Game #68: For Goods and Honor by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Interesting...if I'm understanding how everything works (it's Black Monday, so please forgive me if I'm missing something), I think you might run into problems with 'folk type' selection, in a manner analagous to setting up 5 players to play on a hexagonal board. The players of the same type lose the effective competitive advantage in supplying their worker type, and unique worker-providers will get proportionately higher offers.

Also, I'm not sure the 'attacks' will even out among the players enough over the course of the game. With an average of two per player, and constantly increasing effects, there will be a _lot_ of variability between the impacts on the players over the course of the game. By not investing in guards, one can still hope to get lucky and not get attacked, and use the additional production to win the game on luck alone. Perhaps having the Nastigans go after the least-guarded tribe would alleviate this?

Your VP system seems very coarse...adding some granularity would alleviate what I would anticipate to be very common ties...or perhaps some other tiebreaking mechanism would help.

Looks like my first two concerns had already been addressed, (Curse you, traitorous caffeine!) though I'd be on the lookout for petty diplomacy issues given that the 'votes' are against a particular opponent rather than simply 'not me!' Also, be careful about mixing marker/chip terminology...I didn't make the connection that there was a single color of chips used for scoring goods for longer than I should have on account of this. As for the VP granularity...just a random thought, but why not include a set of tie-breaking tokens numbered 1-number of players, distributed at the start such that the first player to move gets the worst one, and the last the best. These tokens can be placed with offers, such that the first person to take the offer exchanges tokens with the offerer.

A minor point: in your rules under Components on page 1 you specify 6 Nastigan Markers in Red, but under Setup on page 3 you state For each player in the game, 2 Red Nastigan Markers are also added to the Consumption Draw Cup. Looks like the game should include 12 Nastigan Markers, or else add only 1 to the Consumption Draw Cup during setup. (Your later comment The number of visiting Nastigans is equal to the number of Red Markers on the table, or the number of players in the game, whichever is less makes it sound like 12 is the correct number.)

BTW, I think the Nastigan Draw Cup should be called the Honor Draw Cup. It's used when Nastigans visit, but it contains only Honor chips and no actual Nastigan Markers; the Nastigan Markers are all in the Consumption Draw Cup. This confused me for a while until I got it straight which chips were in which cups.

I like the growth curve for Nastigans: no visits from Nastigans in the first round, then one extra Nastigan on each visit, maxing out at the number of players.

Like Zomulgustar, I'm concerned about frequent ties, especially in three-player games, and I think you'll need a tie-breaker. You aren't handing out many VPs, but your players are passing around a lot of Honor and Goods chips. How about simply breaking ties in favor of the player who scored the most Honor chips from other players? That guy is the one who clearly behaved most honorably, presumably in addition to showing good production capability. If there's still a tie, give it to the guy with the most Goods Chips.

It sounds interesting, and as I take a break to recover from my vacation, the only notable comments I can wrap my head around are:

1 - I see your balancing effect of, for example, if there are 2 Plainsfolk players and 1 of everyone else, there will be more Food consumption markers than anything else in there, thus making Plainsfolk more important... but does that really balance it? Unless I misread, the Plainsfolk players will begin with 10 Plainsfolk of their own, while everyone else will have to pay them for them. So when you have more players of one Folk than another, those people seem to be doubly rewarded to me. Everybody will need their guys, including them (since more often than not, consumption will be of that type), but they start with those most useful of guys, AND they will be offered more for their guys than the other players will, since the other players need them more as well. Does that make sense? I'm not a big game theorist.

2 - Your setup phase effectively makes it so that regardless of # of players, everybody will take exactly 8 turns. An idea might be to reduce that for more players (or an optional rule to do so), so that you don't have such a linear increase in game time. Since you're dealing with small integers, it would tweak the balance - making the game less Nasti, or more Nasti, or more Woody or whatever the case may be, but that may be fine, especially as an optional rule. Quick & Nasti would be a good optional rule overall - players put in less consumption chips, but the same number of Nastigans, for a shorter game where guards are more important.

3 - As someone stuck gaming with my wife and very rarely others, I'd like a 2-player option. Maybe something where you each pick your Folk, and then each get 5 of the third type of folk, or much better, there's a dummy player who doesn't play in general, but accepts a certain fixed offer for his guys always.

Here is my list of comments/thoughts:

Setup section that starts "Any usused Player Boards....", states that unused parts are removed from the game. But then also states to keep the remaining Goods and Honor Chips nearby as they will be used. I would clean this up to avoid confusion.

Turn section number 1. Why do you have the players toss a red Nastigan Marker back in on the first turn? What problems did you see to have this rule? Obviously nothing would happen when initially played, but to me it seems that it might alter the game a little since more Nastigans would be out "sooner". Of course you have the limit, so essentially the max might be hit sooner.

Turns section, number 2 could be worded better. You are conveying the same idea for both pawns. And I had to read the rules a couple of times to make sure I did not miss some difference between allowed movement of the 2 pawns. Maybe something like "Move 2 pawns. The player may complete any one action below for each pawn." or "Move 2 pawns. The player is allowed to complete one action from the following list for each pawn."

End Game scoring, a couple of possible score options: Most or least guarded?

That is all for now, I need to re-read some sections. Overall it looks like an interesting game to play.

Ok a couple more comments...

While I like it, "Play starts with the "most Nastigan-like" player, does it really work out in the long run? Will players always start with the same person?

Hmmmm as I look at the rules, two things keep coming to mind. Potential Kingmaking and Seat Order Effect problems. Have you seen either of these problems while playtesting?

The offers are what make me think these two items might exists. Since players to the left of the current player always get the first crack at fulfilling an offer, the current player could easily "stack" the offer causing the player to their left to have an unfair advantage. Maybe I am way off since I have not played the game, but I would be interested to see if it was possible to cause these two problems.

Likewise, a player might be able to stack offers to the advantage of the current leader, thus causing Kingsmaking problem.

For the Producing Goods section, I assume that "Each Plainsfold adds 3", means that for each "Plainsfolk pawn" you add 3?

Again, the game seems very interesting. If I ever have the time, I would love to give this game a test run.

I agree with many points raised so far, especially about player order effects and luck over a small number of turns. I also wonder if it wouldn't be too easy to make a trade bloc and embargo a player.

But here's my biggest concern:

At its heart, this is a trading game, like Settlers of Catan. The difference is that in For Goods and Honour there's no secret information: no hidden hands, no discovery cards, and most importantly no secret plans ("I need a lot of wood so I can make longest road" "I need wheat because I'm ready to build a city."). Players of equal skill should be able to agree on what's a fair offer, robbing the game of its tension.

I may be overlooking subtle aspects, but I think game needs more tough decisions. Right now, these are the decisions a player will need to make:

* Should I place this pawn as a guard or a worker? Not bad. Some gambling. * Whose chip should I drop in the Honour cup to attract Nastigans? Almost always the leader, and there's no option to save the chip for VP.
* Where I should I put my worker pawn? Not too controversial. You put him where he'll produce the most (relative to your current total for that good) or free him for trades if you're overproducing.
* How much should I offer for a pawn? Less than what he could produce for you in the time remaining. (A bit of a gamble, because consumption can change.)
* Should I accept that offer for a pawn? Only if it's more than what he could produce for you in the time remaining. (A bit of a gamble, because consumption can change.)

If players could compete simultaneously to accept offers, this would help, because then you have to make a snap decision before the other person steals a potential bargain from you. There's some tension.

I like the theme and the concept of differently productive workers, but I suspect the game needs another element to make it crackle.

Yogurt