After about 9 months I played another test game of 8/7 Central! I incorporated the 'new' start player mechanic discussed here about 6 months ago or so, and it worked nicely. I also added Fundraising (a new way to get money) which was ok as well, but not tuned well. We made a couple other on-the-spot changes as well which I think are nice additions.
If it's ok with you I'd like to quickly post a synopsis of the rules including the changes and see if there are any further comments off the top of your head. I realize it's been a long time since 8/7c has been in the GDW, and it's been a little while since I've had a chance to comment on the GDW games as well (sorry). I don't mean to usurp anyone else's time, but I wanted to post in case anyone was interested in what became of my game post-workshop.
The rules and card lists (not completely updated) can still be found here: http://www.dakotacom.net/~sej/87central.html
The synopsis will follow shortly.
I will put in BOLD things that can use comments in particular...
Recall that the basic gist of the game is that you have Programs in your 2 1/2hr time slots each day M through F, and you play Ads, Events, and Modifiers to try and get your Programs to stack up well against your competition on each day. The cards you play are all shuffled together in a common deck and they are of three types:
a. Adds- yield revenue ($) for playing other cards
b. Events- affect the game state, altering the rules temporarily (like Sorceries and Global Enchantments in Magic)
c. Modifiers- adjust the properties of a Program (like Local Enchantments in Magic)
1.Starting Lineup (Auction for initial Programs): Go back to 5 rounds instead of 6, and set starting money to $25. Each round you place the program(s) you get, rather than draft 5 rounds and then place them all at once. I hope this will expedite the beginnig process a bit.
2. Placing (and Moving) Programs: Programs not in a time slot are considered in your Hand. You may either:
a. Place a Program from your Hand into any OPEN (unoccupied) 1/2hr time slot. If a 1-hr Program is placed in an open 1/2hr slot and a 1/2hr Program exists in the other slot on that day, the existing program is considered "Bumped", put it into your hand.
b. Pay $1 to "Bump" a program (put it into your hand).
c. Discard a program from your Hand. (Should you be allowed to discard a Program from play? Probably...)
d. Pass. You cannot Pass if you have any Programs in your Hand.
3. Each round of turns occurs on one 'day', beginning with Monday (which really represents all the Mondays of a month or season in a nebulous sort of way). Each day the player with the most VPs becomes the Start player for the day (money held being the tiebreaker). This is because there's a scoring advantage to going last in a round, so it allows for people to catch the leader (or at least makes it harder to keep a lead).
4. In a round each player gets a turn consisting of 2 actions from the following list, and then refills their hand to 5 cards.
a. Play a card (pay costs as necessary)
b. Fundraising (discard a card for $1)
c. Discard 2 cards (used for cycling your hand)
5. After the turns each round dice are rolled for 'production' (see which Programs are watched and who gets money from advertisers). Roll 2 sets of dice because 1 roll was not enough and 1 roll per player was way too much, so effectively 2 rolls per turn occur this way.
6. Scoring each day based on Program statistics, compare My Monday Programs to your Monday Programs to His Monday Programs, 4 categories (demographics) score 1vp each to whomever has the best score in that category.
7. New leader becomes Start Player for the next day.
8. After Friday Programs that are 'too good' have a chance to get worse (Jumping the Shark)- this is different, the Program doesn't go away, it just loses it's Ratings Counters, and you check all Programs, not just 1 per player. The check is roll 1d6, if the roll is LESS than the number of Ratings Counters then the Program Jumps the Shark. Obviously you can skip rolling for Programs that have 0 or 1 Ratings Counter on them.
9. Supplemental Auction: One round of auction and then Placing/Moving Programs as at the beginning of the game.
10. Play to a predetermined number of weeks (maybe 4 is good?). Should the game be to a particular score instead? Or a score of 20 (for example) triggers the game end, finish the week and see who's winning?
ALSO CONSIDERING: Static rule that only 1 Modifier can apply to a Program at a time (as opposed to multiples being allowed as it presently stands). Thus if you play a second Modifier on a program the first one is discarded. This would keep crazy combinations of cards under control a little (not that there necessarily are any) and would allow players to negate other players' plays without having to draw the specific card that does so (they could use any Modifier). Then again, it means putting a bad modifier on a player's Program is nearly useless since they can easily override it. THEN AGAIN, because of the turn order effect, players later in the turn can play things on a given day which cannot be overwritten by the earluer players. Does that encourage bashing the leader (since the leader now goes first each round)?