The Baubles of Hamlin
By Edward Boudreaux
"In The Baubles of Hamlin the players take on the roles of apprentices and Scholars in a guild of crafters existing in an alternate world Victorian age. These apprentice and Scholar characters are given four tasks, called Trials, to complete in order for the Scholars to advance to the level of Master in the guild hierarchy. Each Trial must be completed within a given time frame. Characters are directed to work cooperatively, but may have secret orders to foil the actions of other characters."
REVIEWER NAME: Kenji Baugham
1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 5
Feedback:
Four Sessions of Two Hours: I am not completely satisfied with the use of time in this game. While the time limit is supposed to put pressure on the players to complete their task, how long it takes to complete the task in actuality is a completely arbitrary call by the instructor, because of the tremendous leeway the rules give the instructor in every aspect of the rules. After the competition, I think the game would be better if it either removed the time constraint entirely, or introduced some kind of mechanic that gave the apprentices more control over how long it would take to complete the task - for example if every successful challenge added to some kind of running total, and this running total had to reach a certain threshhold before the challenge could possibly be completed.
On top of all this, the instructor is advised to fudge the time limit as desired, thus making the presumed deadline not really a deadline after all.
Glass: The use of the glass ingredient is very strong, being the central theme of the entire game. It also creates a setting that was very compelling to me, as if steampunk were re-envisioned as glass-punk. Very cool.
Ancient: This ingredient usage was not as strong as it should have been. The justification is that the city is very old and that this history sets of the history, places, and events with which the game unfolds. I think this kind of argument is overly broad though, and could be very easily applied to a wide range of settings. Furthermore, the age of the city doesn't really impact the game in anything more than a cosmetic way.
Committee: This ingredient usage was pretty good. The players must decide as a committee how to allocate team resources.
2) CLARITY (1-10): 9
Feedback: I found this to be very well written. Concepts are not often referenced before they are fully defined, and when they are, it is not necessary to understand them to understand the current text. The setting material is also of superior quality and really adds to understanding what the rules are supposed to do. There were a few minor places where rules were not fully explained, or slightly confusing. These easily corrected errors mark down an otherwise great effort in clarity.
3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 3
Feedback: As the author points out in the beginning, the planned setting material is very ambitious in scope and currently incomplete. What I find interesting about this is that I find the planned setting material almost too ambitious for the scope of the game itself. The setting material provided so far is excellent and inspiring, but it makes me want to take the game in directions that the rules do not support. It makes me want to play this game with a scope more broad then these trials alone because there are so many possibilities. In terms of rules, the primary thing missing is some kind of system for regulating how difficult it is to complete a task from start to end. Other parts are missing as well. In the text it is often mentioned that apprentices will be given ulterior motives that may conflict with other players. The rules for this, however, are not there. The end result of this is that most of the game text has little bearing on the actual game in practice.
4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 3
Feedback: There seem to be some conflicts between various aspects of the rules and, as a whole, it does not hang well together.
A. The primary problem that I find is that the game is designed fundamentally as a trial presented by the instructor to the players that they must overcome. However, with the rules as currently implemented the players really have almost no say whatsoever whether or not they succeed. In fact, the rules for determining whether or not they win pretty much explicitly say that the GM should just decide so subjectively at the end of the time period. As mentioned before, there is no mechanic to determine how far away the players are from completing the trial. Furthermore, the rules constantly advise the GM to make arbitrary calls and punish/reward players by fiat. Finally, the default method of challenge resolution is pure negotiation without any rule structure to aid it. This style of GM-managed game is strongly at odds with the competitive structure of the theme. I think the trials would work much better if the GM was constrained by a fixed set of rules and had his own set of limited resources that he used to provide adversity for the players. Otherwise the actions of the players have little meaning. When playing this game, what kind of fulfillment do you hope players will come away from the table with after it's all over? I think looking at the game again with this in mind might help to make the design more coherent.
B. The gauge for challenge difficulty seems off a bit. A "nearly impossible" action has a 60% success rate with a +2 attribute and three other players assisting.
C. I am not a big fan of GM-only content. I think the game works better the more that all of the players know. If a player is motivated to read up on setting content and incorporate that, why discourage them by hiding some of it? It's not like, if they read the player section and want to know more, they won't read the GM section anyway. Finally, even accepting the GM only section, why are the rules for challenge resolution there. The players need to know how it works in order to have effective tactics. Removing the tactical element from player knowledge moves their ability to effect the end result of the trial even further from their control.
D. How do challenges benefit from being task based rather than conflict based? Currently the GM can really deprotagonize the players inadvertently by causing one thing they are trying to achieve require a large number of rolls. When the players tries to climb across the room does he make them roll to climb once or does he make them roll once to grab the the ledge, again to pull themselves up, again to not fall off the platform as they walk across, again to jump to the next platform, etc. The leeway in granularity that the GM has here can make many of the players' decisions meaningless. Conflict resolution addresses this by cutting to what's really important and making sure that everyone is locked in to what's actually at stake in the challenge, making sure that every instance of resolution actually counts.
E. Who gets to determine when apprentices or baubles die? Right now it's completely arbitrary, a situation which in my opinion is headed for a complete trainwreck.
5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 9
I would really like to see the author continue work on this game as I do not think that the constraints of Game Chef have meshed well with the idea, but the general concept behind it is really cool. In some ways it kind of reminds me of Perdido Street Station. How would this game have been designed, and what would it have focused on, if Edward didn't have to worry about the contest rules? I like the trials, but I suspect from the setting material that he might secretly have wanted to make a game with a more broad scope about the glasscrafting guild and the city of Hamlin.
TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 29
Any thoughts or questions, Edward?