The first thing that playtesting made clear was the best order to do the character and situation creation in: answer the three group questions communally, then everybody answers the first two questions (establishing why some people think they are a good candidate for the throne, and some people think they are a bad candidate for the throne), and share those answers. That will generally give you enough of a basic concept to start working on the “divider” questions, distinguishing your characters from others.
Character creation did take a bit longer than I had original thought it would. A few people mentioned that they would have liked “3 questions for setting creation, 3 questions for character creation”. I suppose it wouldn’t be that hard to just use “What quality do you posssess that none of the other PCs possess?” but I still kind of like the idea of using differences between individuals rather than differences between the individual and the group as a whole.
Another thing one player tried to do is, when acting on another player’s character, put points of strength “behind” his action: sort of like a preemptive challenge to their attempted resistance. As I wrote it, a challenge is always a reaction to stop someone from doing something: but it still has that inherent fairness. If you bid too low a number, they’ll just block your action, paying you a pittance of points to do so. If you bid too high, they’ll just accept your actions, and you’ll have to pay through the nose for it. So there’s a pretty good incentive to try and place the strength as ‘fairly’ as you can, either way.
Another thing that came up, and probably is worth mentioning in the rules, was contested actions. Rather than one person acting and another resisting that action, both were trying to perform mutually exclusive actions upon the other (In this case, convincing each other that they were the best candidate to be in charge). There was a bit of confusion and discussion as to how to handle this: two different challenges? Which would go first? As of now, I think I would just let either player set the strength of the challenge, and the other person get the usual choice, with the stakes “I win but pay points” versus “He wins but pays points” instead of “He wins but pays points” versus “He doesn’t win and I pay points”.
All good food for thought as far as explaining the rules in the next draft goes.
Playtesting: worth it.
I admit I am kind of tempted to completely cut out qualities from the challenge mechanics, though. There’s something elegant and pure about simple “I cut, you choose” of setting a point number and letting the other player decide if it’s worth it or not. But I do want them to be mechanically significant somehow: Maybe I’ll make it so you can’t use multiple qualities to help a challenge (something one player assumed was the case anyway), to lessen situations where one player has four qualities and another only has one being a fairly gross imbalance, but it’s still a little bit useful.
Tags: playtesting, the starflower throne
September 1, 2009 at 1:55 am |
Hrm.
I think that the purity of “I cut you choose” is pretty compelling. Did it not work out with the powers being “bonus points?”
Maybe you can’t make a challenge at all unless you have the right quality for it?
September 1, 2009 at 2:22 am |
It worked, but it just felt a little bit unjust when, in one instance, the challenge basically resolved to “I pay you 1 point and my action goes through, or you pay me 4 points and my action doesn’t go through.”
I think just not letting multiple qualities stack would be enough of a fix, for me: they’re still helpful, but it encourages a broader diversity rather than 5 different ways of saying “I’m very persuasive”
Plus, there was this weird asymmetry where having multiple copies of a positive quality was a good thing, but there was no incentive to have multiple copies of a negative quality, since they didn’t affect the payouts of Compels, just allowed for the existence of them.
September 1, 2009 at 4:55 am |
Anything but anything which discourages stacking your traits is good.
I would do something like, have a few special powers which are non-stackable that traits give you, if the trait applies. (Pay out one less than you bid, bid two higher than your total stack, take an extra one if you take the payout, bluff about your number of tokens, etc. Just various tweaks.) Basically encourage people do use traits one at a time, and make traits all a little different from each other.
But that’s what I’d do. It’s not necessarily what you’d do.
yrs–
–Ben
September 1, 2009 at 8:10 am |
Hmmm! An idea occurs to me of using some of the fluff terms Everway used in describing attributes to describe certain possible modifications to the challenge structure:
Forceful Energy: Pay one less point when rejecting another’s challenge.
Focused Energy: Others must pay one more point when you accept their challenge.
Resistant Integrity: Pay one less point when others accept your challenges.
Receptive Integrity: Others must pay one more point when rejecting your challenges.
I dunno if I’ll use it, but it’s an interesting idea, yeah.
September 1, 2009 at 11:41 am |
Can the players work together on challenges against others?
September 1, 2009 at 9:09 pm |
It’s something I’ve been thinking about, and probably worth a main post.