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All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

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sedjtroll
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All For One
A pickup/deliver game for 3-5 players
By David Brain and Seth Jaffee

France, 1630. The Royal Musketeers are personal guards of King Louis XIII, defending the King against the dubious plots of Cardinal Richelieu. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d'Artagnan, Rochefort, and MiLady DiWinter move around Paris, fighting duels and completing missions to earn the favor of the King and Cardinal. Both characters and players earn Favors throughout the game and bonus points are scored at the end when players reveal their true allegiances. The winner is the player who's earned the most Favors!

All For One is a game of doing missions. Players are not tied to any specific character, rather each turn you choose which character to activate and then take actions with that character. Each player is secretly assigned one of the characters whos score will be added to their own at the end of the game, which helps drive decisions during the game.

The missions are printed on Mission Cards, which detail which character must complete the mission, which Plot Tokens are necessary to complete the mission, and the location at which the mission must be completed. Completing these missions involves collecting various Plot Tokens from around the board, and bringing them to specific places. Some missions involve getting 2 of the characters to a specific place at the same time, and some missions involve characters duelling.

The board is an interconnected web of streets, some of which are patrolled by Cardinal's Guards. The guards serve to hinder the musketeers' progress. There are 6 named locations where the characters begin the game, and the other 18 locations are home to 1 plot token each. 2 of the tokens are horses, which can be ridden by the characters. The rest are used to complete missions.

The way you complete missions is through actions, and the available actions are as follows - each allowed only once per turn:

Move: Move the active character up to 3 locations. You must stop if you encounter any other character. Musketeers encountering a guard must stop and fight a Guard Duel - if they defeat the guard they may continue their move action. A character carrying a horse token may choose to ride. When riding, move exactly 4 locations, skipping any characters or guards passed by (but not those you land on). While riding you my not turn around or pick up tokens en route (see Transfer Token action).

Refill Hand: Refill your hand to 4 Mission cards (this is in addition to your One For All card). You may discard 1 card before drawing.

Complete a Mission: Play a Mission Card and demonstrate that the conditions of the Mission have been met (the correct characters in the appropriate locations with the correct Plot Tokens). The character completing the mission receives 1 favor, and the player completing the mission receives 1 favor per token delivered. The tokens go back to their home space, and the player keeps the mission card for a tiebreaker.

Demand a Plot Token: The active character may demand that another character in the same location to hand over a Plot Token. Milady and Rochefort always agree to each others' demands. All other characters refuse and a Character Duel occurs.

Transfer a Plot Token: The active character can pick up or drop a Plot Token in the location they're in, or hand a plot token to a teammate (Musketeer or Agent) in their location. The recipiant of a handoff must have a vacant space on their character card - each character can only carry 3 tokens at a time. Transferring a token is a free action, can be done multiple times in a turn, and can be done in the middle of a Move action.

One For All!: The special One For All card can be used as an action. End your turn and immediately begin another. Activate the same or another character and take your actions. If you activate a character that was just active, you only get 2 actions this turn.

The one for all card has other uses as well. It can be used in combat, and it can be used when Completing a mission to score bonus Favors. Any time a One For All card is used, it is placed face up on the table and cannot be used again until it is recovered. You recover your One For All card whenever you complete a mission.
[THIS IS BEING CHANGED TO "You recover your One For All card at the END OF A TURN in which you complete a mission" TO PREVENT CHAINING OF TURNS]

The combat uses Mission cards, which also have either an offensive or a defensive maneuver listed on them. The basic combat resolution is that you play cards, then count up all the offensive cards and all the defensive cards. The active character is always the one on offense, and the other character is always on defense.

Guard Duel: Active player plays a Mission card, then reveals the top card of the Mission deck. Cards with offensive maneuvers (blue) count toward Offense. Cards with defensive maneuvers (red) count for defense. Riposts (white) count double for defense. A One For All card counts triple for offense. Compare offense to defense to find the result:
WIN - more offense than defense. Active caracter earns 1 Favor and may continue moving.
TIE - equal offense and defense. No Favor is awarded and the Move action ends. The active player may continue their turn.
LOSS - more defense than offense. The turn ends immediately.

Character Duel: EACH player plays a Mission card, and they are revealed simultaneously. Cards with offensive maneuvers (blue) count toward Offense. Cards with defensive maneuvers (red) count for defense. Riposts (white) count double for defense. A One For All card counts triple for offense when played by the Active player. When played by another player it counts as zero for the duel total but goes back to the player's hand. Compare offense to defense to find the result:
WIN - more offense than defense. Active caracter earns 1 Favor and the demanded Plot Token.
TIE - equal offense and defense. No Favor is awarded. The active caracter gains control of the demanded Plot Token.
LOSS - more defense than offense. Nothing happens. The active player continues his turn.

Each Musketeer has a Signature Move, a certain offensive maneuver that they are better at. When that character is active, their signature move counts double toward the offensive duel total.

