Hi all,
I've become a big fan of the bluffing / liar's poker mechanic where you declare some feature of your hand which might be challenged by others. Coup http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup and Masquerade http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/139030/mascarade are a couple of examples.
I'm working on a game with a similar mechanic: You play one or two cards, declaring what they are in order to get the abilities of the cards you claim. My twist on the concept was that, if your claim is not challenged, you then hand the card(s) to other player(s), who must make room in their hands for the extra card.
I like this because it gives additional reasons to challenge or not, and it lends some credence to a claim if you received a card from someone else who just claimed the same thing. However, for that same reason, there is one person who knows that you're lying, because he knows that he didn't give you that card (or he knows you're telling the truth).
My first thought was just to say that someone can not be challenged by the last person to give him cards. This works well in the early game, where everyone still needs most actions. However, in the later game, when, say, Fred only needs to play the 'horse' card to win: If I declare that I'm playing a horse, it goes unchallenged, and then I hand that card to Fred, then everybody knows that it wasn't really a horse, because I would not have handed it to him if it were.
Thoughts? Am I worrying about nothing? Part of the abilities that you get from playing certain cards is an increased hand size -- from a base of only 1, there are two cards that increase hand size while they are active, so you can go up to three. So if you are in the end game, then you have at least two cards in hand -- no one can completely spoil your hand by handing you a card.
Some ideas:
1. Increase hand size so it goes from a base of 2 up to 4. I worry that this will make it too easy to play without ever bluffing.
2. Allow a player to refuse an offered card and take a random card from the deck, instead.
3. Leave it, it's not broken.
So far I've only done solo play-testing on this game, and solo testing of a bluffing game is nearly useless. If I hadn't just broken my arm, I would be ready for some friendly-eyes play testing, but I'm currently unable to operate my paper cutter, among other problems. So I thought I'd come here and at get some opinions.
Thanks for the replies.
You don't pick two actions, just one. Some actions take only a single card, and some take two. Generally, the two-card actions are just more powerful versions of the one-card actions. Once you've moved into the mid-game, you'll be falling behind if you're only doing one-card actions.
Challenges come when the player declares his action. He pauses for a moment in case anyone wants to challenge; if there is none, he completes the action and hands off the cards.