[Business Solutions] "Delbert LeMond, you're fired"

[Jason Morningstar]

So I playtested Business Solutions today.  The game has been developing in fits and starts for a while now, but it's picking up speed.  I wanted to run through the game as written and then chat about what we saw, which is what we did.

The game was fun, as it has been all along, pretty much.  We had Delbert LeMond, the Unpleasant Temp from the Philadelphia branch who needed Drama, James Buffet, the Bitter Hipster with the unfortunate name who needed Sympathy, Ed Alabaster, the Clueless Nerd who needed Technobedience, and three others.  Creating characters and clients has been the killer app from the beginning - it's fast and fun and instantly sets the tone.  We played a full game using the default mode.  Card handling presented no problems, the Blame economy seemed balanced, and we had a good time chewing the scenery. 

But the game isn't perfect yet, and it's a bit of a problem.  Here's what I discovered from this and other recent playtests:

1.  It's over-written.  The system is so tight that bits that are a little soft impact others in a big way, like a delicate clockwork.  It got "finished" prematurely, and now I have to really take it apart.

2.  The balance between free play and mechanical interface is delicate and weird.  There are many portions of the game that have no conflict and no real goals - they are just there to do with what you want.  This is a little unnerving, but I think that's just gamer baggage talking.

3.  There's not much "game" in there - when you do interface with mechanics, you have few choices, most of which are made at the beginning of the game.  We knew who would be fired (the character with the most blame gets fired at the end) about half-way through.  This isn't fatal, but it isn't as fun as it could be. 

4.  Certain bits, particularly Needs and Tech Support, were under-utilized and, I think, unneccessary in their current form.  Stripping them out changes the balance of the game, however, and entails a more or less complete re-working of the resource economy. 

5.  Information design is going to be critical - there's a lot of data that everyone needs access to.  Rather than three information sheets (one per player, detailing a Lead, Trainee, and Client), I think there needs to be one central sheet with all six characters and thre Clients on it somehow.  I am not sure how to do that.  Similarly, there's a list of photocopier malfunctions (72 of them) that is constantly referenced and needs to be centralized somehow.  Ease of use will make or break what is supposed to be a light pick-up game.

I thought it interesting and worth sharing that my design, which I thought was pretty well baked, is actually too baked.  More incremental testing, even of sloppy or half-thought-out components, would have saved me a lot of trouble.  Still, I see a clear way forward and I'm very excited about Business Solutions!  We laughed and laughed.  It was stuffed with funny moments, mean-spirited treachery, ridiculous characters, and demoralizing copier failures.  My favorite Client was EighAte, a molecular gastronomy restaurant with a "culinary photocopier" in the kitchen, which you had to put on a clean room suit to enter. 

[Remi Treuer]

I really enjoyed playing BS. I mentioned that I was looking for stuff with a little more of a free-play aspect, and I liked how the lightly-sketched characters provided fuel for this fire.

One thing that I think you're downplaying is the fun of dealing with the physical pieces of the game. Rolling dice, drawing cards, writing on a sheet are all fun tactile experiences that announce 'now something is happening'. There's a fundamental difference between drawing blind from a deck and picking out of a stack of pre-drawn cards. I think the strategy element the pre-draw gives drains away some spontaneity from the free-play/resolution transition, spontaneity that could be used to make that transition feel a little more natural.

I don't know how useful it would be to talk about specific parts (like the way the Trouble scenes came up in the early part of the game), as you've mentioned you have to pull the game apart a little.

[Jason Morningstar]

I think we played it trouble - diagnosis - repair every time, didn't we?  Because the order trouble comes in doesn't matter too much, or shouldn't.  I guessif it comes later you could theoretically win (and lose Blame you earned in the repair).  It's broken because in the first three scenes the person in trouble is guaranteed not to lose any Blame, because they have none.  But yeah, that's all going to get hacked apart.

Remi, are you suggesting random draws at the moment of conflict?  That'd change things a lot.