Game #4: Profit and Provenance by jwarrend

Great, thanks for getting us started. I'll respond to a couple of your points.

A legitimate concern. But, this is really only a prototype, and those kinds of kinks can be worked out more at the (hypothetical) publisher's level. For the purposes of making a functional game system, though, it's just the simplest way to do the bookkeeping of different archaeologists, different players, different Sites. But I agree, a more icon-heavy solution would likely be needed for the "published version"!

Yes, the "semi-blind" bidding was the core concept of the game; you know approximately what people are bidding, but not conclusively. The extra functions of the "coin symbols" were an attempt to tie the whole game together mechanically.

The board is indeed functionally superfluous, it is primarily included because a prototype need not be hindered by production concerns initially (because, after all, it may not be me paying for the game to be (hypothetically) published!) and I thought that having the board would help enhance the feel of "I'm sending out archaeologists to these different locations" rather than "I'm drawing from this pile". Any simple ways to evoke the theme more fully are good, in my opinion.

Because your bid cards are used in Exhibits as well, so you must decide whether you want to play a tie-breaker card (in which case you could only have 2 exhibits) or not (in which case you could have 3 exhibits). Making it mandatory may be an appropriate change...Although, a different tie-breaking system would be great. But, "closest to start player wins ties" adds a dramatic player order effect, because, with the one-bid-per-Archaeologist limitation, there are likely to be quite a few ties. I thought that an extra "tie breaker mechanic" would be easier than removing a player order effect. I am open to different suggestions!

There is a "Start Player" marker in my prototype, and the card you used to commission your expedition stays next to the Archaeologist card, so it's a one-step process to find out who the Start Player commissioned. (that rule only exists because your choice of Artifacts may depend on what Artifacts you or other players have chosen in the other (already resolved) auctions, so having the resolution order change each turn may be important) (and the Arch. cards may need to be reordered each turn; I don't know how important the effect is).

I am not sure whether public or private is better. Public, I fear, can lead to a "bash the leader" effect, yet private leads to a "bash the perceived leader" effect, or "whining" about how "I'm not the leader, why bash me?" Bashing is somewhat indirect in this game, yet still very possible, which I like. So setting aside the cost issue (paper money vs. scoring track), which system do you think is "better"? (The scoring track would make the "last place player" mechanic easier.)

Yes, the bids must stay in the order they were placed in; this apparently wasn't clear. And this procedure only resolves "2nd order" ties, ie, ties where the tie-breaker cards of 2 players were also the same. (Perhaps it should become the primary tie-breaker mechanic, and remove the tie-breaker cards altogether?) Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough that the order the cards are laid down in is important.

It was suggested to me on spielfrieks, and I liked it. What I primarily wanted was a way to prevent you from scoring bonus points for the same Set over and over. In my first iteration, your Set became less valuable every time you exhibited it, which was ok, but led to more math. So, the next idea was "if you score for a Set, you must give up one of the Artifacts". And who must you give it to? The last place player seemed the natural choice. An alternative would be to give to another "bidding option", analogous to the Black Market.

But the main thing I want to do is prevent a player from scoring a bonus repeatedly. Any ideas for how to do that would be most welcome! (Abolishing sets altogether would be a possibility, yet I like having them because it makes some Artifacts, though lower in value, potentially more valuable to you, if they fit into your set, which could lead to interesting bidding/choosing). In my earlier iteration, only the player who "won" the location could score for a Set or Group, yet that seems to be too generous.

If it could be a d6, it would be better, but I'd have to shift the value of the Artifacts (not a big deal). It's meant to be a risk-reward effect. You can go for cheap points by selling a value 2 artifact and incur little risk, but other players will be able to acquire that Artifact next turn. Or, you can go for big points by selling a more valuable Artifact, but the risk is higher. It's mainly meant to be a different path to getting some VPs, and also to let you "dump" artifacts you acquired but can't really use.

Not a bad idea at all! Thanks! The only problem I see is that high-valued Artifacts, since they are less prevalent in the decks, are actually *less* risky to sell on the Black Market, because other players are less likely to have them. But something like your idea could work...

