Reviews: Tippling, Heart of Glass & Champs of the Gods

[Kuma_Pageworks]

THE ANCIENT AND VENERABLE ART OF TIPPLING (#37)
REVIEWER NAME: Brian Hollenbeck/Kuma Pageworks

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 4

Feedback: Tippling gets high marks for the creative use of the word 'glass', making what might be the world's first 'roledrinking' game. (I'll note that the author advises the use of a beer stein, which are traditionally made of ceramic, however.) As for 'ancient' and 'emotion', only 'emotion' is integrated into the game - 'ancient' only makes it into the title.

As for the time limit, the stated use was '1 two-hour session', which is good because otherwise this game might lead to alcoholism. Again - other than staving off alcohol poisoning, there's no real need to conform to the time limit.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 6

Feedback: The game fits on the side of a beer stein, and even at that, it does a remarkable job of being well-written. It's brevity, however, keep it from scoring a 7 - there are some parts of the rules that could use further explanation. Overall, though, thumbs up to Josh for being as clear as he was.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9

Feedback: The game is quite complete - there are only a few points that need to either be revised or clarified. One is whether you score an empty simply by tippling or fending off protests. Currently, the only way to score is to go 'Bottoms-Up'. Given that, there's no real reason for a player not to do that instead of being forced 'Into His Cups'. Other than being completely blotto.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 8

Feedback: Eminently playable. I sense mayhem at pubs across the world.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 7

Final Feedback: An excellent effort, particularly considering that Josh has a whole 'nother entry in the contest. Great game!

TOTAL: 34 Average: 6.8

...



HEART OF GLASS (#38)
REVIEWER NAME: Brian Hollenbeck

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 2

Feedback: This game appears from the outset to have been horned into the contest. The stated ingredients are glass, ancient and emotion. Of those three, only emotion has been addressed in any real way. Glass is in the title and inserted gently into the text on the first page, but it doesn't impact the game whatsoever. The same applies to ancient - the Dragon around which the game is based is very old, but that doesn't really come into play either, other than as an adjective to describe it. Lastly, the time constraint is based, I think, around the idea that this is a casual game - but other than that, there's no real integration of the central theme.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 3

Feedback: The rules and the economy of this game are complex (complex enough to require a big-ass table!), and the game doesn't go to too many lengths to explain them well. Most of the game is written in bullet points and short sentences, making for a very tough read. One other minor quibble - the bullet points don't have periods at the end of them, even if they're complete sentences. Again - just something that made the game very hard to read.

There are examples in the text, and that's good - because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails out of the main game mechanic. The mechanic involves comparing played cards (from a standard deck of 52), which are evaluated by suit and face value. To make things more complex, there's a heirarchy of suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades) and differing effects on the stats of your character (a Minion of the Dragon), and the Dragon's stats. The author provided a Rolemaster-sized table to help with these evaluations, but it's hard to read as well.

I have to admit to not getting the entire gist of the game, although with a little play it might be clearer.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 6

Feedback: Certainly the game is complete, but the document, as presented, seems like the outline of a roleplaying game instead of the whole enchilada.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 5

Feedback: I'm pretty sure that you could play this, as written. The heirachy of suits bothers me - I think that it may be a broken part of the game. Essentially, if you play a heart, the lowest of the suits, you're almost guaranteed to get it trumped by some other facet of your character - making it either a bad idea of invest in the lower suits or necessary to dump all your tokens (yes, there are tokens as well - mainly as stat markers) into the hearts/diamonds stats.

Again - I'm really, really unclear on how this would play out.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 5

Final Feedback: It's an interesting take on a 'My Life with Master' kind of game, and the card mechanic might actually work out - but there's not enough meat here for me to really jump into the game. As written, it doesn't make me care about my character, other than the fact that it's my character - there's no real way to grab a hold of the game and fit into it.

With some serious re-writing, explanation and expansion, Heart of Glass might redeem itself.

TOTAL: 21. Average: 4.2.

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CHAMPIONS OF THE GODS (#39)
REVIEWER NAME: Brian Hollenbeck/Kuma Pageworks

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 9

Feedback: The stated ingredients were ancient, committee and emotion. It scores well on all three counts, although 'committee' is a bit weak, given the context. The emotion ingredient is the key to the game, and it rocks. Easily the best use of emotion that I've seen in the games thus far. The time rule was very well followed, with each of the four two-hour sessions being one year closer to the first Olympics.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 9

Feedback: This could easily be a published game. I'd only suggest that the author include a couple of diagrams with the game to illustrate the exchange of Debt tokens. It's counter-intuitive that you have a big pile of your Debt (tokens) in front of you, and you're giving it away when you ask for help, only to get it back when the other God calls in their marker.

