Disciples playtest session report

That's it, precisely. The game engine is fine - there are plenty of games with simpler engines of significant appeal to gamers - but many of my concerns about the game really came down to the group's play style.

Great, this is turning into a very good discussion, and I'm glad others have chimed in. Indeed, as Matthew mentions, this seems to revisit issues the group has brought up before (in that case, in the context of Mystery in the Abbey).

But I think the game does have a "Rome burns" effect via the Traitor. If the players won't be "semi-cooperative", then they will lose to the Traitor. We certainly saw that the other day -- the game came within one turn of a Traitor victory. I would say that this is the sense in which the game "punishes" selfish play. (In fact, "Republic of Rome" may be a decent analogy for this game -- despite the chasm of differences that divide the two games)

As for incentivizing "selfless" play, I certainly think there's an ingredient of that as well -- for example, performing Deeds in occupied towns gives you extra points, but it gives points to the other players as well. Same thing Gospel tokens. Maybe "selfless" isn't so much the right word as "helping others as well as yourself".

I guess I'm just unsure whether the "play style" adopted by the group would have been the same one adopted in the 2nd play. Let's say this game had come to your group as a published game, by Alea, say (that won't happen in real life, of course, but just pretend...). And you had exactly the same experience we had the other day -- the game seemed "tough", with the action tracks being pegged and Jesus performing relatively few Deeds, and the Traitor had a huge score (whether or not he actually betrayed). Now, would your response be "clearly the game is broken!" or "maybe we are missing something?"

Yes, this is an unfinished game, so there's a strong possibility that the fault lies with the game. The point I'm trying to make is that I think the game system may reward the kind of play style I'm asking players to adopt -- namely, that some actions need to be taken that may benefit other players in addition to (possibly even more than) yourself; at the very least, the fact that players who didn't adopt that style were quick to declare the game "too difficult" can't be used as evidence to say that the game doesn't encourage that play style. If anything, our session reveals that the play style they adopted does not lead to a win, and can come dangerously close to a group loss to the Traitor.

But the crucial point is one I want to take up in response to Matthew's comments:

Well, I like MotA, but that notwithstanding, I don't think the analogy applies, because the problem isn't in this case that Disciples is asking players to adopt some meta-game posture to playing the game; rather, it's asking them to avail themselves of explicit mechanics that in this specific case, the players refused to do. A good analogy would be if people refused to trade in Settlers (on the grounds that they didn't want to help the other players), and then complained that the game was too slow and too hard. But that's not a complaint you can really make against Settlers, because a mechanic is provided that allows you to make the game "easier" -- players can trade what they have.

In Disciples, the game we played was found by the players to be too "hard", yet they never took advantage of the explicit mechanics that allow you to make the game "easy".

I think this may be because there may be an element of "taking one for the team" that is required in Disciples, and that may be what Joe is concerned about, however, I believe that a "good" player can "take one for the team" in a way that also benefits himself, and that, I think, is where the competitive and cooperative elements converge.

As I said, this game is unfinished, and you may be quite correct in your assesment. On the other hand, I think it's also a possibility that the game does work the way that it's supposed to but that this is different than what players may expect. As to how the mechanics could communicate this more clearly, I'm not sure; my feeling is that the Traitor racking up a lot of wins in "super-competitive" groups might be a hint. Do you think there are other mechanical elements that could be introduced that would further incentivize players to avail themselves of the opportunities the game provides to make play "easier"?

But to summarize, if I understand you right, Joe, you are saying that the idea of Disciples requiring a "slightly selfless" play style isn't bad per se, so long as the mechanics communicate to the players that this is expected. Do I have it about right?

Thanks again for your thoughts and for continuing the discussion!

Best,

Jeff

Realistically? Unless someone enjoyed it, it would probably end up on the trade pile of the person who brought it.

Quite independently of the context of this game specifically, I consider this to be an unfortunate but all too common occurence -- a game must reveal its depth in one playing, two playings max or else it's history. In a sense, I can understand this -- there are so many games out there, and why waste time forming a more experienced opinion on the game, particularly when there's an even-odds chance your initial impression may have been correct?