Each character has a special ability, most of them help in combat.
Athos: Foresight - After cards are played, reveal the top card of the Mission deck. If it is an Offensive maneuver, add 1 to the offensive duel total.
Porthos: Battle Ferver - After cards are revealed, play an additional card. This card also counts toward the duel total - either offensive or defensive.
Aramis: Calming Peace - Discard a card instead of fighting a guard. You may continue your move action. No favor is awarded.
D'Artagnan: Stubborness - Must be defeated twice in a duel.
Rochefort: Expert Swordsman - After cards are revealed, discard any card to add 1 to the offensive duel total. This ability can be used more than once. [If this proves too powerful, change to "BEFORE cards are revealed..."]
Milady DiWinter: Feminine Guile - Discard a card when Demanding a token instead of having a Character Duel. Gain control of the Demanded token. No Favor is awarded.

Each ability is usable only by the ACTIVE character, and each is optional. All cards played or revealed in a duel are discarded.

Game End
The game ends when the predetermined number of Favor tokens are exhausted. Points due after the supply is exhausted are still awarded. At that time the turn is finished and scores are totalled. Reveal your Identity tile and add your favors to those on the appropriate character. The winner is the player with the most total favors. In the case of a tie, the tied player with the fewest completed missions is the winner.

sedjtroll
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9/02 and 9/03 playtests

I played 2 games last night (9/02) and another today (9/03, different people) with these new rules (see summary above). Here's how the games turned out:

Game 1,40 Favors, 60 minutes (including rules):

PLAYER     CHAR          SCORE (P/C)*    MISSIONS<br />
Seth       Porthos       9 (7/2)         6 or 7<br />
Mike       Aramis        14 (9/5)        6<br />
Erin       Rochefort     10 (8/2)        4<br />
Game 2, 40 Favors, 35 minutes:
PLAYER     CHAR          SCORE (P/C)*    MISSIONS<br />
Mike       Milady        16 (10/6)       7<br />
Erin       Rochefort     10 (7/3)        3<br />
Seth       Aramis        10 (6/4)        4<br />

In game 1 I chained 5 turns together, doing 5 missions in a row. This seemed powerful, but when the smoke cleared I didn't really win because of it. 3 of the missions were duels, all of them involved my character but I couldn't make him win all three (one win, one tie, one loss). The other two were 1-token missions, and by using the One For All card I didn't get any bonus for that either. So I got about 6 points from that big turn, and I only had 9 total.

However it's boring to watch someone else chain turns, and it can completely screw up the board, so I'm going to try it next time with a small adjustment: You get the One For All card back AT THE END OF A TURN in which you complete a mission. This way there will be no chaining at all, which is probably better for the game.

Mike and Erin had played the game before, in different incarnations, and Mike didn't like it too much before. The last version he said had gotten better, but this time he liked it a lot more. His wife Erin liked it too. The game went pretty quickly, about 45 minutes average for three players. I attribute this to the relative ease of movement and manipulation of Plot Tokens which has opened up quite a bit. I am thinking of adding tokens to the supply to make the game last a little longer.

All in all, a good test I'd say. This morning I played again with 2 different players. Here are the results of that:
40 Favors, 45 minutes (including rules):

PLAYER     CHAR          SCORE (P/C)*    MISSIONS<br />
Seth       Athos         11 (6/5)        3<br />
Joe Lott   MiLady        13 (9/4)        7<br />
Joe C.     Porthos       11 (7/4)        4<br />

A very close game. Neither Joe had played before. I went through the rules pretty quickly, but they are experienced gamers and understood what the rules were doing... the game went pretty fast.Might have taken closer to 60 minutes.

In this game Joe Lott chained 4 turns together. He won by a narrow margin. Chaining is definitely more powerful than not chaining, but I continue to think it's not really unbalanced. However, for the reasons stated above I think it still needs to be removed from the game.

* The score is reported as a total, followed by a breakdown... P/C indicates the number of points scored by the Player, and the number of points scored by the player's ID Character. The number of missions completed is also recorded, so it can be inferred about how many missions other people did with your character.

Scurra
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Re: 9/02 and 9/03 playtests

sedjtroll wrote:
so I'm going to try it next time with a small adjustment: You get the One For All card back AT THE END OF A TURN in which you complete a mission. This way there will be no chaining at all, which is probably better for the game.

Why is that not a surprise to me? ;-)

Thanks for the notes. I see you played with three players, so a playing time of 45-60 minutes is about right. What worries me is that a five-player game seems to take around 90m, and that may be too long. Still, I'm glad to know that blind testers didn't have any trouble with the rules system as it currently stands. The paradox that freeing up players to do more actually makes the experience more calculated is interesting, and mirrors the feelings of my playtesters.

(Oh, and how many mistakes on the Mission cards did you find? ;-))

jwarrend
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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

I found your comments in the other read about people feeling "shortchanged" by not getting to take all 3 actions to be really funny. The reaction of those players shows that people will evaluate a game based on their expectations for the game at least as much as the experience of playing the game itself. I know I've found that when a game lacked a source of tension that I thought it was going to emphasize, there's a bit of a let down. It's funny how just repackaging this one aspect of your game doesn't affect the game but does affect the way players respond to the game.

Quote:

All For One is a game of doing missions. Players are not tied to any specific character, rather each turn you choose which character to activate and then take actions with that character. Each player is secretly assigned one of the characters whos score will be added to their own at the end of the game, which helps drive decisions during the game.

