Since my latest game "The 12 Disciples" was recently up for discussion in the Game Design Workshop, I thought I'd provide a session report for all who are interested in hearing how the "alpha" playtest went.
For those who want the short version, it went well.
Now, for the more detailed version. I'll comment first on the session, and will specifically address some of the comments that were made during the workshop. Some of the playtesters are members here, and may chime in on the discussion.
We had 6 players for the game -- Vitas, Rich, Chris, myself, and Preston/Mindy (played as a team). All except Mindy have playtested several of my games before. Mindy was a friend of Preston's, and it was great to have her along. They played as a team, which worked quite well, and, I think, potentially doubles the effective number of players in the game (and it works thematically, since all players represent "teams" of disciples). Plus, both Mindy and Preston are ordained ministers, so I was constantly looking for them to shout "blasphemy!" They never did -- a good sign.
This session was without a doubt the best alpha test I've ever had, and quite possbily the best playtest session I've ever had, period. The game works really well. Everyone learned the system easily, and there are a lot of cute decision points. I took hpox's suggestion and changed the actions from "do these in order" to "do any 4 actions". This worked really well, and gave players a lot of flexibility, which was really needed. I also took Matthew's suggestion, and had Jesus move at the end of the turn, towards the town with the most Deeds, but this was optional. This worked in an interesting way; you could try to position yourself in such a way to be in the town that Jesus was going to be in, to hopefully capitalize on other players selecting the "Jesus performs a Deed" option. There are also a few Events that give Gospel tokens to players who are with Jesus, and as a result, there is definitely a desire to "follow Jesus". There also seems to be an effect of "following the Deed cards"; it seems players were very commonly clustered at one end of the board or the other, depending on where the most Deed cards were located. That was interesting as well.
One thing that was rather surprising was that the Action Tracks spent the majority of the game maxed out at 4. This wasn't too big of a hindrance, since the costs could be reduced by one if others are in the town, but it seemed like people were being a bit "cagey" with having Jesus perform Deeds to reduce the action tracks. Even so, Jesus performed 7 Deeds during the game, more than any player save one. So...I think I may need to drop the rule about "at the start of your turn, if you reveal a Deed card, advance one Action track".
The big bummer in this game was that there was no traitor. There are 12 "Goal" cards, one of them says "you are the traitor", and 10 are dealt out. The possibility that one of us was a traitor was a very satisfying source of tension for most of the game; there were quite a few points where the Traitor track had creeped up to a point where someone could have betrayed and probably come out pretty well based on the level of the Pharisees track and the number of unfinished Deeds showing. And the "guess the traitor" mechanic worked just fine! There were several incorrect accusations, some of which were met with surprise and some with suspicion ("Are you just accusing me to deflect attention from yourself?") Chris tried to use this to his advantage by deliberately acting "suspicious", taking several actions that advanced the Pharisees when others were available. I was very close to accusing him, which was what he wanted, as it would have gotten him a card draw. In fact, at one point, he started moving towards Jesus, and I was fairly sure he was going to betray Jesus and end the game. The level of tension that created for me was somewhat analogous to what one feels when marching across Mordor in Lord of the Rings. I found it very satisfying.
However, there's an event that says "reveal the last 2 Goal cards", and when we did, and found that there wasn't a traitor, we were all kind of like, "Oh, ok. Huh." It really was a huge anticlimax, and made the rest of the game somewhat lame, because the tension in performing Deeds that move up the pharisees is gone.
So...this needs a big change. First off, I think we either need to ensure there's a traitor, or dramatically increase the probability that there is. The obvious way to do this is to, during setup, pull one of the 11 "good" cards, and then shuffle the Traitor in with the remaining 10, then deal everyone 2 cards. This means there's only a 1 in 11 chance that there isn't a traitor, which is probably more appropriate. 1 in 6 is just a little too likely. Also, I think we'll have the event that says "reveal the remaining 2 goal cards" be a game ender, which is fitting since it's "The Last Supper". What I think I'll do is shuffle this card into the last 5 or 10 cards of the Event deck, and when it comes up, the traitor *must* end the game by betraying Jesus. (or, if there's no traitor, it just ends and players score out normally).
