Giant Stone Head and Empire

Two very distinct things in this post.

First off a play test of Giant Stone Head.  All good - nice tight game (I did really badly) but the end of game points were just to much.  I think they need to still be very focused - so only a few players get anything but the end result was just to extreme a swing.  So they need to be trimmed down.

The cards when unable to place a GSH went fine - and the the increased value for the "all the cards" build card worked.

One thing we did do was play with one less build card - so only as many build cards as the number of players.  It worked fine - made resources more important - but was a bit meaner as the last person got no choice.  Overall I think I preferred it as resources have always felt a little unimportant and this seems to kick them over a little bit.

The second was that I play tested a new game today - working name is Empire Jong.  So I go larping (or cross country pantomime as I've heard it called) and the company I go to are about to start a new game "Empire". 

So I've got talking to people about making a game to play in character - and this is a very different design experience.

So there are some very clear design requirements - it has to be easy to learn, suitable to play in a poorly lite tent while drunk, deep enough to interest a gamer (so contains interesting decisions) and reflect some aspects of the background in it's set up and style.

In many ways I'm after something that feels like a decent classic card game - something of a similar nature to Whist.  However using tiles rather cards - because tiles will feel more suitable - and with a different distribution you can create a different game. 

It pretty much started from the background fact that there are "seven virtues, and six realms".  Which made it very tempting to create a version of Dalmutai skinned for Empire - but it felt wrong as the "virtues" should be important.

So what got play tested this weekend - a couple of quick hands was.....

A deck made up of eight materials, seven virtues, six realms, five herbs, 4 coins and 1 empress.

You have seven cards - there is one face up in the middle - or two face down.  You can either take the face up and replace it or take both the face down and replace them.  The aim of the game is to get a single full set and then the rest of your hand of seven as the same thing.  The empress is wild and different hands are worth different things.

It went well - couple of suggested changes.  Two face up cards rather then 1 - which will mean the addition of an extra tile.  The empress as wild is too good.  So the plan is to make the empress just give bonus points if you can go out holding her - and introduce a wild card that costs you points if your holding it at the end of the game (currently it's going to be called 'the Foreigner').

I also think that there needs to be more scoring opportunities so holding the most of some cards - say materials or virtues should give you some points as they are much harder to complete......  Will need balancing but currently hopeful.