The point is, for me, I don't really take that kind of stuff into account when designing games. If my games have a "learning curve", well, that's just the way it is. I'm sure it's worth trying to reduce this, but my games are a reflection of my tastes, and "learning-curve" games don't bother me; if anything, they make me more interested in playing again.

Have you ever jettisoned a game and then, after playing again subsequently realized your initial impression was inaccurate?

I think it does, in some ways. But not enough given other parameters. (For example - if there were frequently multiple deeds of the same type in cities, having Jesus perform a deed would frequently benefit the player choosing this action most, and other players to a lesser extent.)

Well, now I can't win; if Jesus' performing a Deed benefits the other players too much, no one will do it; now if it benefits the active player too much, it's unfair!

A simple idea I had was to have it be that if you have Jesus perform a Deed, you get 1 Gospel token, +1 if others are in the town (and they get one as well). This might incentivize this action a bit more (and perhaps a change to Gospel scoring from a fixed reward to a scalable one would help.)

Of course, there's still the problem of people who perform Gospels having the opportunity to quickly cash in on cheap Deeds. To mitigate this, I am trying to formulate "Jeff's latest crazy idea." It goes something like this: the Jews track is removed. Each town starts with one "anger cube". When the consequences of a Deed call for movement of the "Jews", the town that Jesus is in either receives or loses "anger cubes" (as indicated on the card). When the number of anger cubes hits a threshold, Jesus must leave the town, towards a town with fewer cubes. When the last cube is removed from a town, the player gets to do something -- reduce an Action Track, probably.

Additionally, the cost of performing a Deed is now the position on the Action Track plus the number of Anger Cubes in the town.

So now, this has all sorts of interesting effects, many of which are probably beyond my ability to calculate currently. Obviously, the cost of actions becomes higher, but I think it also will certainly encourage people to target Deeds a little more specifically, and to have less chances to simply score an "El Cheapo" Deed after someone else had Jesus perform a Deed.

Any thoughts? (from anyone, not just Joe...)

True - but I think an even more interesting question is why Dave won. He didn't target his goals particularly effectively. He didn't take particular advantage of any of the game systems - I don't believe he had Jesus perform a single deed. He _did_ effectively guess where people would be performing deeds - but is that really what you want to be the key to the game?

I agree with what you say; I think that you played what I considered the most "intelligent" game, and came in a close second, yet Dave's 20 points from Deeds won the day. Certainly the other players threw him quite a few points from Deeds they performed. There is, in that sense, perhaps an "unintended kingmaker" effect in the new rules about getting VPs for Deeds; not sure if that's bad or not.

I agree, and again, I appreciate the chance to test with your group, which is probably the most "serious" the game will get tested with. It's been a very useful excercise so far...

-Jeff

Not that I can come up with. Actually, I was having a conversation on this same subject elsewhere recently - might have been in Nigglybits. I find that my initial ratings are usually within 1 of my final ratings, and 99% of the time within 2.

That's quite impressive. I certainly found your article on "sightreading" to be interesting, and it sounds like it's a skill you have. Clearly, having played a lot of games must give you a big advantage at being able to formulate a pretty accurate first impression. I have no problem with someone who is "accurate" at sight-reading writing off a game. What I'm worried about is that some people may overestimate their ability to sight-read a game, or maybe in some cases, may dismiss it entirely simply because it contains a mechanic that they "usually don't like" (like "area majority" or "blind bidding.")

That makes sense, and I've found that I've had to develop a "filter" as a designer to try to identify whether a player is reacting to the game system holistically or just in response to a particular small-scale balance problem the current system might have. For example, if a player said of this game "I don't like it; the Traitor is way too powerful" I can tell that this player isn't really taking into account the fact that this is a simple problem to fix via revaluing the tracks.

Why is that a lose-lose scenario? That sounds to me like a balance that the game must strike.

My point was that it seemed to me that on the one hand you were criticizing the "call on Jesus" mechanic because no one wanted to do it (not powerful enough) but were also criticizing it on the grounds that it was too powerful. I may have misunderstood...

Great, I probably will. Do you feel that it ramps up the complexity too much? How much more complexity do you think this one can tolerate?