Add to that the other piles of debt from the other players, and some diagrams to show the flow would have helped me grok the game better.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9

Feedback: The only point that I took away was the fact that out of a daunting 41-page document, only 19 pages of it are the game. The other pages are taken up either by the God's stat pages (which is fine and good), followed by 10 (!) pages of Greek names for your Champions. While I agree that finding names is important - it's not that important.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 6

Feedback: The economy of the game gets it in trouble in this category. First and foremost is the use of Determination chips. Determination chips are what the player has as a resource (the ONLY thing that they have as a resource) when they're playing their Champion character (as opposed to their God character). You start out with 3, and you can 'earn' another by adding a complication to your own narrative during play. As written, however, with the heavy weight of the game on the side of the support you gain from the gods, there's no reason *not* to earn the extra chip by throwing in an obstacle.

Determination chips determine the number of dice you roll, trying to get as high as base score as possible before the God-wrangling begins. Depending on how many dice the opposing God (i.e. the Guardian) gets to roll, you need as many dice as you can get your hands on. And since the end-result of the conflict will be almost completely weighted by the support your God gets, there's no reason not to take the chip. It's essentially free.

Second, there may be a problem with dogpiling in the game. Your Champion is to steal an artifact precious to one of the other gods. For each artifact stolen, the God's stat to which the artefact is tied is decreased by one, making them less effective. There's nothing in the rules to keep all of the gods from picking away at one god, neutralizing them.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 9

Final Feedback: Kick-ass game. I want Warren to publish it so I can buy it. The mechanics are smooth, the document is pretty and prettily written, and the subject matter is near and dear to my heart. The best entry that I've read so far.

TOTAL: 42. Average: 8.4

[Joshua BishopRoby]

[dindenver]

Hi!
Thanks for the review. The only comment I have is that the suits are all independant, except for deciding who goes first. Otherwise, playing hearts is playing hearts and unrelated (not better than or worse than) to the other suits.
Thanks!

[Warren]

[rpoppe]

[Destriarch]

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 3
Feedback: The three ingredients have been used, but in a rather lacklustre way. 'Glass' for instance refers only to the dragon's heart which is apparently made of the substance. This doesn't really seem to affect the rest of the game, it's just a nice little touch. 'Ancient' at least is used relevantly as the players are defending an old dragon who is no longer capable of defending him/herself. Emotion has been incorporated vaguelly into the rules as one of the methods the players have of manipulating the dragon, but since this would be a standard part of any RPG I don't feel it has been used to its fullest extent. With a few minor alterations in wording to the text it could have been made far more central to the game's functioning. The author did not describe how he used the ingredients on the first page so maybe I'm missing something somewhere, but I've read it pretty thoroughly and I just don't feel any strong connection with the ingredients here.

My real bugbear though is the time constraint. I'm not convinced that this game would last for two hours. The limit doesn't seem to be enforced in the rules, unless it is meant to be implied by the inclusion of the time limit on the first page. If that IS the case then this rule needed to be thoroughly emphasised in the text. The game is set to last for around 22 'turns', with each turn constituting a single resolution. Now if the group is heavily into role-playing and does a lot of 'narration' (as the pdf calls it) for each player's turn, it could end up being a lot longer. If each player only says a couple of sentences to describe how they complete their challenges (as the example details) then it could be far shorter. There's no real way of saying how long any game would last for any one gaming group.


2) CLARITY (1-10): 5
Feedback: Mostly understandable with one or two odd quirks in the rules that might need to be addressed. For instance one such rule states "Players cannot vote to increase the value of their own card, but may vote to increase the value of their opponent?s if another player already has." Now, how can anyone vote to increate the value of someone elses' card when the prerequisite to do so is that some other player, who is under this selfsame restriction, already has? This rule needs serious clarification. When is a player first allowed to bid up an opponent's card?

Another thing I am not fond of are the tables included to apparently 'make the game easier'. One in particular to my mind actually makes things more complicated for the sake of some very simple addition. I mean this rule:

"If the Stakes are equal to or higher than the Conflict, the Dragon?s Trait increases, otherwise the Dragon?s Trait decreases. If the Conflict and Stakes add to an even number, the Minion?s Trait increases, otherwise it decreases."