Ok, fair enough. The "cohesion" mainly comes, I think, from the fact that you're using the same Bid cards in all 3 phases of the turn, so you must maximize the way you use them to both get you the Artifacts you want, and to net you the most points, BUT you must also be careful because every auction/exhibition you lose (and you must lose some), you will give away points, so you have to think carefully about those bids/exhibits, as well.

So, it's the single deck for 3 different kinds of actions that are meant to provide "unity", but beyond that, I agree, the 3 different phase mechanics are, well, different. Do you see a way that they could usefully be unified without losing anything? eg, perhaps the "exhibit" system could be hacked altogether, and only the Expeditions/Acquisition phases remain. And then, maybe at the end game, you also score points for your Artifacts, with bonuses if you've acquired Sets. That might make the game feel more "cohesive". Any thoughts?

Thanks again for the comments! Let me know if anything else occurs to you! (It sounds like you were able to follow the rules of the game pretty well--yes? I tend to be long-winded, but my hope in this case was that it resulted in a comprehensible rulebook.)

-Jeff

Yeah, I debated whether to have "variable archaeologist 'powers'", but it seemed in general to make things more interesting, yet not overly complex.

Seems ok to me. Sometimes, I think it's fun to play by intuition, but I'm not sure if this is a game where that style is called for...

Not a bad idea at all. It's ironic, I was telling seth that his "jump the shark" mechanic was superfluous and unnecessary, and yet here I am defending my "black market" mechanic! I think what I was going for was a system where you could score some points quickly, but at some risk. Perhaps the ability of other players to acquire your Artifact and have it help them out is risk enough. I am intrigued by the idea of using bid cards to "buy" from the Black Market, although that would require a lot of mental energy to make sure everything is still balanced.

One thing I should make clear with the die rolling is that if you roll less than the value of the artifact, you lose VP equal to the result of the roll, not the value of the Artifact. So, even if you're putting up a "value 6" artifact, your maximum penalty is 6, yet you may only lose 1 or 2 VP, which, compared with the ability to gain 6 VP, might be worth the risk. It's a risk-reward thing, and you can't have that without some randomization. Maybe there shouldn't be a risk-reward aspect at all, though; maybe it's a way for players to acquire each other's artifacts. Definitely worth thinking about!

But you don't want too many variables, or else decisions become meaningless (as randomly made decisions are as likely to work as carefully planned ones...) There's a delicate balance to be had. I think this one doesn't have "too much" to think about, but there's certainly "a lot" to think about.

I agree, it's meant to be a 1 hr game with a simple system, yet with enough complexity in the interaction of mechanics that decisions are somewhat agonizing. I think a good set of Artifacts and Archaeologists could enhance the theme, which would also make it more fun.

Thanks for the suggestions!

-Jeff

It does sound like I confused you! It's so easy to explain in person, with the game components in front of us. But, I fear I made things confusing with my explanation. Let me see if I can clear it up.

Let me start from the start. There are 3 actions, "Expeditions", "Acquisition", and "Exhibition". In phase one, each player gets one turn. He chooses one of the 7 Archaeologists, sends him to one of the five Locations, and recovers as many Artifacts from that Location's draw pile as the number of Gold Coin symbols on a Bid Card that he lays next to the Archaeologist.

So, after this round, each Archaeologist card has between 1 and 3 Artifact cards next to it. Some Archaeologists will have Artifacts from the same Location as other Archaol

Next comes "Acquisition". Players lay down one bid card at a time on an Archaeologist of their choosing (or on the Black Market). They go around the table 6 times. So at this point, each player has placed six bids, and each Archaeologist (and the Black Market) has between 0 and N bid cards, next to it, face down (N = number of players).

These are revealed, and the Archaeologists are evaluated one at a time. The high bidder for each Archaeologist receives Victory Points in the amount of the number of Gold coin symbols on the *front* of all Bid cards played on this Archaeologist. (an important distinction because the "0" card has no coins on the front -- it's purely a bluff card). He then gets first choice of the available Artifacts for that Archaeologist, followed by the 2nd highest bidder, etc. (I'm setting aside the tie break rules)

Next, players "Exhibit" their Artifacts. They lay down a Bid card next to all of the Artifacts from a Location they wish to exhibit. (So, for example, they place a Bid Card next to their "Egypt" Artifacts). Then, all Exhibits are revealed, and each Location is scored. So, all of the players with Egypt exhibits compare the strength of their exhibits. This is calculated by adding the value of the Artifacts from Egypt, and adding to that the value of the Bid Card laid next to the Exhibit.