I don't know; while Dave did have 20 points from Deeds, certainly less than, say, 6 or 7 came from "Deeds performed by other players." Granted, that's still a larger percentage of his total score (20%) than one might expect, but it may have also just been a peculiarity of this particular session. We'll have to see how much this mechanic pays out over time. If you get more points from being in the right place at the right time than from targetting your goals, then indeed, that is a bit weird...

Thanks again!

-Jeff

As discussed extensively, we had our Albany regional playtest get-together, and Disciples was played by Tom and Mike, "veterans", myself, "pro" (as if!) and Gil and Steve, "rookies".

This game went pretty well. I drew the Traitor, and had some legitimately tough choices as to whether I wanted to try to set myself up for betrayal or perform Deeds that wouldn't help Judas' betrayal goal as much. The Deeds didn't come out in the torrent that we experienced last month, and so Mike and Tom finally got to see some of the Events that I had been promising were "really cool". We did have a couple of periods where few Deeds were present around the board. This prompted Steve to suggest adding a turn option "Reveal a new Deed card". I think this could work well; it's at least worth a try. I could also see changing the current turn-beginning rule from "roll the die and reveal a Deed or Event, as indicated" to "just reveal a Deed, no matter whether an Event is called for by the die or not". Currently, there should be an average of about 1 Deed revealed per turn, but they get used up a bit faster than that; it's not uncommon for a player to fufill, by themselves or with Jesus' help, 2 Deeds on a turn, so we do need a way to get more Deeds out there. A combo of these suggestions might help.

In the end, Gil filled a Deed that moved the Pharisees up to 22 points, which, with the 5 face-up Deeds showing, was too hard to resist, and I took the bait and ended the game, scoring 27 points. Michael and Steve actually came much closer to me than I thought, having 24 and 23 points, respectively (I think); prior to the game end, they had 10 and 12 points (or so) but both did very well at completing Deeds and acquiring Gospel tokens.

I think the session went well, and the game continues to feel pretty close to done. I think that as evidence of this, it seems common for people to say "I like this game" but increasingly rare for them to say "[this change] might make it better." It's possible that people are just being nice, but I think we're at the point where while the game could be made different, it's no longer clear that any big changes are needed to make it better. So, while it would be fun to iterate endlessly, I should probably just call it "done" and move on to fine-tuning. That's, I'm sure, what David (Scurra) would say, anyway!

The only recurrent "complaint" is that there is a fair bit of bookkeeping required after performing a Deed. (score points, increase the Action track, adjust the political tracks, take the Deed card, discard your Action cards). I think it becomes intuitive quickly, but I'm sure people won't necessarily love this aspect of the game. Not sure how to do it differently, though; certainly, a computerized interface that can handle all of this stuff would help a lot!

Anyway, thanks again to all who played, and hope the rest of you enjoyed this report. I welcome comments from anyone!

-Jeff

Tom,

Thanks for your excellent comments. My replies:

Yes, earlier in this thread, but they're outdate. Here's a link to the latest list: Disciples goals.

This issue has been discussed previously in this thread, and my feeling is that the goals are, I think, balanced in the sense that they pay out a value that is fair in accordance with their difficulty. BUT, what they do not guarantee is the same level of gradation across all goals.

For example, the Goal you had the other day, Bartholomew, pays out 4 VP if you've performed a Deed in each category (plus a 2ndary bonus which I will take up later), which is fair given the relative difficulty of that goal (it's tough, but not impossible) BUT it's a bit "all or nothing".

I would say our game on Sat. had only a temporary Deed famine. Most of the game, there were 5 or more Deeds showing, which is typical (but, perhaps that's not enough; it's typical, though.)

The one "Deed overload" was a complete fluke. I've never seen it before. It will happen sometimes, I guess. There are a lot of random factors in the game, to be sure.

The game does occasionally seem to have a "one guy gets hosed for no apparent reason" effect. I've seen this same effect in Puerto Rico and La Citta, which I don't think anyone would say are anything other than terrific games. I think in a 5 player game, there's a chance for the player interaction to just result in one guy not doing as well. The 4 player game should be more "equal opportunity". It may or may not be a problem; when you find it happening, can you dig yourself out of it? Not sure...