That's fine. Simple, easy to understand. But the table that accompanies it, apparently to make things easier if the players can't add up simple two-digit numbers and don't have a calculator, is a nightmare to consult. It's a mass of narrow, single-letter results from A to D (or N/A) which then have the be cross-referenced on a second table. Completely unneccessary, makes the process more complex than in fact it is, takes up space and hurts the eye to look at.

Another rule that needs to be explained more explicitly: "Players cannot vote to increase the value of their own card, but may vote to increase the value of their opponent?s if another player already has. Each player only gets one vote per scene and it must be cast before the Minion?s card is displayed"

So, exactly what effect does this vote have on the relevant values? Does each vote constitute a +1 bonus to the value? Do the players vote against each other and the winning side decide how much their choice is increased by? What if the vote is tied? I've no idea.

I feel bad for placing all these negative points on the game, so I would like to point out here that most of the text is easy enough to understand, it is well-furnished with brief but useful examples, the font is unpretentious and clear, and bulleted lists have been used to good effect. The spelling and grammar is also of a decent quality.


3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 5
Feedback: Insofar as the game rules go, it is a fairly complete (if deceptively simple) game. There's everything you need there to enjoy a quick hand of what could be a nicely enjoyable card game. However as a role-playing game the background is somewhat lacking. In its entirety the game's background information boils down to two brief paragraphs right at the beginning, these being:

"There is an ancient Dragon living deep within its den. Every Dragonslayer, Knight Errant, Sorcerer and Adventurer wants to test their mettle against the beast. And, the only thing standing between the Dragon and them, is you!
You will play a Minion of an ancient Dragon, you could possibly be an Ogre, a Dark Wizard, a Devilish Rogue, a kindred soul or whatever else you can imagine. You will use your resources and the Dragon?s, when possible, to overcome all the adversity headed your way!"

I suppose we could also charitably include the descriptions of the four different types of dragon in the definition of 'background material' but since these are each only about a sentence long for the descriptive non-rules-related part, this is also very minor. The only insight we have into the game world therefore is that first paragraph and a snippet from the examples about an ogre earning a nice new sword or somesuch. In all, "Heart of Glass" is much more like a card game (not dissimilar in face from the old game 'Hearts') than a fully-fledged RPG. The element of choosing a quest and describing the resolution, and indeed the whole background to the game, feels like a bit of fancy decoration tacked onto a normal card game, and could actually be ignored if you wanted.

Fortunately the game's rules are reasonably complete with just a couple of minor odds and ends that need to be sorted out (as mentioned earlier).


4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 5
Feedback: At first I was tempted to give the game a higher score in effectiveness because the rules seemed to add up to a reasonably interesting and amusing card game. However I noticed just now that there is a strange dichotomy in the way that the game ends. Basically, when a player is on their last card, if that card's number matches the trait indicated by its suit, either of themselves or of the dragon, then they have 'won' and the game is over, provided that the dragon and the player both survive that long. A cunning player could easily save back a card that matches one of their own traits and simply attempt to burn away the rest of their cards as quickly as possible to be ensured a win.

Sure it's always possible that the dragon or the player will die before then, but hey! If the dragon DOES die then everybody has lost anyway. The dragon dies if any of its attributes are reduced to zero. The dragon loses score from an attribute if the card played by the current minion is less than the card played by the dragon. Since the dragon's cards are played by the person sitting to the left of the current 'minion' it's in everyone's interest to play all their low cards when they are the dragon and all their high cards when they are the minion. The minion loses attributes if the sum of its and the dragon's card face values are an odd number (no values are given for Jack, Queen and King by the way, I can only assume that they are 11, 12 and 13) but then so long as the minion has SOMETHING left in the statistic in question at the end of the game, the actual values don't matter that much.

I'd be interested in seeing the results of a number of playtest sessions of the game because I have a sneaky suspicion that the first player to take the part of the minion has a major advantage. The voting system might change this considerably but I can't tell for certain since I don't know how it works. However if voting has too high an effect on the results of the game, then it could become open to tactical play.


5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 4
Final Feedback: All in all I like the idea of card games that involve narration. However the voting aspect (vague as it is) leaves me cold especially since it could be a little open to tactical voting. The concept is pretty but ill-defined. As a card game it might have some merit with a little work on the sketchy rules and in evening out the rough points. As a role-playing game I couldn't really rate it.


TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 22

Ash