The player with the highest total receives VP equal to the total of all Coin symbols Red and Gold played on Egypt exhibits. 2nd place receives half, 3rd half of that, etc. (There is only one red coin in the game, it's on the "8" card. It's meant to make playing the 8 card as a bid in the Acquisition round a tougher choice, since it has added strength in the Exhibition round).

So, the scoring systems present in the Acquisition and Exhibition phase both reflect the same principle: the highest value play will score as many points as the number of coin symbols on all cards played by other players at the same spot. In "Acquisition", the "spot" in question is a given Archaeologist, and the strength of your play is determined by your Bid Card. In Exhibition, the "spot" is a given Location, and the strength of your play is the sum of your Artifacts, plus the number of Coin symbols on the Bid card you associate with your Exhibit.

I hope this makes more sense. This has one very interesting effect from a gameplay standpoint that I very much like, but I'll leave it to someone on the group to figure out what that is (it isn't all that deep).

The more I think about FastLearner's comments, the more I think reworking the game to remove Exhibiting until the game end might be an interesting thing to consider. It would certainly remove some of the unclarity in the scoring systems.

It doesn't exactly work this way (or are you making a suggestion). In the current game, the Archaeologists have already recovered the Artifacts, and the high bidder is the one who gets first choice of the Artifacts. Also, the sense in which one "buys" artifacts from the Black Market at the cost of VPs is only that winning an Artifact from the Black Market doesn't *gain* you any VPs, but it never costs you any. My guess is this already makes sense to you, and you're just seeing it in a deeper way than I am -- you're seeing the full implications of the decisions inherent to the game, whereas I'm dealing only in the letter of the rules. Am I right?

It's probably not how real Archaeology works, but it dramatically reduces the "luck of the draw" effect if you were to just commission an expedition and then take whatever artifacts you drew. Although, that game could become an interesting negotiation game where you have to "loan" artifacts to other museums in exchange for what you want. Not the kind of game I'm trying to create here, though.

I think it plays an important role in the game, but I agree with others that the die roll may not be the best way to handle the risk-aspect of it.

And, it gives you something additional to shoot for in choosing Artifacts, as well as a reason to try to outbid someone else in certain situations; you may not want them to complete their Set! It's a little too like Rummy for my taste, but I can't come up with a more innovative way of evoking such a concept, so for now, it probably stays (although the scoring rules around it may change...)

The inherent order is an ok idea, but is one more thing to balance, which is a pain. But then, having players bid for turn order solves that problem, so it's not a bad thought. Definitely worth considering!

Thanks for the feedback! Do let me know if I've made the scoring system more clear...

-Jeff
- Seth

Yes, there are definitely some flaws in the rulebook. I'll try to correct them soon. Thanks for finding them!

Yes.

The one playtest session I had (with an early form of the rules) was with 7, and it seemed to work ok. The one advantage of that game is that on average, everyone can win one Archaeologist auction each turn. That, combined with the fact that games for 7 players that don’t last all day are pretty rare. So, it’s worth it to me to see if this game can be extended to 7, although perhaps the best way to handle that is to add “special rules” at the end of the rulebook. In theory, the game ought to scale well with player size, because the scoring systems are primarily dependent on how many coin symbols are played by all players at a given scoring spot; that, and Sets are more valuable in a bigger game, but should also be more difficult to complete. Or that’s the theory anyway.

This is actually an interesting idea that I hadn’t thought of. What I found is that in the one test game, if the same people were tied repeatedly, the same player won repeatedly. I like your idea of having to surrender your tie-break card after you use it to break a tie. Very cool!

That’s the theory.

This is not a bad idea at all, and I thought about something similar; at each site, perhaps there are a couple of “treasure map” cards that if you acquire through a bid, you can use to find “super special artifacts” that have some special property or something. In the end, it was just too much complexity. Your idea is different, but interesting. Currently, the Artifacts are all just number cards; I considered having them be “special cards”, or rather, each having different ways of scoring VPs, but that was too close to Ra, I thought.