In practice, how much of an impact does the "secret character" rules affect the game? Is it generally possible to guess who is who? Is there a way to influence the game if you acquire this knowledge?

I know that in the one and only game I played of Clans, one of the experienced players observed that he knew from about half way through what color the eventual winner was, but couldn't figure out what he was supposed to do about this.

In that sense, I think that secret idenity games do two things psychologically to the players: (a) the players think they are supposed to act "sneaky" to disguise who they really are, and (b) the players think they are supposed to solve the mystery of who is who.

I strongly suspect that both of these will happen among players in your game (have you seen this?) and I'm wondering how much it affects the game, and if it doesn't, whether that's a let-down.

Quote:

Complete a Mission: Play a Mission Card and demonstrate that the conditions of the Mission have been met (the correct characters in the appropriate locations with the correct Plot Tokens).

In practice, if I want Athos to go to X, and you want Athos to go to Y, how much of a problem does this present for the game play? I'm worried about the possibility of gridlock where players wrestle over control over one or a couple of muskateers, and completing one's missions becomes tedious. Have you seen this at all? I assume that it's a losing strategy as compared to not engaging in this kinds of wrestling matches, but that doesn't exactly settle who is supposed to back out of the match first...

Quote:

Each character has a special ability, most of them help in combat.

Are they all balanced? Does it matter if they're not?

Also, in games like Dune, for example, the game really only "feels" right when all 6 factions are present in the game, because the special powers all complement each other and when one side is absent, some of the decision making is lost. I guess you don't have this since you do have all 6 characters in every game. Do the NPCs tend to see as much action as the characters who are held by players? Is it straightforward to learn all of the special powers and to incorporate them into decision making? It seems like that is a difference with your game, where in most special power games you want to be aware of all the special powers that all players have but you yourself only have access to one; in this game, you can use any of them, so the decision matrix is much more complicated.

But, it seems like your games are pretty quick so this must not be a problem for most people.

Many of Seth's SRs seem to include one or more rookies. I know that's the place I find myself in with Disciples as well, where it's hard to get a game of "experts" off the ground, so the game always has one or more rookies, which really doesn't help in testing how the game holds up to "expert" play. Have you had many sessions with folks who have 5 or 6 games under their belt? How does the game change when played by such folks?

Sounds like it's coming along well. Keep it up!

-Jeff

Scurra
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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

jwarrend wrote:
It's funny how just repackaging this one aspect of your game doesn't affect the game but does affect the way players respond to the game.

Indeed. Seth and I argued this one a fair amount, and I know I argued it with many playtesters. Ultimately, my testers never really had an issue with it, but then again, they'd been through the game from a much earlier incarnation!

jwarrend wrote:
In that sense, I think that secret idenity games do two things psychologically to the players: (a) the players think they are supposed to act "sneaky" to disguise who they really are, and (b) the players think they are supposed to solve the mystery of who is who.

I strongly suspect that both of these will happen among players in your game (have you seen this?) and I'm wondering how much it affects the game, and if it doesn't, whether that's a let-down.
My experience has been that although it's entertaining to try and work out who is who, it ultimately doesn't affect the game that much because there are always multiple options - you may change your mind about doing a mission with a particular character because you suspect them of being player X's identity, but that's about all. It's a tough one to justify, without experimental evidence, but I suspect that as players gain experience, they learn a number of ways to deal with the identities issue that largely renders it less vital. (I'm most concerned about the effect in a three-player game, but Seth seems haooy enough.)

jwarrend wrote:
Quote:

Complete a Mission: Play a Mission Card and demonstrate that the conditions of the Mission have been met (the correct characters in the appropriate locations with the correct Plot Tokens).

In practice, if I want Athos to go to X, and you want Athos to go to Y, how much of a problem does this present for the game play?

None whatsoever, since I'll settle for taking Aramis to Z instead, and take Athos to X later. You've always got multiple missions to work with, not just one. (I mention this specifically in the rulebook: you don't just have a plan A and a plan B, you have a plan C and D as well :-)

jwarrend wrote:
Quote:
Each character has a special ability, most of them help in combat.

Are they all balanced? Does it matter if they're not?

No it doesn't, because they are actually pretty trivial. You don't have to know what they are, or particularly plan for them. They only really apply in combat, which doesn't actually happen all that often.

jwarrend wrote:
Have you had many sessions with folks who have 5 or 6 games under their belt? How does the game change when played by such folks?

As you know, playtests are hopeless for getting "expert" players, since the game often changes radically from session to session. Having said that, two of my regular testers have played it enough now to be considered experts, and it's clear that they do significantly better than new players in those games. We've played a number of times with three players where we all know the game, and I don't notice huge difference beyond some obvious ones (which I'm not going to list here, but have no bearing on the underlying structure of the game!)
The game is definitely one which some players simply won't "get" whilst others will click into almost immediately. I think the very counter-intuitive nature of the play (abandoning plans happens far more often than creating new ones, for instance!) is something that is confusing. Some of the elements were deliberately designed that way, others just happened.

jwarrend wrote:
Sounds like it's coming along well. Keep it up!

