The Playtesting Trilogy: Special "Extended" Edition
They say that good things always come in threes, and you always save the best for last, right? 
Playtesting 1: The 'Fellowship' of the Faculties
If I had to use three words to describe it, it would be "slow", "boring" and "confusing". It took too much time moving to the centre of the board to attack the other faculties, and even though we had planned for humour to be in the game, the humour element was painfully missing. The confusion came about when we'd to figure out which piece had what kind of attack pattern and which die to use (d10, d12, d20 and percentile die). As Cheryl mentioned in her blog, it was essentially two one-on-one battles, and nobody really cared about what went on with the other side.
Since the objective was to capture the dean's office, nobody moved their deans. I attempted to see if leaving Alex to protect the dean would be a good idea, but as it turned out later on, that really wasn't necessary at all.
Everyone's talked about how overpowered the student was, but really, even the overpowered student was no match for the overpowered dean with the percentile dice. Weiwei learnt this the hard way when he tried sending his faculty to go against Ahmed's dean. Within minutes, the dean wiped out everyone and Weiwei surrendered. Ahmed then tried taking out Cheryl's faculty but lost to her dean and bowed out. Cheryl managed to wipe out my faculty members save for my dean because I couldn't take out her Alex with two hitpoints in time (stupid one!!!), but because I didn't surrender like the other two did, I didn't lose. It would have been interesting to see whether her faculty would be able to overthrow my dean, or how our deans would have fared against each other, but we ran out of time.
We decided to implement the cards and the backstabbing in the next iteration, hoping that would solve some of the issues, and revise the attack dice and health to balance out the mechanics.
Playtesting 2: Curse of the Natural Ones
More action-packed than the last, Curse of the Natural Ones is a "tale" about backstabbing, betrayal and battles in the University. See faculties fight not one, but two different faculties at the same time! Laugh/Sympathise as the die betray me by giving me ones and other people high numbers over and over again! See Alex in action as he defeats a student! Watch as a dean get trashed by a student! Who will win?
There was humour in the game all right, but it was from watching people suffer as they get penalty cards, or taunting people when they make lousy rolls. (Ahmed: Your student didn't do his tutorial, huh?) As mentioned earlier, the dean (and for some very strange reason I keep wanting to spell "dead" instead of "dean") was very much weaker this time round, so leaving him alone was a bad idea. Too weak, in fact.
Who won? Well, we ran out of time again. Stay tuned for the concluding episode...
Playtesting 3: Revenge of the Playtesters!
This is a game of epic proportions! More drama, more action, more backstabbing, more playing cards and attack squares!
The dean is now more formidable, with an attack damage of 4 x d4. The 'Alex' unit is also pretty strong, but he also dies very quickly, so he's just as balanced. Players have to use him very carefully, or they'll find themselves heavily handicapped after his death, as Ahmed and I discovered later when our Alexes killed each other. The use of the attack squares added +5 bonus damage for every turn as long as the piece was standing on it, but that will be revised.
After the game was over, Weiwei went through with us about the game objectives. The player loses if his dean gets killed or his dean's office gets taken over by another faculty. Hearing all this made me wonder what incentive there is for the dean to leave his office and join in the battle. Won't the player want to try and protect the dean by keeping him in his office, and leave one or two units to protect him? Heck, what's going to stop him from just not moving any of his pieces at all, wait for the others to finish each other off, and then move in on the kill? We realised then that we had to rectify this serious flaw, but how do we punish campers? All sorts of possibilities were discussed, like making the centre more attractive, or imposing a penalty for campers, or rewarding those who wiped out a faculty with health bonuses, or graduate students, or the chance to resurrect any fallen unit of his choice, but none of them were truly enough to give the non-campers a winning edge over a camper who's at full strength.
In the end, Weiwei figured out that in real life situations, the non-campers would simply gang up on the camper rather than just play along with his plans, so we'll allow players to form unofficial alliances with each other.
