Been having computer problems lately, so I'm just popping in to post a quick PowWow recap....
My first PowWow was overall a very fun time. Tom and I brought our families along, and in the interest of preserving family concord, we only gamed for about 6-7 hours each day, and we were there for 2 of the days. Overall, I felt that it probably wasn't worth the expense of the trip for the limited amount of time I spent there. In the future, I'd definitely want to try to spend more time gaming than I did, possibly by adding a third full day. But for the time that I was there, it was enjoyable to be there, to meet some other designers, to reconnect with folks I've met before, and to try out some new games. One thing I noticed was that folks weren't afraid to be brutally honest with their comments, and that was great, particularly because most could give very specific reasons as to what in a game was deficient. It was also neat to see the range of designs that people were working on, some with just a basic deck of cards and some with very impressive production quality.
I'm not sure what I can say about the games of others, so for now I'll simply say that I played 2 of Gil's games, 1 of Michael's, and 1 of Tom's. In addition, I saw jhager's game in the process of being played, and it looked great. The game of Gil's that I've played before is improving steadily, and I think had he entered it now in the Doomed Civ contest, it would have a good shot at doing well. Darn those contest deadlines! I liked some of the ideas in the other game he put on the table. Michael's game is in an early stage, but has some truly great ideas and I look forward to seeing it develop. Tom's game is a simple little game that's surprisingly rich in theme for its simplicity, and it's in an intermediate state.
I managed to get playtest sessions of Disciples and Sands of Time. I'll mention the results of the sessions:
DISCIPLES
Played w/Michael (49), Tom (30), Gil (31), and me (29). Michael dominated the game, achieving 15 points from his goal cards and 12 points from Gospel tokens. Gil drew the traitor card, and probably could have won early on - people were pretty indiscriminate about performing deeds that bumped up the Pharisees track - but later in the game, couldn't get the traction to win as Judas. Michael and Tom both cranked out a ton of Gospel tokens, with Michael having 13 and Tom having 12. Herein we see the danger of a 2-person cooperative Gospel machine, as Tom was left on the short end of the deal, but still got a respectable 9 points from Gospels. Gil and I, having accumulated 7 tokens each, settled for 3 points.
I continue to be happy with the game, and I'm hoping to try out a "goals drafting" variant whereby you get, say, 3 goal cards and you choose 2 to keep. I think this will be more fun for experienced players, as one of the things I find enjoyable about the game is trying to make your goals work together. This will be enhanced, I think, when you have some control over your goals.
I'll probably try again later this month to start submitting the game. We'll see how it goes!
SANDS OF TIME
I couldn't really find a good time window for this game, and so it finally came out on Sunday AM but no one had time for a full game. There was some interest in the game, though, and we played through two turns. Everyone liked the action selection mechanic, and the players seemed pleasantly surprised at how quick and punchy the turns are. One of the onlookers conjectured that a first time playing might take as much as 4 hours, but he felt that this was forgivable if players could definitely come away from the first playing with an understanding of the game. He reasoned, and I agreed, that players who seek to play a game like this will expect (or, at least, accept) an up-front investment of perhaps 1 playing to really get how the game works.
Some changes are in the works. First, prior to playing, I removed the aspect of combat whereby the winner can choose to "loot" the territory. In practice, I just don't think this is important enough to the game to justify inclusion, and removing it makes combat simpler, and solely about expelling another player from a territory.
The achievement cards (which say, "If you did [this action], you get [achievement tokens of this type and amount]") feel incredibly fiddly - so much so that I even forgot to flip them several times! I'm envisioning a new scheme for this: there will be 1 achievement card each round, and it gives the 3 categories (political, civic, cultural), and next to each, a Prefect ability that, if you use it, you'll get a token in that category. So, for example, a card might have: "Political: Govern", and if you used the "Govern" ability, you'd get a political achievement token. The particularly nice thing about this is that it streamlines the game, because there's already a phase where certain buildings pay out achievement tokens. So, during that phase, you also check your player mat, and if an ability that you used matches one of the 3 on the achievement card, you get tokens. It loses some of the variety of the cards, but I think it's a tolerable loss in complexity.
Finally, the caravan was unanimously felt to be too much complexity for the game. I really like the mechanic, but I think it does feel like an expansion, for more advanced players.
