Game #57: News by Brett Paul

Here are some of the things I've gleaned from everyone's comments (thanks, all!), and a couple other things that those comments sparked.

This suggestion could go a ways towards reducing some of the complexity and some of the tedium associated with revealing sources: Rather than having individual sources, change over to having sources on the game board itself.

This next one doesn't reduce components since it relies on the deck of cards still, but might still help make a cleaner game: Pre-stock these starting sources with information by drawing the top X cards (where X = number of players). The way the stocking works is that the information shown on the source drawn is distributed to the source spots on the board.

Private source could become like an extra room on the board, and gets all the information shown on the card when revealed.

Secret sources would work the same way (or could be eliminated).

Instant sources provide information as they do now, but the rest is distributed to the spots on the board.

Dispatch would send reporters to the spots on the board only.

Publishing would send reporters to the story, and then to the office.

On role selection:
Rather than having everyone execute every role, players in turn select a role and put a marker on it. Other players who want to do the same role would then have to buy into that role. Players can continue to select roles until everyone passes. (This introduces a possible need for tokens to show what roles you will execute, or something on the board that the player puts a token on.)

Under this scenario, publishing would happen once per turn, after all the roles are executed.

Distribution of the information tokens could be similar to ship distribution in Tongiaki - fill each source area first, then distribute at will (or distribute evenly at the start of the game).

These are all things to try. (Now I just have to get the stuff written and get my playtesters together again).

Could also combine the two decks - stories and sources, and just use them for the different purpose when it is drawn. This eliminates one of the decks.

Another possibility is to have generic (wild card) information that can be used as a substitute for whatever information you lack, with possibly certain limits (no more than 3 wild cards for in-depth stories, none for basic stories).

Is it worth it to differentiate between basic and in-depth stories or should the basic stories go away altogether?

Thanks again, all. This is surely something to think about. I promise that the next game I put up here for review will be MUCH lighter. This is probably my heaviest (rules-wise) game.

For Press Conference, if roles are all selected first, then executed, I was thinking that Press Conference would come right before publishing. In other words, roles are all selected/bought into, then all roles (including dispatch) are executed, then Press Conference (if applicable), then publishing.

Another approach on this would be to have a press conference every turn (total of maybe maybe 10 rounds in a game).

Another random set of thoughts sparked by this discussion. This is a bit more extreme of a change from what I have now.

Currently, the roles are:

Network (trade and share information, hire reporters) Research (get new information)
Reveal sources (show more sources of information)
Dispatch (move reporters out to sources)
Publish (write and publish stories)
Advertise (get money)

With this version (described below), this would be reduced to:

Network (trade and share information) Dispatch (move reporters around)
Reveal sources (combines dispatch and research)

First part of each round could be "set budgets." That could include:

Determine income. Income could be determined by:
number of stories already published player's current score
previous round's advertising expenditure
etc.
Pay expenses:

fact checkers reporters
ace reporters
advertising

Hiring a new reporter (increasing your number of reporters) costs $5.
Getting the Ace from a normal reporter would cost $5. <- this may still be at publishing time to have some qualifications on it.
Keeping reporters you already have costs $1 per reporter ($2 for the ace).
Reporters are bought/paid at the beginning or end of each round.

If you pay for a fact checker (or more than one?), it could modify information reliability (new concept).

Keeping reporters helps you get information, publish stories. The more reporters you have, the more places you can cover (and the more information you can retrieve). The more reporters, the more stories you could publish in a round, theoretically.

Paying for advertising helps increase your income for the following round.

So the things that you would do on your turn would be:

Get new information (like reveal sources + research) Move reporters among locations:

Streets to get information office to write stories
press conference
Share information (like trading in Settlers but with sharing)

Turn sequence:

New starting player Reveal stories
Each player takes a turn and can do one of three things:

Get new information (from reporters who are out doing research) Share information (like trading in Settlers)
Move reporters to one of three locations (limit to 2 reporters moving? One space at a time?)
Press conference happens
Publishing phase

Get new information - instead of having sources laid out for reporters to go to, the cards can be flipped (one at a time) and the information from that source gathered by the one doing the research. This would change the nature of the source cards - they'd have a lot less information on them under this. I'm thinking two or three. An alternative to this would possibly be to get one "wild" information token instead of two or three random colors.

You can publish a number of stories equal to the number of reporters you have in the office.

This would really change the complexion of the game.

Addition of fact-checkers to your payroll can prevent badly-researched stories or unreliable information from getting through. This goes into the whole "bad research or unreliable source" aspect of the game that I haven't really gone into yet.

This is starting to more resemble Ticket To Ride than Puerto Rico now.

Oh, one other idea comes to mind - instead of information tokens, players can have a player mat that shows the 7 different types (colors) of information and little boxes. They get a marker that tracks how much of each they have. This would help reduce components, and eliminate the whole part of the game about watching how much is in the bank - the bank would essentially never run out. Something else that this would help with is information credits (for follow-ups). Players could have a second set of cubes of a different color that they use on the tracking mat to show information credits. The player can't go below this, and could advance it based on stories published.

Geez, it's a whole new game that way. I'm not saying it's better - I'm just spouting ideas here.

Quite true. I was thinking of something like a basic income of 5/round, to facilitate paying bribes, hiring and keeping reporters, etc. There would have to be a built-in max of 10 including other bonuses, I suppose.

I haven't thought of a good way to incorporate it yet. If I find a way that fits, I'll give it a shot. :)

Again, good point. Some things mitigate this - max of 4 reporters (at a cost of $15), information flow versus stories available, but you are right - it's something to watch out for.

Another way to help simplify it is to reveal a story at the start of every player's turn rather than revealing a number of stories equal to the number of players once a round. So basically, everyone gets a turn. It consists of 1) add a new story to the story pool, 2) one action (share, dispatch, get info). When the starting player is up again, publish. That's not bad.

Sure thing Icemage.