I'm currently working on my first game (Whistle-Blower! https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/whistle-blower-beta), and have a beta version available in the shop. Feels great to finally get to that point! But I'm having a little bit of trouble when it comes to score-keeping.
I'm having a little bit of a problem with finding the best way to keep score in the game. It's a very basic game: each player has to make as much money as they can to a goal point ($50k is the goal for the first beta version). They can do this in ethical ways, or unethical ways (these are secret; no one but the player playing the card knows if it is ethical or unethical). If another player has a hunch that the card is unethical, they can blow the whistle on them, and if they are right, the person who played the unethical card will lose money.
Here's my problem: The player loses money in a very specific way. There are "stop points" on the score board at certain dollar amounts and the player who loses money is dropped back to those specific points.
A game board is the only way that I've found to handle this mechanic, but it seems a little cumbersome. This is mostly because there are so many possible amounts (from $0 to $50000). I originally had these amounts in increments of $250, and the game sheet was waaaay too cluttered. Since then, I've settled on increments of $1000 with a secondary space for counting the $250 increments, and that has cleared the board considerably, but it still seems awfully complex for a simple and quick-moving game.
What I'd like to know is if everyone thinks that this is the best possible scoring solution. I've also considered pencil and paper score-keeping, and funny money score-keeping, but those also have their drawbacks (math and ease of knowing your score respectively).
There are downloadable instructions on the TGC shop page for anyone who's interested in helping. And if you do find time to help, THANKS!
--Terzi
P.S. Action shots will be posted shortly, as I've just ordred my first copy. :)
Comments
Simple and elegant
I have read and understood your dilemna. My advice is to make it very SIMPLE, make the "stop points" easy to get. Rather than using play money for ALL the winning, make it ONLY for the money to be used in between "stop points".
So let's say you make a rule like: "A stop point every $5000.00". Simple rule. Now you can determine at what "stop point" a player is at and "roughly" how much money he has... Next, you collect money until you reach $10000.00. Once you reach $10000.00 you give back the $5000.00 in play money (it's pretty easy to calculate $5000.00 in play money).
Another alternative is using Poker chips: there are several colors of chips, you can use a color for an amount... Say $250, $500 and $1000. Again you can use my suggested method of giving back the chips each time you reach a new "stop point". 3 types of chips is also easy to use...
This way you don't need to have too much play money (or chips). Just enough for $5000.00 (or whatever your "stop point" limit).
Thanks!
Thanks for your input. I haven't given much though to funny money/chips/etc., but I do like your idea for limiting it to a small amount of money.
I may have to evaluate how the stop points work from here out, and ask my testers very specific questions.
Thanks for your help! I appreciate it!
BETTER solution
Another option is to put DOLLAR amounts on your cards. Say an action is worth $500.00. Well be certain to put that dollar amount in a VISIBLE place (like at the bottom of the card - in BIG, or in the corners of each card, etc.)...
Then you DON'T NEED ANYTHING MORE! All you do is simply need to keep a FEW cards until you reach the NEXT "stop point"!
This way no additional material (chips, play money, etc.)...
Not as simple...
It would require you to manage both sides of the cards. The card BACK would have the monetary value and the card face would have the actions.
BUT I think this might be complicated for the printer to manage... It's possible, just not as simple (as play money or chips).
dollar amounts on cards
Well, the dollar amounts are already on the cards, front and back, but you don't get to keep the cards as you play; they are continuously discarded after each turn, go to the discard pile, then return as the draw deck when the cards run out. But good idea! Reminiscent of Monopoly cards!
Thanks for the input!
Possible Solutions
I took a look at your rules document, and I agree, the current system seems a bit cumbersome. I had two thoughts that might streamline things a bit. The first would be to create another denominational split, say at $10,000. That way you would have the track that counted by $250, a track that counted by $1,000, and a separate method for tracking $10,000. This could either be a third track, or perhaps you could give each player a token (such as one of the Game Crafter coins) every time they reach $10,000.
You could also take this a step further. I'm working on a game right now where I need to be able to track player money up to $9,999. I'm using a small board for each player, each with four ten space tracks, where each track represents the either thousands, hundreds, tens or ones digit. Players can then simply read their current money across by looking at where their four tokens are placed. This obviously involves more boards and more tokens, but is very intuitive and gives precise granularity. If you adapted your game to only use multiples of $100, you could get away with three tracks. You could also allow all players to track their money on the same board, although this might be more confusing.
As an aside, if you choose to stick with your current system, I would either get rid of the $100 cards or switch the $250's to be $200's and make your secondary track multiples of $100. To go to all that work when tracking scores and still need to round off seems a shame, which is what you're trying to solve, I'm sure. Good luck!
Thanks!
Great Ideas! I really like your multiple track solution, and since I have two tracks at the moment, I don't think it would be any more cumbersome. This might make for a much more interesting-looking game board as well. And since I have included "cheat sheet" cards that list the stop points, this solution might work really well. I've always hated the rounding idea, but, until now, I didn't have a way to get more score "resolution".
I'll have to look at the math to see what changing the $250 cards to $200 might do to the game. As the cards are, everything is in very specific proportions and the deck is very symmetrical. If I can get away with chaning the $250s to $200s that would be an awesome easy fix.
Thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated!