[Sons of Liberty playtest] A Pyrrhic victory

[GreatWolf]

Having made some comments over here<Master Plan podcast, I figured that I needed to sit down and write up a full playtest report of Sons of Liberty<Gameplay

So, a couple of weeks ago, my group sat down to play Sons of Liberty<THOUGHT:<THOUGHT:<Thoughts on What Went Wrong<massive<most<Ideas for the Option Screen

When I playtested Versus mode<TAMSK<The Playtest Questions

And now, to answer your specific questions.

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Seth Ben-Ezra
Dark Omen Games
producing Legends of Alyria, Dirty Secrets, A Flower for Mara
coming soon: Showdown

[Josh Roby]

First of all, Seth, do not feel bad about posting this.  This is very, very useful, and this is exactly what I need to hear.  If you or any of your players want to elaborate, please do!

Secondly, I've run out of lunch break time.  But I will try and get you a good, strong response as soon as I can!

Thanks very, very much, Seth!

[Keith Sears]

I might as well add in my 2 cents.

I was one of the players that was completely lost during play, and I really don't want to play Sons of Liberty again unless there are some changes made to it.

Part of my reluctance is my own personal makeup. I work with customers all day on the phone and when someone talks, I tend to shut up and let them finish. I can't help it.. it automatic. So, when Ralph and Gabrielle were battling over the ship, I couldn't get out a word. I also would have been forced to talk over them, which I consider rude.

That, combined with the fact that this was the first time I had every played this game and the others were racing as fast as they could, so by the time I could get anything out, the action had already moved far ahead of whatever I was going to say. I finally just gave up and endured the rest of the game instead of enjoying it.

[Valamir]

Yeah, I can ditto Seth's comments.

The color of the game produced alot of really neat brainstorming grist.  The Whyst Code is very cool, and trying to figure out a scenario from the bizzare mad lib is even cooler.  Coming up with a rotating wheel that you could set to five different positions and then read the code through the windows would be coolest of all coolness.  I remember one mission had us trying to do something before the "British Inspired the Orator".  The fact, that made no sense had us wracking our brains.  We eventually decided that the Orator referred to the HMS Orator a famous pirate hunting sloop, and "Inspire" had to do with witchcraft being used to make the ship invincible.  Neat.

But then the subsequent mission that involved the Witch being attached as the figure head on the ship quickly spiralled into madness.  I'm a fan of a little over the topness, but having moose firing cannons is one thing.  Having moose firing cannons being the least wacky thing to be narrated is another.  Having all those narrations happen so fast that nobody had time to register...or worse...to enjoy them...is IMO a problem.

The fun of Rummy 500 (melding sets and runs on the table and playing off of others melds in order to declare "rummy") is in the strategy of play and the tension between taking a card from the discard pile that is not useful now but might be later vs. taking a card from the deck which might be useful now.  Played at speed...rummy mechanics are simply not that entertaining.  We'd just played a few hands of Dutch Blitz (which is essentially four handed Klondike solitaire played at speed) and that game is a blast.  There's a method to the madness and a certain skill at play beyond just being really fast.  Jungle Speed also has a skill to it.  Lightning reflexes are key, but if that was all there was to it you could get the same thrill from the hand slapping game.  The Speed Rummy play was just not all that interesting.  It requires no skill to say "huh, I have 2 of a kind in my hand, I'm going to lay them down now." and then draw more cards.

I'll repeat my recommendations from the other thread, because I'd like to know your thoughts on the pros and cons.

1) Decide that SoL really should be a nicely thematic card game ala Guillotine and edit down the roleplaying elements to the bare minimum needed to convey the theme.  I think you'd then need to work on the mechanics to come up with card play that combines an element of skill and strategy with the speed play to make it really successful as a card game.

2) Decide that SoL really should be an RPG...a fun light-hearted RPG, but an actual RPG.  Then I think what is needed is to revisit the campaign idea; because while I'd totally be into playing a whole campaign of this game if it were a semi serious "alternate history" portrayal of the revolution, I'm really not likely to play more than a 1 shot of madcap shennanigans.  Then I'd find a card mechanic that did pit the Tory vs. the Patriots in a battle of skill, but also gave everybody enough time to narrate, to acknowledge other's narrations, to plan on how to build and expand off of previous narrations, and to actually tell a story that sounds like an off the wall comic book rather than the drug addled mash up of We All Live in a Yellow Submarine and Blinded by the Light.


The color is The AWESOME.  And I say that in all seriousness.  I was totally jazzed to play Ethan Allen with his moose riding Green Mountain Boys fighting for a free and independed Vermont.