In the original rules, the game ended when one of the Location piles was exhausted, but in practice, that happened too quickly. (although, with savvy players, the game could presumably have been lengthened...)

Game length is definitely an issue. 5 turns may not be enough for the players to fully develop their collections of Artifacts, yet 10 turns is obviously way too long. (And in the 4 player game, 8 is certainly too many turns!) I don’t think there’s a strong player order effect (as I think the “tied ties” situation is fairly minor, particularly if I go to your “surrender your tiebreaker when you use it to break a tie”), but some players will inevitably complain of inequity if someone gets to go first more than other players. I’m not sure how long the game ought to be; I think a variable game length, like the one I mention above, might be good, but I have to think of a better way of doing it. An alternative would be 'when you reach X points, the game ends and you win'. Any ideas on game length, any one?

Thanks! “Cracking” is British for “good”, I hope? Or at least something positive?

Thanks again for the comments!

-Jeff

Seth,

That happens to me a lot (well, not the falling asleep part, but the losing messages part). Very annoying! I know, I know..."one should save one's work". For whatever reason, that maxim never seems to guide my conduct!

Anyway, very sorry indeed to hear about the lost material! Hope you'll have a chance to post some of the relevant points at some time or another.

-Jeff

Seth,

Great post with lots of content, let me reply to a couple of points and I'll try to respond to the rest later or tomorrow or something...

I agree, neither of these seems quite perfect. I like the "Exhibit every round" because it's the best way to unify the mechanics of the Bid cards over all three phases. As Scurra observed, there will be a shift in the game as you acquire more Artifacts, and need to use your high value bid cards to be able to display your Artifacts (since the value of the bid card determines the capacity of the exhibit). I think I like this effect...

This is not a bad idea at all. I originally meant sets to be an "extra" bonus, but your idea of making them the only way to score points is a possibility. It will take a lot of thinking, though. But a great suggestion!

Actually, this is quite a good idea! One thing I want to make clear, though; in the Exhibition round, your "value" at each Location is the sum of the value of your Artifacts *plus* the number of coin symbols on your Bid Card. (and the number of Artifacts you display must be less than the Number on your Bid Card). So, if I have Artifacts valued 2, 3, and 4 in Egypt, and I play a 5 Bid Card, which has 2 Gold Coin symbols, the "value" of my Exhibit = 2+3+4+2 (for the coins) = 11. I'll compare that with the other players' Egypt exhibit values.

What your system does, though, is gives an interesting effect whereby if I have the best Egypt exhibit, I score as many points as the number of coin symbols on the Cards played by *all other players* who had Egypt exhibits. Then, 2nd place gets VP for the number of coin symbols of the Bid Cards of players whose total was lower than him, etc.

Actually, I'm not sure if this is easier or harder to work out, but I think it might be more intuitive and more interesting. I am going to consider implementing this one right away. What do others think?

Bidding high and losing in the Acquisition round will give VPs equal to the number of Gold Coins on your card to the winner, in addition to you getting 2nd choice of treasure. So you definitely don't want to lose an Acquisition auction with a high bid. And remember, in the Exhibition round, your "Bid Card" takes on a slightly different meaning; the number of Coins give a "bonus" to your exhibit, the number corresponds to the capacity. But then, in scoring, you add up the number of Coin symbols on all cards.

Maybe that's too complicated; I could envision the "bonus" aspect being removed for simplicity, but what I was trying to achieve was that people with "weaker" collections could make up some of the difference by judiciously saving their high-valued bid cards for Exhibiting rather than Acquiring.

One other thing I considered was an inverted correspondence between Gold Coins and Bid Value. So, for now, the "6,7,8" cards have the most coins, whereas in an inverted scheme, they have the fewest. I'm not sure whether an inverted scheme would work or not, but it's something else to consider.

One other possibility would be to have "Gold Coins count for Acquisitions, Red Coins count for Exhibitions" and have a linear scheme for one and an inverted scheme for the other. Not sure if that would be useful, or whether it would make things more complicated...

I didn't do this for the two reasons that, a, it's been done in Citadels! and b, I don't think the Character powers are as powerful in this game as in Citadels. They're really meant to be a supplement to make the Expedition phase more interesting, but not much more than that. But, I'll take your suggestion under advisement!