Yeah well, maybe next time Seth will ask before posting :-)

p.s. I'm amused Seth has listed this as version 4.0 - it's at least version 9 from this side...

sedjtroll
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Re: 9/02 and 9/03 playtests

I'm replying to these posts as I read them, so like right now I have only read Scurra's first response (quoted below). Hopefully this won't cause too much confusion ;)

Scurra wrote:
Thanks for the notes. I see you played with three players, so a playing time of 45-60 minutes is about right. What worries me is that a five-player game seems to take around 90m, and that may be too long.

First off, I agree that 90 minutes might be a TINY BIT too long, but have you played 5p with the oppenness of picking up tokens WHILE moving? I think that's what sped up the game. I will try a 5p game as soon as I can to find out how long it takes. 90 mins isn't the end of the world anyway. I think 60-75 would be ideal.

Quote:
Still, I'm glad to know that blind testers didn't have any trouble with the rules system as it currently stands.

Sadly, they're not really blind testers, as I'm there. I don't coach, but I make sure rules are followed, and I say stuff like "Are you done?" and when they ask "what else can I do?" I list off the possible plays. I try not to say whether they're a good idea or not.

Quote:
The paradox that freeing up players to do more actually makes the experience more calculated is interesting, and mirrors the feelings of my playtesters.

I don't think I know what you mean.

Quote:
(Oh, and how many mistakes on the Mission cards did you find? ;-))

There are a few. I already corrected some, but there's at least 1 D'Artagnan mission that doesn't say D'Artagnan on it. ;)

With the picking up tokens 'en route' I might like to sit down and revisit the missions for ones that are 'too easy' (i.e. possible to complete in 1 turn at the start of the game)

jwarrend
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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Scurra wrote:

My experience has been that although it's entertaining to try and work out who is who, it ultimately doesn't affect the game that much because there are always multiple options - you may change your mind about doing a mission with a particular character because you suspect them of being player X's identity, but that's about all.

This is something I'd keep an eye on, then, as the game goes out to more blind testers. To me, if you give me a secret identity, I'm going to try to protect it, and if you give me a mystery, I'm going to try to solve it. If doing these doesn't influence one's overall standing in the game, then this might be a source of disappointment for players. It's not so much likely to be a flaw in the game as a design element that could communicate something to the players that you don't intend it to actually be communicating.

Scurra wrote:
Quote:

In practice, if I want Athos to go to X, and you want Athos to go to Y, how much of a problem does this present for the game play?

None whatsoever, since I'll settle for taking Aramis to Z instead, and take Athos to X later.

And thereby let you take Athos to X. The question I'm leading up to pertains to player interaction. It seems that group control of the pawns would be a nice source of interaction, but if engaging in a wrestling match is a game-loser, then players won't do it. But if avoiding a wrestling match doesn't make it easy for the other player to get points, then perhaps it's not interactive enough?

Quote:

No it doesn't, because they are actually pretty trivial. You don't have to know what they are, or particularly plan for them. They only really apply in combat, which doesn't actually happen all that often.

If they don't figure into planning, then do they play a significant enough role in the game to justify the complexity? (just asking...)

-J

Scurra
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Re: 9/02 and 9/03 playtests

sedjtroll wrote:
First off, I agree that 90 minutes might be a TINY BIT too long, but have you played 5p with the oppenness of picking up tokens WHILE moving? I think that's what sped up the game.

Holy radical changes, Batman! That's not just a small change, that's a HUGE change. No wonder your games were so short!

sedjtroll wrote:
With the picking up tokens 'en route' I might like to sit down and revisit the missions for ones that are 'too easy' (i.e. possible to complete in 1 turn at the start of the game)

Go ahead. It's not that easy :-) With pick-ups en route, I wouldn't be surprised if there were quite a few now. There were one or two in the old version, mostly caused because of the recent switch of d'Artagnan and Milady's starting positions.

sedjtroll
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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Keeping with the my comment, I have not read Scurra's response to this yet.

jwarrend wrote:
I found your comments in the other read about people feeling "shortchanged" by not getting to take all 3 actions to be really funny.

Me too! That's why I felt I had to mention it. Also the result of the change, which is mostly cosmetic, was interesting to me and probably to any aspiring game designer as well. I completely agree that people have expectations, and that those expectations need to be addressed.

Quote:
In practice, how much of an impact does the "secret character" rules affect the game? Is it generally possible to guess who is who? Is there a way to influence the game if you acquire this knowledge?

In practice, and this has been true ever since the inclusion of the secret identities (about a year ago!), the secret ID's work VERY well. I've had comments from testers that they like that part oft he game very much, or that the ID mechanic makes the game. I've had little to no negative comments on them. This mechanic works exactly as intended, which is as follows:

First off, the missions have to be completed by specific characters. Some can be completed by ANY character. So completeing a mission with 'your' character is like a bonus VP. There are 6 characters, so there's always at least 1 which is not anybody else's character (unless you play with 6 players, which is possible but untested and probably too chaotic to be rewarding). In a 4p game (the ideal number) there are 2 'safe' characters.

