[Machiavelli] Splitting character use in two

[Ricky Donato]

For my game Machiavelli, each player has two characters: a Prince and a Counselor. For this thread I would like to focus on the Counselor because his creation and use are unusual and I would like to look for any possible problems. Click here for my Big 3 about Machiavelli.

At the start of the game, you create your Counselor in 3 ways:
1) You give him a name and brief description. "My Counselor is named Francesco. He looks like a monk: shaved head, brown robe, rope belt."
2) You set the value of an Advice attribute.
3) You set the value of a Misfortune attribute.

Here is the unusual part: you never portray your own Counselor. Instead, portrayal of your Counselor moves around the table among the other players. Similarly, you will play other people's Counselors at certain times. Also, when someone else portrays your Counselor, they use their own Advice and Misfortune attributes, not yours. You use your Advice and Misfortune attributes when you play other people's Counselors.

So here are my questions:
1) Is this too confusing?
2) Is it difficult to portray a character someone else has created? If Joe plays my Counselor, he has to use my description. What happens if Joe dislikes my description for some reason?

[Adam Dray]

I think it's a really cool idea. Let me toss out another option, though.

I think the Counselor is the far more interesting role. The Prince is a figurehead, especially in Machiavelli's The Prince. The real power is the Counselor. Why not create your Counselor as the main character you play and create a less-fleshed-out Prince as a character that other players control? You'll get to use your wile and wit to convince him to do things. As in The Prince, His Majesty may not be the wisest ruler...

The way you have Counselor and Prince set up, there's this guy who helps you out. The way I have it set up, you help this other guy out and he's making your life miserable. Now, I suppose the other players could play the Counselors as trying to undermine you at every turn. Is that what you had in mind?

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I love this conflict of interest. Because what's going to happen is the Consigliere will suddenly turn on his boss at an opportune moment. There's corruption implicit in this system, which is perfect.

This is a lot like something I've been chewing on for years. I'm a big fan of Macchiavelli (having read the Discourses as well as The Prince, which is a very curious balance) and have been trying to figure out just how much boardgame should be in this.

Adam's recommendation about putting the Consiglierer at the center is in line with Succession, a boardgame that I haven't tried yet but have sitting here for research purposes.

You might also want to check out Sissyfight 2000, the most cleanly designed political game I've ever seen, as well as Keep Cool, a game of balancing economic, political, and ecological goals that might just be the best political game I've ever played.

[Ricky Donato]

I think it's a really cool idea. Let me toss out another option, though.

I think the Counselor is the far more interesting role. The Prince is a figurehead, especially in Machiavelli's The Prince. The real power is the Counselor. Why not create your Counselor as the main character you play and create a less-fleshed-out Prince as a character that other players control? You'll get to use your wile and wit to convince him to do things. As in The Prince, His Majesty may not be the wisest ruler...

The way you have Counselor and Prince set up, there's this guy who helps you out. The way I have it set up, you help this other guy out and he's making your life miserable. Now, I suppose the other players could play the Counselors as trying to undermine you at every turn. Is that what you had in mind?

No, it is not. I would like to focus on the Prince as being the crux of the game and the Counselor as a tool to achieve that. I have come up with some mechanics to encourage the other players to actually help the Prince when they play the Counselor; I will discuss those mechanics shortly. But first, I would just like to confirm that the concept of splitting character use among multiple players is not a problem, as my questions above asked. Based on your post, it sounds like you don't think so.

[Adam Dray]

Only playtesting will prove it one way or another, but I think role-splitting can work wonders in many games. I'd love to see your mechanics that encourage player cooperation.

How does this cooperation work if this is a player-vs-player game? Don't players have lots of incentive to fuck each other with the counselor role to get ahead in their own prince role?

[Ricky Donato]

Only playtesting will prove it one way or another, but I think role-splitting can work wonders in many games. I'd love to see your mechanics that encourage player cooperation.

How does this cooperation work if this is a player-vs-player game? Don't players have lots of incentive to fuck each other with the counselor role to get ahead in their own prince role?

Yes. I'm trying to set up a situation where the characters of the Prince and the Counselor cooperate while the players fuck each other over. From what I've read, this is similar to Agon. My mechanic for doing so is this:

Periodically, a player can have his Prince ask for advice from his Counselor. Suppose Joe the player decides his Prince Giuseppe will ask his Counselor Francesco for advice. Joe looks around the table and has to choose an opponent to portray Francesco, so Joe picks Tom. Tom has an Advice score of 4, so Joe immediately gains 4 Player Points (which he can spend later) just for asking for advice. Tom then has to play Francesco and give advice. If Joe/Giuseppe takes at least part of Tom/Francesco's advice, Tom gains Player Points equal to his own Advice score, so Tom would gain 4 points. If Joe/Giuseppe takes all of Tom/Francesco's advice, Tom gains double his own Advice score in Player Points, so Tom would gain 8 points.

This encourages Tom to give the advice that he thinks Joe is going to take, because Tom is rewarded for doing so - but that advice can't be so good that it overshadows the Player Points that Tom gets. Similarly, Joe is encouraged to ask for advice, because he is rewarded for this - but his opponent Tom may be rewarded for it as well, if Tom is smart enough, so there is a risk in asking for advice.

Sound interesting?

[JustinB]

That sounds very interesting and I think it can definitely work. I think you'll have to do some serious playtesting though.

[Adam Dray]

My take on AGON is that it is a game of cooperation with bits of competition in it. If the players don't cooperate, they get their collective asses beat by the Chimera or whatever. Meanwhile though, they're trying to one-up each other and get the most glory and they might steal oaths from one another to get ahead and that weakens the other player. AGON works because it's trading those dice back and forth and because there's real pressure from the outside not to compete too much. If you do, you get weak and people can't fight the beasts.

In Machiavelli, it sounds like you have a PvP game where the players beat on each other through game play but then might get called out for counselor advice. The player asking advice doesn't have to take it to get a Player Point reward. The counselor doesn't have to give meaningful advice ("don't die" isn't meaningful, but the prince will likely take the advice) to get his reward or double even. I'm not seeing how this can work.

[Ricky Donato]

In Machiavelli, it sounds like you have a PvP game where the players beat on each other through game play but then might get called out for counselor advice. The player asking advice doesn't have to take it to get a Player Point reward. The counselor doesn't have to give meaningful advice ("don't die" isn't meaningful, but the prince will likely take the advice) to get his reward or double even. I'm not seeing how this can work.

You rightly point out that if the advice can be meaningless then the whole exrcise of asking advice is pointless. That leads me to conclude that the advice must be meaningful. Right now, I see two crucial components of "meaningful":

1) The advice cannot be so general that there is no way to avoid doing it, such as "don't die" or "attack anybody". This component is necessary to ensure there is risk for the Counselor when he gives advice; he can't get his reward for free.
2) There has to be a reasonable chance that the Prince actually takes the advice, assuming the advice is good. I'm going to need to think about how to make this happen.

As Justin pointed out, this is going to take playtesting to sort out. Thanks to you all for helping me work through this.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I think the answer is to make it so the Consigliere makes a concrete, mechanical promise, e.g. "If you hire some brigands to take out the silver shipment coming through Bavaria, it will cost the Sforza in Respect".

The Consigliere's ability to effect things is directly related to their Reputation. So the Sforza will lose three respect if the Consigliere has three Respect. If, for any reason, the mission fails, the Consigliere loses an appropriate amount of Reputation.