Anyway, thanks again Seth for some great suggestions!

-Jeff

One thought I have about it: wouldn't this discourage people from competing in the same areas? I'd think they'd now work extra hard to be good at one type of artifact (Egyptian or what have you) and completely ignore the others so as to not give points away. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, mind you, but I think it might have that effect (unless I'm missing something, which is quite likely).

I don't think so, because you score the most points when you are have the most valuable collection in the most heavily trafficked Location. So, if everyone carves out a "kingdom" and is scoring points only in that Location, they probably won't do as well as someone who is exhibiting in a popular region.

Or that's the intent, anyway. But the more I think about it, I see your point that if you have a low-value collection from one Location, you may as well not display it, since you will give away points...

This can be modified, of course, by adding rules that REQUIRE you to exhibit from every location you have (or 3 Exhibits, whichever is smaller). But it may still have an impact on the way you acquire Artifacts, ie, maybe you'd go for only one location. I think that would be a diminishing returns strategy over time; players would prevent you from getting new Artifacts for your collection, and wouldn't put up good Bid Cards in Exhibits at the same region, meaning you would not be scoring a lot of VP. I don't know, there's some thinking to be done about how to implement this. The simplest mod would be "you score VP for the Coin symbols on Bid cards played by players with less valuable exhibits AND from your own Bid Card". This means that everyone scores at least the value of their own Bid Card (plus a possible "+1 bonus" if their # of Artifacts matches the Bid Card value, plus possible bonuses for sets). I think this might be more appropriate than Seth's suggestion, as it prevents players from avoiding Exhibiting when it's obvious they won't score.

By the by, not too much has been said about the "redistribution" mechanic to prevent people from scoring Sets over and over. Any thoughts on how to prevent this more effectively, or does the "give one Artifact from the set to the Last Place Player" seem ok?

-Jeff

Using a semi-real-life concept, perhaps one item in each set is demanded back by the government of the country from which it was acquired as an important piece of cultural history they believe was procured illegally. As such it goes back to the bottom of the deck for that country or perhaps it's just removed from the game. Or something.

Yeah, I think that it could potentially be too generous to the Last Place player, particularly if the game is somewhat close. (In my original rules, only the player with the best exhibit at each Location could score for a Set, so there would be a smaller number of Artifacts going to the Last Place player, but still...)

I don't know if I like "return the item to the bottom of the pile", as it breaks the theme of "the Archaeologists are going and digging up Artifacts". I considered having a 9th bidding option, a "national gallery" or something. So if you scored for a set, you had to place one of your Artifacts there, and next turn, everyone can bid on it. I like this because it has a "redistribution" effect, but I dislike it because it adds another bidding option, and thus, more (probably needless) complexity.

Another possibility would be to just make Sets less valuable and have it so you can score over and over. Another would be that you can only score a Set bonus once for each Location (although that requires extra bookkeeping, which is again more complexity). Or maybe you can only score a Set bonus once for each "site color". So, if you score a bonus for the Brown site at Egypt (Khufu pyramid), maybe you get a Brown token and for the rest of the game, you can't get a Set bonus for Brown sites from ANY Location. That might work.

A less generous redistribution mechanic might also be ok.

What do you guys think of Seth's suggestion that you score points for Artifacts in one big sweep at the end, and possibly score points for Sets along the way? Would that be more intuitive/cohesive than the current "exhibit every turn" system? It would certainly be faster, but would remove some of the tension I like from the "which Bid cards will I use to Exhibit, and which will I use to Acquire" decision process?

The only concern I have with "Exhibit every turn" is the Exhibiting will get kind of stale -- you'll just be exhibiting the same Artifacts over and over. Yet, in the one test game we had, we had 7 players, and only 4 turns, yet people were able to amass pretty decent sized collections and power changed hands a few times at each Location in the exhibits (how many artifacts people acquire depends heavily on how many Artifacts are recovered during the Expedition phase; that's meant to be yet another of the game's interesting choices)

Finally, I'd really like to hear alternate game end suggestions. So far, there's mine "play as many turns as there are players" or my old scheme "play till the draw deck from one Location is exhausted". I like the latter, but it could end the game too early; maybe "play until two draw decks are exhausted"?

Not sure...

Thanks again for the feedback!

-Jeff