Combat is another chance to get your character VPs, but that's also where it can become obvious who you are 'rooting for'. If you give yourself away then what's the repercussion? Well, people might stop using your character to do missions for one thing, meaning you get no more 'free' VPs from other players. As a player, doing a mission with a character that is not 'yours' is POTENTIALLY giving a VP to another player. But it DEFINITELY scores you 1, 2, or 3 (possibly even 4) VPs depending on how much worl you put into it. If you can figure out who is who, and more importantly who the 'safe' characters are, then you can freely do missions with them, or help them win fights agaist people who might score points, to help keep other players from scoring points.

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to 'hide' your ID and be sneaky. However I think it's good play to use as many characters as you can, your own when possible, and spread out the points you're giving away. If you do 1 mission with each character, you give each opponent 1 VP, but you get at least 6 yourself.

Finally, due to some of the abilities, it might depend which character you are whether you care if people know or not. For example, one thing I'm watching out for is Rochefort's swordfighting ability. It's been suggested that he is too powerful, that he could effectively slay a Musketeer each turn, earning 1vp a turn. This plus doing any mission that happens to be on his way might be a winning strategy. Well, in order to try this, it's pretty obvious who you are, and you won't get any help from other players. However if you do a good job and get a little lucky, you might win. I think this is acceptable compared to trying to do missions, where if you do a good job and get a little lucky then you might win.

So long story short, the "secret character" rules DO impact the game a lot, it IS generally possible to guess who is who (or it might behoove you to try) but it's not necessary, and there IS a way to influence the game if you acquire this knowledge - you can steer VPs your way, or atleast away from other players. Also, knowing that David is MiLady (for example) is interesting simply becasue I can see if he's ahead of me in points or not.

Quote:
I know that in the one and only game I played of Clans, one of the experienced players observed that he knew from about half way through what color the eventual winner was, but couldn't figure out what he was supposed to do about this.

I have only played Clans twice (tied 1 game, won the other), it was at KublaCon, with Tom Jolly in fact (name dropping, yay!). I am no expert, but I believe there are ways you can use that info in clans, but then I'm not a huge fan of Clans to begin with. The way you'd use that info and actually DO anything abou tthe situation is sorta convoluted... or at least unobvious (which is probably the games' strong point).

Quote:
In that sense, I think that secret idenity games do two things psychologically to the players: (a) the players think they are supposed to act "sneaky" to disguise who they really are, and (b) the players think they are supposed to solve the mystery of who is who.

I strongly suspect that both of these will happen among players in your game (have you seen this?) and I'm wondering how much it affects the game, and if it doesn't, whether that's a let-down.
One of the initial problems was sort of that players DID NOT think they were supposed to be sneaky... rather they felt like they had to use their ID character exclusively. It was hard work getting people to realize that they really have to use all the characters, not just their ID - rather than cry that none of their missions were for 'their' character.

I have not gotten the impression that players get caught up trying to figure out who is who. I'm sure they think about that, and there have been some comments like 'oh, he's obviously Milady' or whatever. But it's never been a problem either way. Nor a let down.

AS it happens, there HAVE been games where I've been suprised at the end by who was who... "You were Aramis? I figured you were Rochefort!"

Quote:
In practice, if I want Athos to go to X, and you want Athos to go to Y, how much of a problem does this present for the game play? I'm worried about the possibility of gridlock where players wrestle over control over one or a couple of muskateers, and completing one's missions becomes tedious. Have you seen this at all? I assume that it's a losing strategy as compared to not engaging in this kinds of wrestling matches, but that doesn't exactly settle who is supposed to back out of the match first...

This is a good question, and it comes up on occasion. The key to playing well, I think, is recognizing that fighting over a character too long will cost you the game. In my opinion, if someone 'undoes' your last move (moves the guy you wanted to move, or drops the token you just picked up, or whatever) you have two choices:
    1. Abandon that plan for now, and come back to it when that player is done using that character and won't get in your way anymore, or

2. Fight for control of the character by moving it again. In this case the choice is on your opponent... take off or fight. If they fight back, I recommend not wasting anymore time on it or you will be set back too far. This depends on how many points you'll be getting for the mission I guess, but usually you can go do something else at this point and come back to that mission later. I believe that with experienced players, if you 'fight' the first time (option 2) they will probably decide to take off and let you do your mission. In my opinion that's not too much of a setback. If however there's another mission that's convenient to work on, I'd recommend not fighting in the first place.

Quote:
Are [special abilities] all balanced? Does it matter if they're not?

They are not perfectly balanced, but they're not that widely varied either. It doesn't matter much though as you can use anyone you want. It could be argued that if your secret ID has a better ability then mine that you have an advantage, but I believe they are balanced enough for that to not be a problem.

Quote:
Do the NPCs tend to see as much action as the characters who are held by players?

That depends on the game. In a 3 player game there is sometimes a character who doesn't move much all game. Then again, sometimes there's not. There are missions that are specific to each character, so there's reason to use all of them (and that reason is seldom the special ability).

I'll also note that if Aramis sits still for 1/2 the game, it's probably safe to do missions with him ;)

Quote:
Is it straightforward to learn all of the special powers and to incorporate them into decision making?

