Stormy Night Games
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My friend Darin helped arrange another playtest date and this time we had five players and played twice. Darin ended up being the Protagonist again for both games and had definitely learned to be more suspicious of those "helping" him. Yet we didn't end up with an exposed Minion in either game. In fact, I don't think we had more than one of the cards that pushed people to the dark side come out in either game.
In the first game I tried out a new rule saying that if a player infiltrates a site, they can llook at the face down cards played by people who had previously infiltrated the site. That was a big mistake and we immediately dropped that rule for the next game. It gave away far too much information. I immediately know the person who played the first card down was influenced and we also knew without a doubt when we had placed enough cards under that site. So it is now the official ruling that when infiltrating a site, you can not look at what was previously played. There was also some question about whether there was a way to remove a previously played card. But I think just playing an additional card will have mostly the same effect as removing a bad card. Plus when you're talking about smashing crates, what is done is done. So once is card is placed under a site, it is there until the end of the game.
We took a close look at the special powers. Lucy's power seems pretty strong because as written, she is always drawing extra cards, even if she is on a space meant to simply replace a card. But since she must give the extra cards away, it doesn't make her that powerful. I think it was ok though with some spaces we had to think about exactly how the power worked. "Discard 1 card to draw 1 card. If you wish, discard that card and draw one more" turned into "Discard 1 card and draw 2. Give one away. If you wish, discard the other and draw 2 more and give one of those away."
We decided Quincey's power oif having an infiltrate difficult of 1 instead of 3 was farily inconsequential most of the time. Next time we're going to try letting him ignore the power of Dracula which is to say he can use a space even when Dracula is there. Mina's power seems fine. Dr. Seward's ability to draw off the discard pile seemed ok, though it neans being careful with the discards. The plaer putting the discards in the pile gets to choose their order. The jury is still out on Van Helsings double resolve token power. Arthur's ability to place cards anywhere seems like a good one. That just leaves Jonathan Harker. Starting in Transylvania and with 5 cards is mildly useful at the start and completely useless afterwards (though so was Mr. Harker in the book as I recall). Now I'm thinking maybe he can trade a Fear card on the space he is on with a Courage card in his hand.
It was pointed out that the stark red and green colors on the cards are easy to accidentally see. We'll have to keep that in mind when doing the final graphic design.
In the second game, there were two Influenced characters early on and just three good ones. Yet the heroes had a remarkly quick, relatively uncontested win. This brings two things into question. Perhaps having the leftover Insight cards at the Library isn't a good idea. First Van Helsing had access to them and then the Library. In both cases it made it relatively easy to guess the definitive location earlierr than I think it should have. I think next time I will put just two cards in the Library and leave the 9th card out of the game entirely and thus it will always be a mystery.
Also, I think Influenced players are better off staying Influenced rather than being revealed and becoming Minions (because once they are Minions, they can no longer infiltrate).. Consequently I did not allow them to become Minions unless accused first. But after this second game, I think one or both of the Influenced players might have actually been better off becoming Minions and using those uinique powers. So while they may generally be better off not being exposed, there may be times when being exposed is in fact the better choice and they should have that option. So going forward an Influenced player can declare themselves to be a Minion at any time.
So those are the observations from this week. I hope to have some weekly playtests in September.
Comments
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David Allison says (Aug 31, 2015):
Thinking about it some more today, I think I will keep Quincey's power the same. Instead I'm going to change the Fear Track. Right now it goes from 1 to 6, and changing it by 1 doesn't really have much effect, So instead I'm thinking of a 4 step track with ratings of 1,4,7, and 10. I may even start people on a 7 to make spending time at the Library more worthwhile. Also that way it's no longer possible to infiltrate a location with no effort if it should happen to get a good card randomly dealt on it. But Quincey will start on the 1 which actually would be a worthwhile advantage at that point.