Playtesting 1: The 'Fellowship' of the Faculties
If I had to use three words to describe it, it would be "slow", "boring" and "confusing". It took too much time moving to the centre of the board to attack the other faculties, and even though we had planned for humour to be in the game, the humour element was painfully missing. The confusion came about when we'd to figure out which piece had what kind of attack pattern and which die to use (d10, d12, d20 and percentile die). As Cheryl mentioned in her blog, it was essentially two one-on-one battles, and nobody really cared about what went on with the other side.
Since the objective was to capture the dean's office, nobody moved their deans. I attempted to see if leaving Alex to protect the dean would be a good idea, but as it turned out later on, that really wasn't necessary at all.
Everyone's talked about how overpowered the student was, but really, even the overpowered student was no match for the overpowered dean with the percentile dice. Weiwei learnt this the hard way when he tried sending his faculty to go against Ahmed's dean. Within minutes, the dean wiped out everyone and Weiwei surrendered. Ahmed then tried taking out Cheryl's faculty but lost to her dean and bowed out. Cheryl managed to wipe out my faculty members save for my dean because I couldn't take out her Alex with two hitpoints in time (stupid one!!!), but because I didn't surrender like the other two did, I didn't lose. It would have been interesting to see whether her faculty would be able to overthrow my dean, or how our deans would have fared against each other, but we ran out of time.
We decided to implement the cards and the backstabbing in the next iteration, hoping that would solve some of the issues, and revise the attack dice and health to balance out the mechanics.
Playtesting 2: Curse of the Natural Ones
More action-packed than the last, Curse of the Natural Ones is a "tale" about backstabbing, betrayal and battles in the University. See faculties fight not one, but two different faculties at the same time! Laugh/Sympathise as the die betray me by giving me ones and other people high numbers over and over again! See Alex in action as he defeats a student! Watch as a dean get trashed by a student! Who will win?
There was humour in the game all right, but it was from watching people suffer as they get penalty cards, or taunting people when they make lousy rolls. (Ahmed: Your student didn't do his tutorial, huh?) As mentioned earlier, the dean (and for some very strange reason I keep wanting to spell "dead" instead of "dean") was very much weaker this time round, so leaving him alone was a bad idea. Too weak, in fact.
Who won? Well, we ran out of time again. Stay tuned for the concluding episode...
Playtesting 3: Revenge of the Playtesters!
This is a game of epic proportions! More drama, more action, more backstabbing, more playing cards and attack squares!
The dean is now more formidable, with an attack damage of 4 x d4. The 'Alex' unit is also pretty strong, but he also dies very quickly, so he's just as balanced. Players have to use him very carefully, or they'll find themselves heavily handicapped after his death, as Ahmed and I discovered later when our Alexes killed each other. The use of the attack squares added +5 bonus damage for every turn as long as the piece was standing on it, but that will be revised.
After the game was over, Weiwei went through with us about the game objectives. The player loses if his dean gets killed or his dean's office gets taken over by another faculty. Hearing all this made me wonder what incentive there is for the dean to leave his office and join in the battle. Won't the player want to try and protect the dean by keeping him in his office, and leave one or two units to protect him? Heck, what's going to stop him from just not moving any of his pieces at all, wait for the others to finish each other off, and then move in on the kill? We realised then that we had to rectify this serious flaw, but how do we punish campers? All sorts of possibilities were discussed, like making the centre more attractive, or imposing a penalty for campers, or rewarding those who wiped out a faculty with health bonuses, or graduate students, or the chance to resurrect any fallen unit of his choice, but none of them were truly enough to give the non-campers a winning edge over a camper who's at full strength.
In the end, Weiwei figured out that in real life situations, the non-campers would simply gang up on the camper rather than just play along with his plans, so we'll allow players to form unofficial alliances with each other.
posted by Swift at
10:42 am
1 Comments:
I think your decision to leave things as they are, and allow players to solve the "camping" problem themselves by ganging up on the camper, is the best approach. Its much better than adding in new rules or objectives. Anyway, in the worst case, people will just refuse to play with the camper... :P
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alex, at 11:40 am
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