Yes. The special powers aren't really all that powerful,. they just give each character some flavor. most of them give the active player a way to actively win a fight. 2 of them are more abilities that help you do missions. So their impact is small. The intention is that the active player needs to have some way of controlling combat, or they'd never do it. I like the flavor as well, it makes the characters different from each other, which makes each fight a little different.

Quote:
Many of Seth's SRs seem to include one or more rookies... Have you had many sessions with folks who have 5 or 6 games under their belt? How does the game change when played by such folks?

I haven't had 5 or 6 playtests of the same version of the game!
Just kidding. The people who have played the game the most often are probably Erin and Mike, Tyler, Chris and Becky, and then there are a bunch of people who have only played once or twice in different combinations. Sadly, I can never get these people in the same room at the same time, and also Chris hates the game. Fortunately Erina dn Mike like it (see latest SR) and so I should be able to play it more often. I would LOVE to get those two and Tyler to play all at once, but Tyler isn't a fan... he has randomly been assigned MiLady every single time and feels like he's at a disadvantage (which I don't agree with).

I am moreinterested again, so I will try and get a larger game set up. You can bet you'll hear abou tit when I do!

- Seth

[/]
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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

sedjtroll wrote:
Quote:
Do the NPCs tend to see as much action as the characters who are held by players?

That depends on the game. In a 3 player game there is sometimes a character who doesn't move much all game.[...]
I'll also note that if Aramis sits still for 1/2 the game, it's probably safe to do missions with him ;)

Having noted that, it's fun when Aramis then turns out to be one of the secret identities: it just happened that it was easier to do missions with other characters. This has happened to me...

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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Scurra wrote:
[special abilities] only really apply in combat, which doesn't actually happen all that often.

With the new Duel missions, I'm seeing a lot more combat. Which is great! It feels like the right amount to me. The Duel missions are nothing short of inspired btw, good idea David!

The duels are a VERY interesting way to make points and worry about who's who. In a duel, the winner gets 1 vp, and all players have a say in who wins. This new mission type has made the combat really shine.

Also, by the way, Mikey didn't used to think the combat was exciting enough, and now he likes it :) I think it grew on him.

Quote:
abandoning plans happens far more often than creating new ones, for instance

Well, by definition it's about the same - every time you abandon a plan you have to make a new one.

Quote:
Yeah well, maybe next time Seth will ask before posting :-)

Maybe. But I doubt it ;)

Quote:
I'm amused Seth has listed this as version 4.0 - it's at least version 9 from this side...

I started counting from when I came into it... what you initially sent me was 1.0, my initial suggestred changes was 2.0, new board/missions was 3.0, and new easy movement/no action restriction per turn was 4.0

Actually, there should be another step probably, the inclusion of the One For All card. I guess that's lumped into 3.0 now.

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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Scurra wrote:
sedjtroll wrote:
Quote:
Do the NPCs tend to see as much action as the characters who are held by players?

That depends on the game. In a 3 player game there is sometimes a character who doesn't move much all game.[...]
I'll also note that if Aramis sits still for 1/2 the game, it's probably safe to do missions with him ;)

Having noted that, it's fun when Aramis then turns out to be one of the secret identities: it just happened that it was easier to do missions with other characters. This has happened to me...

Yes, I have seen this as well :)

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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

sedjtroll wrote:
Quote:
abandoning plans happens far more often than creating new ones, for instance

Well, by definition it's about the same - every time you abandon a plan you have to make a new one.
Not in the slightest. But then again, we play the game differently - which is a good thing, I guess :-)

sedjtroll wrote:
Quote:
Yeah well, maybe next time Seth will ask before posting :-)
Maybe. But I doubt it ;)

I bet Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum never had these problems. Mind you, they're no longer designing as a team... ;-)))

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All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Had a 4 player game today, with three MORE players who have not played before. Not really what you'd call hardcore gamers either. We played with the rule that you get the One For All card back at the end of the turn, rather than upon completing a mission.

One liked it, another said she thought it was a good game, but not one she'd go buy, and the third thought it was awefully complicated - with so much stuff going on.

Here's the stats...
Game length: 2 hours including rules. It took like an hour to get through the rules explanation... mostly because they were talking alot about other things and stuff. The game itself took about an hour. We played with a pool of 40 VPs again (as I always do, as I never bother to count out the stones). 40 seems like a good number for 3 players, and that's all I can usually muster anyway. Might need more for 4, and will probably need even more for 5 players.

Player     Character     Score (P/C)     #missions<br />
Seth       Athos         10 (7/3)         3 or 4<br />
Corey      Aramis         8 (8/0)         3<br />
Miranda    Rochefort      9 (4/5)         2<br />
Ben        Porthos        8 (5/3)         4 or 5

I guess the game was a learning experience for the players, but the good part is that they seemed to understand very well the important points of the game - the things others have had trouble with.

- Seth

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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

sedjtroll wrote:
Quote:
In practice, how much of an impact does the "secret character" rules affect the game? Is it generally possible to guess who is who? Is there a way to influence the game if you acquire this knowledge?

In practice, and this has been true ever since the inclusion of the secret identities (about a year ago!), the secret ID's work VERY well. I've had comments from testers that they like that part of the game very much, or that the ID mechanic makes the game. I've had little to no negative comments on them.