I agree, more Deeds showing would help give you a viable target each turn. But, there's always something that you can do to get points, even if it isn't goal-specific. But I agree, getting more Deeds may be important.

I suspect that some goals will just get yanked from the deck depending on the player number (I envision each card having a triangle, square, or pentagon icon indicating that it's removed during a 3, 4, or 5 player game).

I think you can influence what other players do, by planting yourself in towns which have the desired type of Deed (thus making those Deeds more lucrative), or by having Jesus perform Deeds in that category to keep costs low. It used to be even easier when moving Jesus was optional rather than mandatory. We may go back to that at some point.

I would say that goals like, say "Matthew"'s, which is "Receive 1 VP for each Compassion Deed you performed, receive 1 for every 3 Compassion Deeds performed by the group" is meant to foster cooperation but also it has the effect of preventing you from getting "targetted". Trying to scoop up Compassion Deeds to prevent the "Matthew" player from scoring for them may be effective, but it still gives him some points.

I have, however, heard complaints about these kind of goals in the past. I think that philosophically they're ok but the game system may not allow you to make concrete progress towards them. One playtester called those little secondary aspects a "random 0-3 point buffer", which I guess they are in some sense.

Again, what the original purpose of such goals are is that you're not just trying to win big for yourself, but to help others along with you. I'll also observe that coming up with 12 unique goals in a game with relatively few mechanics is tough! But, I'm open to changes...

I think the "all or nothing" goals tend to favor a longer game; this game was relatively "quick". Is there a way you could have made progress towards both? Not sure. I will say that some goals work very well together, some don't work well at all. That's a "luck of the draw" effect that is inherent to the game, and which I rather like, actually; it's fun to get a challenging pair of goals and try to see how to get some points out of them. However, it may not be totally "fair". A couple of solutions include a variant that lets you "draft" goals, or perhaps a bonus or penalty that adjusts your final score based on how well-matched your goals are (sounds like a hard thing to create, but not actually all that bad...)

But again, my goal isn't so much to make the goals equal in opportunity so much as equal in difficulty. Some goals may have a higher potential payout than others, but as long as getting 5 points from goal X is just as hard as getting 5 points from goal Y, I'm happy. If that still doesn't seem satisfying, let's talk about it some more!

Originally (pre-playtesting), the costs of Deeds were on the cards. I liked this Cost system as it made the "call on Jesus" mechanic interesting. It may not be the best system ever, but it seems to work in this game.

But high costs play against everyone, hence the need to call on Jesus to reduce costs, or to try to make the Jews very happy so as to get a reduction.

That said, the tracks may increase too fast. But since they can always be reset by Jesus, it's not something I've really actively thought about changing yet.

I don't think this indicates any changes, but I thought I'd put it out there for you to consider. Whether you like it or not, you're getting a good view of the inside of my head.

I agree that your overall score wasn't reflective of your play. This seems to be an effect of the different goals scaling at different rates. The players who did really well didn't get huge payouts from their goals, but they did get *something*. Your goals (particularly Bart) are more "all or nothing". Theoretically, you had probably made as much progress as they had towards your goal, it's just that it didn't happen to pay out at that level. Maybe Bart should be changed to "1 VP for every category in which you've performed a Deed." Has the same overall effect, and easier to achieve.

Another thing I didn't include, but could, I guess, is goals that pay out according to a non-linear "schedule". (like the Factory in Puerto Rico, for example). But this seemed too "gamey".

Thanks, I'm glad you like the game and I'm all for trying to tweak the goals. The trick seems to be that there's no one goal that always wins; which goals pay out most seem situational, and it's unclear whether it's the game state that "favors" a goal or whether players are actively controlling this aspect. At any rate, since goals used to be about 60% of the game, but now are about 30-40%, I think the emphasis is nicely divided between scoring for Deeds, Gospels, and Goals. You have to balance all three, or really excel in two, to score well overall.

It can't be done! I'm the long post king!

Seriously, thanks for the thoughts, and let me know what you think after seeing the goals. I have a .gif of the 12 goal cards that I'll send you if seeing that would help.

