[Game Chef 2011] The Daughters of Verona
Wilper:
I cropped and resized all the pictures of women for the character cards. And wrote the last of the absolutely necessary rules. Now the game can be played, but I think it could be greatly polished. Especially the section on what should happen during the five acts. I have studied the five act structure on wikipedia, but I think I'll need to dig deeper before I can write a very meaningful section on it for the rules.
Not counting the cards I have used 1300 words in the rules this far.
Wilper:
Two more days to polish the game. But I have a playable draft, complete with cards if anyone cares to have a look.
http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~wilper/gamechef2011/
My todo list, order of priority high to low.
* As for the characters, I'll take 15 of them and build a play set with prepared relations and stuff. To use if you only ever intend to play once, or as a tutorial game. This will in essence be a Shakespearean style comedy, it can't take more than an hour to whip up one of those, can it?
* I'll make card backs, for those that want them. I will just print my own decks and dump into card sleeves with opaque backs.
* I'd like 7 more Scene cards, to make a full 4 pages worth. Suggestions for events and location both are welcome.
* Tidy up layout a bit.
* I'll add funny quotes on the rest of the Scene cards. It is trivial to hide the ones that are there already if I want a uniform look.
Paul B:
Per my offer over on S-G to trade feedback, here's my notes on Daughters of Verona:
Like that you’ve selected some Shakespearean tropes to help guide expectations. Good call; nobody else did this and I feel like that’s important if you’re going for a Shakespearean simulation.
A thought on the stock comedy characters: It seems to me that every one of these characters exist only because of their relationship to one another. Lover A exists only because he is in love with Lover B. A Blocker exists only to block. A Fool needs a person of power to foil. It’s just something that jumped out at me early – maybe what you need is not stock characters, but stock relationships (and the players fill in either end of the relationship with their characters). Perhaps there are enough characters drawn in setup that one needs not worry about a Fool without a foil, or a Lover without a match? I’ll bet you could provide a tiny bit more structure to the relationship setup early on.
The scene/location deck is very efficient and clever.
Whoa wait…I just hit the end of the file. That was it?
Okay. So Daughters of Verona reads to me more like a Shakespeare Generator than a game as I understand it. Actually I really wish I’d had a randomizing table during my own IGC effort, because the tropes, the characters, the “typical scenes” breakdowns are interesting and thoughtful. However, I feel like there needs to be something more than the (very lightly) guided creative exercise presented – but that’s maybe just my own biases showing! If that was the intent of the design, then I think it’s pretty tight and probably as “complete” as it needs to be. I’d recommend someone take on a facilitator-type role to make sure everyone progresses through the exercise and scenes are somewhat vetted for appropriateness.
That said, if you’re going for a game that has some of the uncertainty and tension you get from a game experience, some ideas:
Maybe build some small little procedural pushes into the scene/location cards? Only noble characters can appear in palaces. Only lovers can meet under a tree. At the end of a Duel, at least one character must end the scene grievously wounded. Stuff like that.Maybe everyone gets a secret scene/location card? Maybe one at the top of each Act? If there’s something procedural or even mechanical baked into the card, then players can’t be 100% assured of what will actually happen in play.
Maybe build something into the relationships: Any connected Lovers appearing in the same scene get a draw off the deck, say. A Fool gets a draw when he’s in the same scene as his master (but not the master!). Powerful characters can veto any played secret card, or acts as facilitator. Stuff like that.
I’m thinking anything mechanical added to the scene card thing would ideally prompt a major change state in the game: A Lover must make a major revelation (introduce some heretofore undiscussed fact, or draw a new line on the r-map, or whatever). A Powerful character loses his power, or pick another character onto which to transfer power. Stuff like that.
Just riffing here. I think what I’m looking for is procedural or mechanical constructs that help frame up those scenes with more direction, rather than relying entirely on the players, who may have not much more than the tropes to work with. That said, I’m not persuaded you need a real “resolution” system as long as you lay out how each Act is supposed to end – let the players figure out how the Lovers’ situation is complicated, but here’s some requirements and surprises you have to work within.
Wilper:
I continue the development of my game here: http://wilper.wordpress.com/the-daughters-of-verona/
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page