I missed this comment first time around, and I think it's worth mentioning.
The game as originally designed (i.e. before Seth messed it all up :-) had a very different take on the whole secret identities business, but it was always a part of the game.

Each player would get two tiles: one with the King and one with the Cardinal. They would each secretly choose which of these two "factions" they were going to support by keeping one tile and discarding the other (secretly). So it was possible for everyone to choose to support the King, etc.
The rest of the game played out much as it currently does; the score for each faction at the end was the cumulative score of the relevant characters, but the players had to share this score between themselves (i.e. those who chose to support the King shared the total cumulative score of all the Musketeers.)
Notice that the two factions are deliberately unbalanced, which becomes more of an issue as players get more experienced with the game.

The result of this was that players began to get much more of a feel for which side everyone was on as the game progressed, and there would even be some attempted co-operation. Certainly, with only two "factions", there was less stress involved in trying to hide your allegiance, although it was generally still a good idea.

Personally, I am still quite attached to this version, as it feels like a very different spin on the whole "secret identities" mechanic. That's not to say that the current version is better or worse - just more straight-forward. (I may try revisting this version now that the underlying system has been smoothed out!)

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Re: All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

Scurra wrote:
Personally, I am still quite attached to this version, as it feels like a very different spin on the whole "secret identities" mechanic. That's not to say that the current version is better or worse - just more straight-forward. (I may try revisting this version now that the underlying system has been smoothed out!)
I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to include the 'team' thing as a variant.

Either I missed it, or you changed it, but it sounds like this time you said the players [/i]share[/i] the VPs from their 'team'... does this mean that all players supporting the king get a fraction of the points the musketeers earn (total)? Or that each player gets the full amount of points earned by their team?

I initally thought it was the former, but on reading your post just now I thought the latter might help balance the fact that the teams are unbalanced. One might think it'd be easier to get more missions done with Musketeers, so they might choose to support the king. But if 3 people support the king, they each only get 1/3 of the Musketeers points at the end, while player 4 supporting the cardinal gets ALL the points scored by the Agents...

I would not be against including a 'teams' variant in the rules, and the way I just described it I think the game can probably hold up and be fair as is. i might even try it, as I happen to have made "King Louis" and "Cardinal Richelieu" ID tokens when I first prototyped the game!

[brainstorm]
Hmm, I wonder if it would be fair to throw one or two each of those into the mix with the 'regular' ID tokens and then shuffle them up and deal them out - in other words have 1 player rooting for a whole team and another rooting for just 1 character.

On second thought, that last is probably not fair at all. Suppose I have 'King" and you have "Porthos" - I stand to score way more than you. Unless perhaps the King player scores 1/x of the total Musketeer tokens, where X is the number of King + Musketeers...
[/brainstorm]

- Seth

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Yet another 'successful' playtest

Played All For One again last night, which makes seven games of it played this month (I've been tracking on BGG).

Again the game was warmly welcomed, by all except Tyler. I have accepted that Tyler simply does not like this game.

I have played the last couple times with the "You can't ride a horse over the Ferry Crossing or through the Catacombs" rule, which makes some sense and makes some missions harder, but I worry that it may be a step backwards when compared to the recent changes that made missions less difficult and frustrating to do... still watching that one. I should have asked the playtesters what they thought of it!

All of the recent playtesters (Tyler excepted) have said that All For One feels like something they'd expect from a game off the shelf, which is what I figure we're shooting for in order to submit to Days of Wonder or Fantasy Flight or whoever.

Friday's game was interesting (4 players, me and 3 never-seen-it-before gamer types) in that there was a LOT of guard combat, and not a single Character fight. No duel missions were done, and no demanding of tokens. The score was very close. Here are some stats I wrote down:

Player    ID          Score (P/C)    # Missions<br />
Seth      Porthos     12 (7/5)       3<br />
Louis     Rochefort    8 (5/3)       3<br />
Guti      MiLady      11 (8/3)       4<br />
Brad      Athos       12 (5/7)       3

The game took about 75 minutes, including a full rules explanation, and a short pause to watch an anime trailer.

Tonight's game was atypical for other reasons... I was able to do far more missions than usual, and Tyler fought quite a few times with both characters and guards but was able to complete no missions. Even with zero missions, he managed not to come in dead last... and in fact he was nearly in second place. Simply making 1 mission work could have put him in second place. Also, I'll note that he fought twice to a tie with his Porthos, having won those would have tied him with Kira for second as well. One turn he almost fought two guards, but he didn't have enough Blue cards.

I'll also note that Tyler 'blew' his One For All card in the middle of the game, and not doing any missions, he was unable to recover it.

Player    ID          Score (P/C)    # Missions<br />
Seth      Aramis      17 (14/3)      8<br />
Mike      Rochefort    6 (3/3)       2<br />
Tyler     Porthos      8 (0/8)       0<br />
Kira      Athos       10 (6/4)       3

I'm excited at how well these tests have been going. I will be testing the game with my regular gaming group on upcoming Thursdays, starting with this week - I've had several people actually request it for this week!