Other interesting notes...The final scores were Vitas 19/Chris 18/Rich 16 (I think)/ Mindy-Preston 15 (I think)/Jeff 10 (maybe). Once again, I lost my own game! Yes! Actually, in this case, it was because I drew a goal card that was "broken" -- it was "Get 2 pts for each deed by which you exceed the traitor", obviously no good when there is no traitor! The goals will need some tweaking, but they did have a big impact on the game (by design). Vitas was the Gospel writer, collecting 9 gospel tokens and earning "best Gospel" accolades. But, he also had the "get 1 vp for each Gospel token you hold" goal, which was hugely successful for him, and won him the game, despite having only performed 2 Deeds. Chris took a balanced approach and made good progress on both of his goals, pulling off a very close 2nd. Interestingly, at the game end, the Pharisees were at 16, and there were 2 face-up Deeds, meaning that the Traitor, had he been in the game, would have been very much in the running, but would not have won. I think that the pharisees track may be better balanced than I thought!
Most of us hoarded cards, and all had 6 or more symbols at the game end, except for Chris, who had 2, giving him 2 VPs at the game end. I like this mechanic a lot, but it made Rich feel that we should disallow "passing" as a turn option -- you MUST take 4 actions, he argues. I'm inclined to agree tentatively -- otherwise, you can be a little too cute with keeping your hand low, or with positioning yourself to be set up for Gospel tokens.
We found that the Pharisees track increased rather slowly, and as a result, the turn option "discard 2 symbols to move the pharisees or Jews back 1" was a little too powerful. No one had taken the action, but we decided to remove it from the table, and I think we'll probably keep it that way. If it comes back, it will probably be "pay a performed Deed to move the Pharisees back one", ie, it will cost you some VP to do it. It may be necessary as a "last resort", but it needs to be costly.
The Jews seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time at "-3". Rich suggested extending the tracks to +5 and -5 and having 2 points on each side that move the Pharisees, rather than just one. I like this in principle, but it might create too much motion on the pharisees track. The better option might just be to look more carefully at the card distribution and remove some of the cards that move the Jews backwards.
And finally, comments on the "last turn". In this game, it was superfluous, because there were no Deeds that anyone could perform, so we all wrote Gospels. I'm thinking that the Goal cards, combined with "symbols in hand" may be sufficiently difficult to calculate (particularly since they're secret) that the traitor's position is always uncertain, and having the extra turn may be superfluous. I may wait and see, but tentatively, I think it will probably get the boot.
So, in summary, the session went very well, and we're scheduled to play again next week. I don't exspect any huge rules changes, but I will likely tweak the goals a bit, and may make Rich's change of "you must take all 4 actions", or maybe even reduce it to just 3 actions per turn. And, I expect that I'll get rid of the "advance an action track when you draw a Deed card". But other than that, everything is working remarkably well. I'd be happy to answer any other things that came up as concerns but that I've forgotten to mention here, but basically, I think this one is off to as good a start as I could have hoped for. Again, my sincere thanks for the great suggestions that you all made during the workshop. I'll keep you posted on the progress with this one!
Best,
Jeff
And then you go on describing what a great source of tension the possibility of there being a traitor was.
Wasn't that the real problem then? If you just remove this card, wouldn't that fix the problem?
It would fix the "anticlimax" problem, to be sure. Luckily, in this game, that card came out fairly late in the game. Had it come out early, the game would have been broken.
But I think that overall, the systems of the game are pretty heavily invested in there being a traitor in the game. So, I think that my reworking of the "Last Supper", to have it be a game-ender, fixes the game length, forces the traitor to "hurry up" a bit (because the game could end unexpectedly for him as well!), and removes the "anticlimax" problem, yet the game isn't left dangling forever while players wait for a traitor who isn't there. And, I really think that the chances of there being a traitor in the game need to be higher than 5 out of 6. 9 out of 10 might be best, but 10 out of 11 is probably easiest to machinate algorithmically (though they're both easy), so I think we might try that in the next game (or just "load the deck" so there definitely is a traitor, since we really need to know whether the traitor scoring is balanced or not).
Thanks for the note!
-Jeff