Uncle Louis update (split)
stefoid:
bah, 6 rounds isnt enough to do squat. I am increasing the revolution limit to 15 turns.
A change I could make to a simple arbitrary limit is a 'revolution track' which is 8 rounds long. every round, the revolution counter advances one position and it it reaches the end, 'viva la revolution'.
However, players can attempt to influence the king to do something OTHER than increase their own prestige or decrease a rivals -- they can try to convince Louis to do something useful about running the country. If successful, the rev position goes backwards 2 places.
Baxil:
A floating limit seems more strategic than an arbitrary limit to me. Good idea. That adds the complication of, who wastes a turn making sure that the game doesn't end in failure?
I would strongly recommend giving dead players a second chance. Verisimilitude, blah blah, sure. But I can't think of a single "die and you're out for the rest of the night" mechanic that has ever worked out well in practice. Losing all of your influence tokens and restarting with a random, unclaimed noble at the bottom rank is more than sufficient penalty for death.
I'd also really urge you to consider allowing specific influence when your own noble is acting. This creates a huge temptation to act openly (especially if this turn's general influence roll sucked) and, along with removing the one-life rule, should result in more players directly backstabbing each other and a much more risky, edgier game. Is the ability to add an extra +3 to this roll really worth exposing yourself and losing all the nobles in your pocket? Is it worth wasting a turn attacking a minor noble to target a player, rather than assassinating an heir? It deepens the game.
stefoid:
Quote from: Baxil on February 17, 2011, 10:58:09 AM
A floating limit seems more strategic than an arbitrary limit to me. Good idea. That adds the complication of, who wastes a turn making sure that the game doesn't end in failure?
I would strongly recommend giving dead players a second chance. Verisimilitude, blah blah, sure. But I can't think of a single "die and you're out for the rest of the night" mechanic that has ever worked out well in practice. Losing all of your influence tokens and restarting with a random, unclaimed noble at the bottom rank is more than sufficient penalty for death.
I'd also really urge you to consider allowing specific influence when your own noble is acting. This creates a huge temptation to act openly (especially if this turn's general influence roll sucked) and, along with removing the one-life rule, should result in more players directly backstabbing each other and a much more risky, edgier game. Is the ability to add an extra +3 to this roll really worth exposing yourself and losing all the nobles in your pocket? Is it worth wasting a turn attacking a minor noble to target a player, rather than assassinating an heir? It deepens the game.
Thanks for those notes. My gut feeling is that player assassination would be towards the end game, because its hard to do - the player has those specific tokens for defense, so it sucks out a lot of general tokens from the other players if they want to see it through. They have to really mean it.
I reckon all your ideas are worth considering as options once playtesting starts, however.
stefoid:
Quote from: Baxil on February 17, 2011, 10:58:09 AM
A floating limit seems more strategic than an arbitrary limit to me. Good idea. That adds the complication of, who wastes a turn making sure that the game doesn't end in failure?
I would strongly recommend giving dead players a second chance. Verisimilitude, blah blah, sure. But I can't think of a single "die and you're out for the rest of the night" mechanic that has ever worked out well in practice. Losing all of your influence tokens and restarting with a random, unclaimed noble at the bottom rank is more than sufficient penalty for death.
I'd also really urge you to consider allowing specific influence when your own noble is acting. This creates a huge temptation to act openly (especially if this turn's general influence roll sucked) and, along with removing the one-life rule, should result in more players directly backstabbing each other and a much more risky, edgier game. Is the ability to add an extra +3 to this roll really worth exposing yourself and losing all the nobles in your pocket? Is it worth wasting a turn attacking a minor noble to target a player, rather than assassinating an heir? It deepens the game.
Could make the revolution track specific. Like each segment represents a real problem to be addressed - And its easier to address the problem with a character's resource, like some problems could be more easily dealt with using Martial, whereas some might require financial expertise -- then players would be forced to consider that perhaps influencing characters who might be good at defeating up and coming revolution events might be more of a priority than influencing characters that might benefit them personally. maybe. I guess these are all tweaks compared to getting the narration of actual scenes done right.
My gut feeling is that I need to give the narration more structure, or at least examples of functional structures. there are probably half a dozen different patterns of narration structure that emerge from the game mechanics - by structure I mean when to switch from influence by-play conflict to activity resolution, if it gets to that stage, etc... The structure of the narrative needs to feed back into the conflict between for/against influence tokens and vice versa. somehow.
stefoid:
So Im thinking of ways to tie the for/against battle for conflict resolution back into the mechanics.
Consequences are a great way to ratchet up the tension. At the moment, I have two types of consequences - those dealing with Martial influence attempts (acting character could be killed) and those dealing with influencing the King (acting character could take a prestige hit). These are both types of backfires, and at the moment a backfire is a straight mechanical thing that only effects the acting character.
I think once I work out the half a dozen or so structural patterns to influence attempts, I can identify points where potential backfires will bring negative consequences on either the acting character Or the player character. Like, the playing character trying to push an acting character too far could result in direct consequences for the playing character such as the acting character not only failing to take action, but breaking off ties with the player character (remove influence marker).
At the moment there is this back and forth between the acting player and the resistance offered by the other players. "I try this", "well you meet with this resistance" and at that point the acting character can choose to roll an outcome or continue to play out the scene and thus give the other players a chance to introduce more complications/resistance and more potential consequences.
So I think thats the missing ingredient as far as the the resistance play is concerned -- not just saying 'this or that' happens, but being able to link it to real mechanical consequences besides just a decreased chance of success by virtue of them adding +1 to the resistance.
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