- Seth

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All For One V4.0 - Rules Summary

I've just played this once, but I thought I'd give you some feedback on the game before I head out of town for a week:

All for One report
Sept 23, 2005

This "report" is actually more of a review of the "feel" of the gameplay.

Game Flow: Since the characters on the board are shared, at first I was uncertain how much control I would really be able to have over my chosen character, since there were three other people between each of my turns, and any or all of them might disrupt my plans irretrievably. After four turns, with no real progress being made toward achieving a mission, I was beginning to wonder about how we'd get through all of the scoring tokens. Since I could only judge my own progress toward a goal, I figured the game would take forever to end, assuming everyone was in a similar position. Then, suddenly, everyone finished a mission, it seemed, and the game was on.

Some of the players were disturbed by the downtime, which I found strange, considering my own turns took less than a minute, usually. By the time a turn came around, my options had usually dwindled to one or two, and it was just a matter of doing the actions in the right order. I still can't figure out why the turns took so relatively long. I think, overall, the gameflow was pretty good, and would only improve with repeated plays.

Depth of strategy: Considering the lack of control over any character's actions, and the severely constrained information, I sometimes felt clueless about what the other player might be doing, and this made incisive strategy decisions nearly impossible. Tactically, there was little to be done to influence the action between turns without sacrificing an entire turn to move some character away from a predicted goal, and this seemed like a foolish plan.

One problem our game encountered was that of a runaway leader. There was nothing to be done to stop him, and he didn't even need to keep his game identity a secret, since we couldn't do anything but inconvenience him by wasting our entire turn on the effort. Also, as I drew but one blue card the entire game, I was constrained to use the Agents almost exclusively. Though this worked out well for me in the end, as I was playing Lady D'Winter, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened to my game if I have drawn any of the musketeers, and yet couldn't lay hands on a blue mission for one of them to perform.

I hesitate to suggest altering the mission layout (as I know how tough these combinatorial elements are to calibrate), but some thought might be given to loosening the missions a bit, to allow some greater flexibility for who can perform them. But the balance seems pretty tight as it is; maybe any changes here would be a mistake. All in all, though, I couldn't help but feel that my apparent freedom of action on the board was illusionary, since the mission requirements were as tight as a Victorian corset. But, I can imagine that with repeated playings, strategies such as using turns to move many characters all over, exchanging things seemingly at random, would be a good possible ploy, allowing me to slowly maneuver a character or two into position. I can't help but think this was the sort of intrigue you imagined when writing the rules. But then I imagine the gameplay when two or more players are doing the same... Gak!

The most obvious opportunity to influence others was through the duels between characters, but to use any of the signature abilities required the discard of the mission card that character was capable of performing. Thus, if one character is accosted by another in the course of a mission, there is little active defense possible, since to get the bonus move requires the discard of the mission that requires the item you are trying to keep. So you can usually choose to lose an item you need, or keep an item you no longer need. With a four-card hand limit, this was a no win situation, and removed most of my feel of controlling events.

Components: Though this is just a prototype, I appreciated the large areas between spaces on the board, and found the various tokens to be not just amusing, but also actually calling to mind the feel of the novel. Though the size and color of things might change, the actual mechanisms the components embody were usually well integrated and produced. Though I've only seen one other example of your card-layout methods, you pack a lot of information on every one, and this was one of the strongest parts of gameplay.

As noted during play, the rules "cheat sheets" could use an upgrade, including more info. Also, you might consider a "tired" counter that could be placed beneath a character after you act with them on a turn, making it clear to everyone who's tired and who isn't. One less thing to keep track of in your head.

Interactivity: Usually, one of the most fun aspects of boardgames is the interactions between the players as the game goes, giving it an almost role-playing feel at times. All for One, though I initially though it would have a high value in this area, was pretty quiet, with no role-playing to give the bare mechanics some clothing. Maybe it was just the group, but there was little but mechanical chatter during play. Since the rules were pretty straightforward (usually), I was wondering why else this might be. One thing I thought of was the need to keep so much of what you were doing a secret. I don't think I can blame this on the game, though.

Persistent vagueness: The only problem I thought came up with some regularity was the bevy of rules involved in dueling. This could, I suppose, be made clearer with a different play sheet, especially the tie results during duels. Also, the many uses of the One for All card were not shown on the card itself, which, given your excellent clarity elsewhere where cards are involved, was all the more jarring. This card needs its rules explained on the card.

Overall: I have to say, I really enjoyed this game. Though it had a number of mechanical cogs in plain view (such as the lettered items), the theme was overlaid so well I never got distracted by them. With proper art on cards and tokens, they will further recede. I got the feeling, during my one game, that there's a lot of potential here, both for deductive strategies, as well as information-cloaking. That this should be the primary goal of the game play is extremely fitting for a Three Musketeers game, showing a more intelligent take on the tale, rather than just having endless swordplay be the centerpiece.

I'd advise against any radical changes from here on out. This is a very playable version, and you'd do well to note any future changes so you can revert to this "stable beta". Really, this game's too tight to fiddle with too much, at this point, and it's in a good place for that to have happened, as it's a good time. Not perfect, yet, but too close for major surgery.

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