Last night Ian, Jon, and I met.
Chit-Chat
We started a bit differently by chatting about games on the couch. We talked about our games being published, and all of the details that go along with that.
Ian told us about his newest game idea involving dice, Chun-Li, and fireballs. We were very taken with the idea of a Street Fighter-based game, and Jon and I were spouting out ideas left and right.
The topic of designing to prevent cheating came up when Ian mentioned using dice behind a player screen. Jon said one of his biggest pet peeves was when playtesters ask: “How do you prevent the players from cheating?” He said that cheater will cheat regardless, and there’s no reason to work to stop them. I was concerned with unintentional cheating: accidentally giving the wrong answer in Mystery of the Abbey, or not following suit when you have one in you hand, or, in Ian’s example, accidentally manipulating some game state (dice, score track) that is behind a screen. Those actions can derail a game sometimes. I think we all agreed that taking the time to consider these problems is worth it, regardless of whether or not we fix them.
Haunted Destinies
Knowing that the night was slipping by, we decided to head to the table and play Jon’s game Haunted Destinies. It was a deduction game, but it lacked deduction. It was more in line with a “stab in the dark” style of detective work. The players had to determine who the bad guy was by revealing cards from the individual player’s decks. If they saw the bad guy card, then they knew how to proceed to victory. This sounded good when Jon described it, but I felt like it was a slow process. With 30 some cards to look through, a player may stumble upon the bad guy right away, or, through no fault of his own, not find the card until he sees everyone of them. Actually, that isn’t entirely true. In a three player game, the maximum amount of cards you actually need to look through is 2/3s of them because if you don’t find the bad guy card in player 1 and player 2’s decks, then it must be in player 3’s.
The revelation part of the game was, for me, the part that needed the most attention. The other parts of the game, however, were actually very clever: Eliminated ghost players, and making setup of the board into a mini-game. I hope Jon continues to refine this game to make all of the mechanics shine.