Thanks again!

-Jeff

Whoops, forgot this:

Maybe, but perhaps too gamey. I'll think about it. I don't really want to add that mechanic period, but it may be necessary.

Great, hope you'll get the chance to at some point!

(1) Change Gospel scoring from "average the number of tokens that you and the player with the next lowest total hold" to "you score 1 point per token held by the next player".

Was this not proposed originally? (It's been so long now, I can't recall.)

I don't think so, but maybe. Originally, the rule was just a fixed payout based on your relative rank. The suggestion was that a more intrinsic value to the tokens would make them more interesting. I think it has, but the averaging involves a small math operation which works fine but feels clumsy.

Oh, it will have an impact, to be sure; I'm just not positive it will necessarily be bad; I haven't thought it through yet. Picture this, you have 10 tokens, the next guy has 6; so, to boost your score, instead of going and getting yourself more tokens, you have to find ways to get that guy some more tokens, which I think presents a nice struggle. However, I just realized that it loses something: since that guy's Gospel scoring depends on the next guy below him, you're not actually helping his score along by getting him more tokens (although I guess maybe you're helping him get in a higher position, perhaps). Hmmm....maybe the averaging is a necessary "evil"; it certainly captures what I'm trying to do thematically more accurately.

That may have been proposed, but it wasn't ever ratified. That's the Web of Power payout schedule, isn't it? At any rate, I think it rewards the wrong thing -- it is more a "riding on coattails" payout than a "pulling others up with you" payout...

Was this not introduced because the Events weren't occuring often enough? I never thought the die was a good idea anyway - there must be more interesting ways to generate the same effect.

Actually, it was created for 2 reasons; originally, there was a rule that said "at the start of your turn, increment one track". This meant that if it was possible, an action track was always incremented, and this kept them pegged for most of the game. The die changed that so now it was possible that if a maxed-out track was rolled, no track would increase that turn. Additionally, the die was meant to decrease the number of Events; there are 16 Events and 43 Deeds currently, and when they were all shuffled into one Deck, too many turns had an Event. I wanted to keep the variety of having many different kinds of Events, but reduce the number that were seen in a game.

I think the solution I'll try is "When you reveal a new Deed, if Jesus is in the indicated town, reveal an Event."

I think this would be a bad idea. It always struck me as being one of the interesting thematic elements of the game, even if it didn't have a major impact on the outcome. It's also useful to have something "spare" that can be affected by Events, which makes balancing them easier.

Good rebuttal; it's maybe something I'll try in a solo playtest and see if it loses anything. You'll still have the other two tracks, of course.

This is inevitable, and not something to worry about. (Seth and I will both tell you that someone wioll generally complain about exactly the same thing in "All for One" :-) The only real way to explore this is to play some "fixed" games (where certain things are predetermined such as which Goals are in play, where Jesus moves, what Deeds appear etc.) and see if there is a clear problem.

That's a good idea. I think it's also important to filter the opinions based on experience of the players. A first time player who doesn't score well will commonly blame his goal, but I'll take his opinion more seriously if he says the same thing after playing a few times. I think it's just a common thing among gamers to assume that a game is broken; the chatter around Puerto Rico and San Juan was in each case that certain buildings are "too weak" or "too strong" or whatever, yet I think that as people have explored those games more, they've found the games to be more balanced than they thought. I haven't actually changed any of the goals in quite a while; I think it will just take some patience in playing with them as is and seeing over time which are the "big winners" or "big losers".

The thing is that each goal presents you with a challenge to work towards, and I find that quite satisfying, even when I have a goal that is "tough". But if drawing a certain goal means you will lose, even though you'll have fun losing, that's probably A Bad Thing.

Will do! Thanks again for the comments!

-Jeff

Perhaps it's a possibility to playtest a copy of "Disciples" at "ChinWag" later this year? That would certainly be interesting.

I'd obviously be delighted if you guys wanted to give the game a go. I'd have to look into it, but I fear that sending a prototype "across the pond" may be too expensive, so perhaps you'd be willing to assemble a copy from graphics files?

Drop me a note if you want to try it out, and we can talk logistics.

Thanks,

-J