirler had a date who decided to try it, so it was Brother Ty, Brother Stirler, Sister Megan, and I. None of us had visited the Abbey before. (Evidently that's how all the session reports for this game begin).

The rules were learned quickly and understood by all. We had no real rules issues all game, which is always a plus. We played with all the cards and all the rules that applied to 4 people, although afterwards it was suggested that we play with X Suspect cards face-up from the beginning of the game, where X is the number of players. I think it might be as good or better just to turn the "Parlor" suspect cards face-up (and then not draw them if you go there). Note: we also decided that the benefit for going to the Parlor after the suspect cards are gone is that your question is answered in secret (only you get to see the card 'revealed' by the quetionee)... otherwise why go there!

Right from the outset, Brother Jaffee spent turns 3 and 4 in Penance- I never have been good at moving my turn counter :/ It was evident that each of us were struggling to figure out a system to keep track of all the information being tossed around. It was also evident that we were looking for good lines of questioning, and in some cases floundering a bit. My questions were terrible, especially the one where I left out an adjective, and got a completely useless response.

Early in the game, several players stole cards from me, so I headed for the Library in search of a card which I hoped would be "so good as to be unfair" (that's my definition of "broken"). I was rewarded by the immediate draw of 3 Scriptorium books (Ancestral Recall!)- 2 to keep and use later, and one to use right away. The latter teleported me to the Crypt where I picked up a Crypt card (Time Walk). A strong turn to say the least, but hardly game breaking. Or maybe that's just because I dug myself a hole in the beginning.

The Scriptorium cards were OK... one forced an answer from a Monk who takes a Vow of Silence (some fast talking (rhetoric) I guess tricks them into spilling their guts without even asking a question in return). the other wasn't as useful, it sends another player to the Chapel after you question them. I used both of these prematurely and to little avail.

After the first mass, we were all required to make a revelation by the Event card. Having eliminated nearly all of the templars after the first two or three turns, and not seeing or hearing anything of the Franciscan monks, I guessed that the killer was Franciscan. You never can trust those browncoats anyway. Other revelations were "Fat", "Unhooded", and "Father" or something... they were all merely guesses at that point.

After some mediocre deduction, I decided that I still thought the killer was franciscan, and Tyler had a lot of Brothers in hand, so I tried to nail down how many of his Brothers were Franciscan... turns out th answer was 2, and when I found out what one of them was I took a pot shot with the other one (I felt like Ty had about all the Brothers in his hand)... of course I was wrong and put my piece at the Chapel for pennance. Tyler also made a guess and was also wrong, so he joined me. After Mass however, we completely forgot that ty and I should miss our next turn. I recommend perhaps putting the piece in a proe position, and on your turn just stand it up and say "done". A lot can happn between an incorrect accusation and your next turn.

After a little more information (and misinformation) exchanged hands, I guessed the other franciscan Brother, and was again proven worng. By this time I should have known better, as suspicion had been cast on one of the Franciscan Fathers- who turned out to be the murderer.

Ty, Jake, and Megan all figured this out, and while I was off in the Chapel paying Pennance, they raced to the Chapter Hall... Tyler, thinking that a correct accusation wouldn't win him the game (I think he misadded the scores), made a revalation. Jacob made the correct accusation one turn before Megan would have. His accusation, alon with a correct and an incorrect revelation won him the game with 5 points. Tyler finished with either 2 or -1 (I forget if his early revelation was correct)- either way a correct accusation instead of the correct revelation would have won for him. Megan had -1 point for an unfortunate guess for that early revelation. I ended with -2 points, which could have been more like +2 if I simply didn't make those ill advised accusations.

All in all the game was allright, and most of us decided we'd at least play it again (Megan didn't enjoy it). I knew ahead of time that it would be the kind of game I'd have to play several times before even formulating an opinion on it.

I think I like the idea of some face-up cards at the outset... at least till we get a grasp of what we're doing. Also, the rules seem to say that the Bell begins on the (1) and moves to the (2) right away... this doesn't make a lot of sense and also doesn't really allow enough movement before having to return for Mass, so we played it as the bell moves ONTO (1) on the first turn- each player gets 4 turns before Mass is called.

Summary: Pretty fun, somewhat intriguing... will have to play some more before I make a real decision, but at least I feel like I WANT to play some more and make that opinion!

- Seth

Played 3 more games tonight. Same group as last time (minus Jared, so 4 of us).

This game is officially a good, fun game.
Caveat: It is NOT a German Strategy game. There is some influence of luck as sometimes you happen to get dealt a certain combination of cards, and people just happen to ask questions which play right into your hand, allowing you to win very early. It doesn't happen often, but game 2 today (for example) I figured out whodunit on about my turn 4. That's pretty quick, and it doesn't happen too often.

So game 1 Steve won... he, Michael and I all knew the culprit (Erin asked me a very revealing question which I SHOULD have refused to answer, and then I asked her an even MORE revealing question that I should have tried to disguise...) but Steve had the Crypt card and was able to beat us to the punch.

Game 2 I figured out very quickly based on otehr people's questions regarding fathers and the information in my own hand. I quickly learned that there were only 8 Fathers in the game, and that William was the one not represented. I was about to make revelations because noone had a clue yet, but I relised that would be silly and I just accused. No point in maximizing a score if we don't record it or something.

Game 3 involved me making an incorrect accusation, Mike making *2*, and Erin being the only one of us with a clue what was going on. Steve did make a revelation, which was incorrect. He said that had Erin not won that turn, he would have made another revelation... that too would have turned out to be incorrect. This game lasted a long time, as we were aout to go to Mass #4 when Erin solved it.

Game 3 also featured a really lame bibliotec card, which I didn't even want to get, but did because I had the fewest cards.

Games 2 and 3 also saw some people try the "vow of silence" strategy. There were a LOT more unanswered questions those games than there had been before. My solution to that was to hit the Parlour a bunch and also searching peoples' cells. I think this isi a great strategy IF you're the only guy doing it. If everyone Shushes up, then noone gets info and the game drags. If that happens I think you have to start getting in peoples' way so they land on you and HAVE to ask you something (important rule there)... then answer and ask them something useful back.

Finally, the rules clarifications I mentioned were discussed, agreed upon, and implimented. Also we nixed Penance for forgetting the turn counter (which was a boon to each of us as we each forgot at least twice) and were lax about other stuff. I did have to pay penance for not asking a 'yes or no' question per the event card though :(

- Seth

I think it's more a game where you have to play several times before you decide if it's fun or not. It's almost like an investment... if you play a couple times to see if you really like it, you'll be rewarded with a fun game. If your first impression is that it's bad for some reason, and you never play it again, then it will certainly never get better.

MotA has something of a learning curve I think, it's analagous to a newbie playing Puerto Rico for the first time wih a bunch of veterans... except everyone feels that way. Noone really knows what they're doing, and they all feel like it was a bad experience. That was how my first session with MotA went, but I was interested to see if it was really that bad, or if my guess was right (based on our discussion here). When I played it with the second group, I had the experience of that first game and was able to relate it a bit to the new players, and I think that made the whole game go a little better.

- Seth