This week I decided to improve a bit on my bard game, if only to make the rules that we reestablished in class more official.
Revisions:
Bards will now draw cards from three piles. Beginnings, Middles and Ends. THis way they never run out of those parts of the story.
Bards will play as many cards as there are patrons playing.
The * cards for bards and patrons increase or decrease the value mentioned permanently from the victory thresholds for either side, rather than simply increasing the number for that round. A * card with -1 for a bard would make his goal further away. For example placing a -1* when his goal was 23 would make it 24.
The beginning value of the game will be 2*The number of patrons. The goal for victory for patrons is 0. And for the bard victory is at 4*The number of patrons.
I had some thoughts on adding more cards to the game, but I couldn't recall balance issues with the game so I didn't want to ruin anything. Here are some options.
Players alternate between bard and patrons playing. If bards end up overpowered, then they'll play one less card than the bards. Or one more if they end up weaker.
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Karl,
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you revise the bard game. There are a couple visual elements you could add to the game to make it easier to play:
-Color code each deck so that players can more easily organize the cards (just print out on colored paper or construction paper)
-Create a pegboard or some other visual representation of the scores of the bard and patrons.
Both of these will help give your players feedback for their actions.
For play, it did seem like the patrons might be a little underpowered, but this will require plenty of playtesting and tweaking of cards. Clarifying the rules of the cards will certainly help.
I kind of like the rules that make the game more action-reaction based as this helps players be more active and can help role-play (now because the patrons are dancing, the bard does a lute solo). Modifying some card rules and scoring to better react to this might help with creating a sense of narrative and setting (say, bonus points for throwing stuff at the bard when he breaks a string).
I don't think we got very involved with the storytelling process of the game, though Kate seemed to be fairly good at it, and enjoyed it. Adding more flavor text to the cards might help encourage this, but that requires a lot of work for visuals, and it suggests player performance may be significant to the rules and scoring system.
I suggest breaking the problem down into smaller bits. How do the patrons interact with the bard? How do the bard and patrons react to the cards played? Which cards seem more powerful? Here, you can count up the number of points that the bard might receive and the number of points that the patrons might receive (you should also factor in score subtractions). If these numbers appear equal, then the game may be balanced. However, if they are not, then one side has an advantage.
-Devin Monnens
I thought the game was awesome the first time around. This time was no different!
ReplyDeleteI think our last test was the best, when we decided to make the dancing card be reduced, and allowing the patrons to discuss what cards they were going to play that turn and in what order.
This game, as usual, was lots of fun!
ReplyDeleteThere was a bit of unbalance in the cards, but you're chiselling that out.
One thing that might help visually is do something like with the Munchkin cards, where the score being added or detracted is also clearly represented in like the lower left hand corner in red or green (pos and neg) numbers, for ease of scoring.
I enjoy this game, but it's a bugger to balance out and can only be played by 4-5 people because of this. The card texts were fun also!
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to come up with a bard story on the fly...