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PostPosted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:53 pm
by kleenestar

PostPosted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:01 pm
by Graham Walmsley

PostPosted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:10 pm
by spaceanddeath
Now I feel like the brute. :(

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 7

Feedback: Emotion, Glass and Committee are all well integrated at a mechanical level in some pretty innovative ways. There's less of a tight fit with the 10 sessions of 1 hour. I think it would be difficult to get everything done that is suggested in any of the one hour sessions, except perhaps the set-up in the first hour. The game could be more or less sessions or contain longer or shorter sessions without changing the dynamics of the game.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 5

Feedback:

The writing style starts off very clearly. The instructions for the first hour are crystal clear, but after this, things start to get a little more confusing. Examples. You need dialogued examples of play.

Is there expected to be narration during the card playing scene like, say, in With Great Power? If so, this is not clear.

How does not refilling your own glass on your turn encourage you keep your turn short? Just the prospect of getting more wine, or is there something I am missing? If you can call a conflict for yourself regardless of the level of your glass, and you can not participate in the card bidding, what does it matter how much liquid you have?

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 6

Feedback:

This game is desperately in need of both examples of play and system support for the players to create narrative structures in the game.

(Most of) the first hour works so well, and is so clear, because it gives tools to the players to build the ideal citizen with. The tropes that it draws on (picking a sub/culture or group, using it to create an ideal citizen, creating characters that contrast with that citizen) help to support players by generating ideas and providing a process to create. The examples included makes that process very tangible to the players. Creating Euthymia is less supported, framing scenes even less so.

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

Feedback:

If the point of the game is to regain your humanity but not lose control, than an Active Player who's aspects are getting too high may want to initiate a conflict that he aims to fail (and so lower his humanity which is getting out of control). Can he do this? Your text seems to imply that no one would want to, but considering that others may push me to regain my humanity through card play and I will be out of the game if I go to 10, I'd say this would be a pretty common occurrence.

It would be really easy to gang up on a single player in a conflict. I assumed stats of 4 4 4 3 I dealt out four hands and mocked out a conflict round. I could, just by the random card deal that I made, push a single character to a nine in "feels". Had there been five players in my game, or one player who drank strategically to hit the active player more often in one round, I could kill someone off in the first round of the game. (This abusability is especially important in a game that draws on Paranoia-esque tropes.)

Why would anybody, beside the Active Player (unless a believe, love or speak aspect is particularly evocative or interesting) engage a conflict on anything other than the feel aspect?

This rule: "If a player spends a full turn narrating how the Committee subdues and humiliates his character, he may discard the cards he holds..." is very cool. This is the kind of support for narration and roleplay that the game's system should strive for. Most of the rest of the system is completely indifferent to the nature or quality of the play product that the players produce.

Overall, I think: freeformish RPGers might be OK with this game (because they do not require system support to produce narration, world creation or roleplay interaction (but that they would not manage to give each player a turn in the hour of play), while non freeformish folks will likely have a great amount of difficulty getting anywhere near the conflict.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 6

Final Feedback:

Is there a design goal in mind in denying the player any input or control over their own character? As it stands, player intent does not count for anything significant here, nor does any narrative that might arise through (but does not seem mandated by) play. Everything hinges on the whims of the other players. While I can see that there could be a tit for tat intent here, the game does not present itself as a character collaboration game. In fact it seems quite the opposite: the presence of the committee member underscores a level of competition in play.

I think you have some good ideas here, Graham, and I strongly encourage you to keep working on it. You state at the end that you want a particular kind of friendly epicurean feel to the game. To make that happen, I think you need to design it more intentionally.Right now, it does not support ease or comfortability, and it does not necessarily encourage the kind of storytelling that I believe you are personally envisioning.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 29

PostPosted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:10 am
by Graham Walmsley

PostPosted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:50 am
by Destriarch

PostPosted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:12 am
by Graham Walmsley

PostPosted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:40 am
by spaceanddeath

PostPosted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 7:46 pm
by kleenestar

PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:45 pm
by spaceanddeath

PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 5:36 am
by Graham Walmsley