So, those are the three changes I'll be making. I noticed that modifying these three rules took two pages out of the 8 pages of rulebook text, so I think that's a very good thing.
Overall, PowWow was fun and I hope to be able to attend again next year. In addition, we're considering trying to hold a "PowWow"-like event in the northeast this winter. We'll keep you posted about that as things develop.
-Jeff
I like how WtW is coming along. I'm not sure how much I like games of its ilk with high-stakes auctions. I recently played PowerGrid, and I just didn't care for the game; the whole economy felt like a prop compared to the relative overimportance of the auction. I'm afraid that WtW could have an element of that as well, where a player who can't win auctions can't really do well in the game. It was interesting that in this game, the early auctions were very costly as players fought tooth and nail for the less valuable media outlets, but in the endgame, the very lucrative media outlets were going for a song.
I do like the auction mechanic you've devised. I wonder if it would be more interesting to me if there was a display of 4 items and the auction was deciding the order in which players would choose (but folding still leaves you out cold). You could then tweak the media outlets, so that some pay out more VPs for successful "wagging", others have a better Media Point (aka "Mega Point") payout, etc. As it stands, the auctions are not that difficult: it's always best to win, if you can. This might be a way to make the order more interesting. But it's a big change, and I don't know if you're still at a point where you're open to big changes.
Good news/bad news, I did think that Body Parts certainly had enough good core ideas that it could be publishable, although I still think it needs some further development. In the game, players bid sets from their hand to earn the right to acquire additional parts for their monsters. I was expecting the source of tension to be between bidding your cards vs holding the ones you want to be able to add to your monster, but I didn't really find that this came through. The "flaw" in the game, for me, was that the outcome of losing a bid, having to give up the cards you bid, is positively devastating, and condemns you to several turns of simply drawing cards. This is forgivable in a quick game, but I found that the effect it had was that people became pretty gun-shy about bidding, and frequently only 2 or 3 players would be involved in a bid each round. Of course, all bidding games are learning curve games so it's possible we were bidding too high and trying to put together unnecessarily big runs.
Bad news, there's a new game by M. Schacht coming out called Frankenstein, which looks to have some similar elements. It's probably not very similar in gameplay but you wonder how many light card games about building monsters the market can accomodate. I think it's worth continuing to refine Body Parts, but it may end up being a tough sell to publishers, depending on how well Frankenstein does.
Easy enough to fix with a rule that says "you can't discard the traitor card". Fiddly, but it's a variant anyway...
Thanks, I'm glad it appeals to you.
Yeah, it was in there primarily to allow flexibility in play style, you could have your Civ be a bunch of "raiders" eg, I guess, the vikings. But I don't think it's worth the complexity.
I agree, there should be ways to get more than one token from the cards, but not sure yet how to achieve that.
I think it could add a lot to the game, but I think it would be easier to sell as an addition to players who already are experienced and really like the core game system. I think it's harder to justify the up-front investment in complexity for people who aren't even sure they want to play the game or not...
I think part of the difficulty is that there are a lot of random factors that fluctuate from game to game, and even mid-game. In this playing, Gil had a slam-dunk traitor win for about the first third of the game, which often happens in games with newer players, who are a bit indiscriminate early on about performing deeds that bump the pharisees. But mid-game, there were at least two occurences that moved the pharisees back. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to balance the game if I just removed the effects that move the Pharisees back altogether.
As for the traitor's non-betrayal goal, it's quite possible that it's too harsh, and I'm certainly open to exploring alternatives. Originally, it was "1 VP for each deed you performed that doesn't increase the Jews or Pharisees", which, I think, is a little too strong relative to the other goals.
It's certainly possible some further balancing is needed. I do think it's possible that the traitor's relative VP "arc" peaks a little earlier in the game than other players (bad) and then plateaus (also bad), and it's the first that worries me more -- that too many games will end in the first 2 or 3 turns.
In my solo tests, I have found that in general, the traitor's position is relatively competitive, and can win some of the time but it is, as Seth says, something you have to work for. But that's sort of as it should be -- the game shouldn't simply coronate you as the winner.
Still, it needs further study and I obviously welcome comments and suggestions!
Thanks for your comments,
-Jeff