Another Day, Another Crisis
JeffR:
Okay, the first couple of solos were pretty rough on my heros. I've made three major changes that should help them out, though.
First, I expanded the token mechanic to give two tokens if you beat 1/2 of the Threat's base rating. This came from noticing that it wasn't too fun for rolls of almost enough to do the same thing as rolls that were practically nothing.
Second, I toned all the combat cards down significantly, to where they add 2, 5, and 7 to Threats instead of 5,10,and 15.
And Third, I changed the Director to only have one card rather than two each turn, which also reduced complexity in play a bit.
Right now I'm leaning toward the second Bad Luck, the third Coyote's Prank, and the second Origin Retcon as the cards that get cut to get to 52*3. (Which will also end up letting me lose a full page of cards in the file.
I'll try some more soloing to make sure that I haven't gone too far in the other direction, and then do the designers notes and whatever rules layout is going to happen. (I intend to submit Friday evening at this point.)
JeffR:
Went ahead and wrote the Designers Notes and cleaned up the rules a bit. At this point I've got ~1550 words of rules that I'm fairly happy with; I think that any further balancing will be done on the card-side.
Posted at http://mappamundorum.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/game-chef-2012-another-day-another-crisis-second-draft/, in two files. (Wrangling them into a single file, which really ought to be easier than it is, will be the last thing I do before submitting.)
I'd love any feedback anyone else has at this point
JeffR:
And submitted.
Only a few rules tweaks between the previous draft and the final one, the biggest one being to give the Hero one more run through the deck and having Reboot hit after Threat Level 5 rather than on reaching it. My experience suggest that should make the first set of threats managable most of the time. Other than that, a bit of word-shaving (changing "weak to X" to "weakness:x" and it's ilk made the biggest difference) and toning down of Drama and Adversity cards, and giving the three type of Drama cards unique colored banners.
JeffR:
Moving Forward
So, for the first time in one of these I'm strongly inclined to write a post-contest revision of the game. This is because I felt the word-count limit hard, at multiple levels, and because I've gotten a lot of good feedback so far, some of which points me toward places I was already looking to go, and others sending me in entirely new directions. So, here's what I think I want to do.
First, I need to get my cards into something easier to edit and otherwise manipulate than the OO Draw file they currently reside in. I'm taking a close look at nanDECK right now.
Second, I agree with one of the reviewers that the 'write on the cards' business needs to go. I really liked that as a way to have the player define the powers and moves of a hero during play, but it's a little awkward, especially as the standard way to make the cards moves from 'paste-onto-playing-cards' to 'stick them in sleeves with old CCG cards'. So the next version will need a bunch of new cards, for upgraded abilities. I'll probably add in some level three upgraded abilities, which will all be "2 dice + do something positive" in style.
This change in paradigm will also involve re-thinking how many of each type of card there should be; I'm not really sure what the ultimate counts are going to look like.
The rules themselves probably don't need any immediate changes, although the presentation can be clarified, expanded, and supplemented with examples, and with stronger support for the Roleplaying side [with some solid instructions on scene framing and narration rights] (again, now that I'm free of the wordcount restriction). Most of the changes are going to be in the cards. [I still don't think that I've gotten the combat cards right, to the point where 'hold a card back from the attack or not' is an interesting decision for the player.]
So at some point I will have a significantly upgraded version of the game coming out. There is, though, a limit to how far I can take the game. A 'final'/publishable version of this game would almost certainly involve lots and lots of original art, and I'm no artist nor could I easily imagine affording even a fraction of what it would take to purchase rights to that amount of art. So, barring the divine provenance of an artist partner/co-creator, that next version (and possibly a round or so of playtest-based tweaks thereto) will be as far as I can see this going.
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