But right now, the biggest deal breaking weakness in the game for me, is that I didn't get to enjoy anybody else's contributions but my own.  And three of the 5 players at the table struggled to get in any contribution at all.

I'd love to play again with a completely revamped card mechanic, but I have to say, I probably won't be interested in playing the Speed Rummy version again.

[Josh Roby]

Seth, Keith, Ralph, thank you for your candid thoughts on the game.  I know offering criticism can be hard, and I appreciate hearing it, especially when it is as considered as yours is.

In this playtest, it was so fast that no one could keep up.  Mostly, I think that this was because of the desire to play cards as fast as possible, in order to win.  So, the right drive was in place, but it actually interfered with the narration.  I like the real-time aspect of the game, but the rules need to encourage a slower pace somehow.  I think that this is the biggest issue that the group had with the game.

Having all those narrations happen so fast that nobody had time to register...or worse...to enjoy them...is IMO a problem.

...when someone talks, I tend to shut up and let them finish. I can't help it.. it's automatic.

It seems like the biggest problem at your table was the lack of a traffic cop.  Keith's comment makes perfect sense to me; I'm the same way, Keith.  And Ralph, you felt like you were unable to appreciate others' contributions (and get your own acknowledged?).  I considered adding a section, or even a little box, trying to set down some rules or procedures that guide who says what when, or what I tend to call "traffic cop" stuff.  Because you are absolutely right: there needs to be some attention paid to other players, and appreciation for contributions, and the like.  In early games while I was playing Tory, I know I kept having to tell myself to step back from a moderator role; that's not what the Tory is there for.  I worried that, with the lack of a moderator or traffic cop, the game would get out of hand and incoherent.  Now, that never actually happened in any of my playtests, but it sounds like it happened in yours.  Yay for playtesting!

In the end, I decided to leave this as an intentional hole in the game procedures, assuming that each table would sort of fall into a way of playing on their own.  (I don't tell them how to sit around the table, either, for instance.)  I know in a lot of my playtests, players have defaulted to a sort of "hold out the two cards I'm going to play, and thereby get the attention of my other players, so they know that I have something to say next" thing.  This may be something that they picked up unconsciously from me as I demonstrated how to play, since I never made it part of the explicit rules overview.  Maybe I should include that in the book, rather than leave it out!

It was difficult to play the Tory.  I was trying to juggle appropriate narration, based on my card values, with the need to oppose four different players simultaneously, while still tracking the situation enough to react narratively to what was going on.

Seth, I think your difficulty playing Tory may be a couple things all at once.  First, though, playing Tory is supposed to be difficult, just as Patriot is supposed to be difficult in a different way.  The Tory player isn't the GM; he's the adversity, and he faces just as much of a challenge as everybody else.  That said, it shouldn't be so challenging it's not fun of course, which sounds like your experience.

But as I said, I think your experience may come from a few causes.  The first would be the lack of a traffic cop and there being too much narration without enough coordination.  I can totally see how it would be hard to respond to events that you can't even begin to keep track of.

(I'm assuming you used the Tory sheet, which has some crib notes on it which smooth play out a bit.  Apparently not enough!)

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Also, the Patriots never thought to call the question.  They just kept playing cards.  And, in a lot of ways, this makes sense.  In a five player game, the maximum Tory score is 53.  But that assumes that the Tory can get three face cards.  If the Patriots play cards faster than the Tory, then they can quickly outpace the Tory, making it impossible for him to win.  This is not just true with the quantity of cards but also that the Patriots can burn through the available face cards, making it impossible for the Tory to call the question.

In my big games with 5+ players, we went through the deck, but there was a sizable discard pile which players would jump in, shuffle, and upturn to make a new draw pile.  But it sounds like in your game there wasn't much of a discard pile because they were all played to the table.

I'm kind of surprised that the Patriots didn't call the question at all.  In one of my con playtests, the Patriots didn't call the question soon enough, but they did eventually get there.  Were the Patriot players too wrapped up in playing to notice that they could win?  There's no mechanical benefit for creating a blow out, so it makes me wonder what kept them going.  Were they too wrapped up in trying to get the game to work?  Or were they wrapped up in where the scene was going?

All of you, thanks again.  This is really helpful!

[GreatWolf]

It seems like the biggest problem at your table was the lack of a traffic cop.....I know in a lot of my playtests, players have defaulted to a sort of "hold out the two cards I'm going to play, and thereby get the attention of my other players, so they know that I have something to say next" thing.  This may be something that they picked up unconsciously from me as I demonstrated how to play, since I never made it part of the explicit rules overview.  Maybe I should include that in the book, rather than leave it out!

After reading your comments, especially on the "traffic cop", I decided to give this another go.  Today, I've played a game in Versus Mode against Gabrielle, plus a game in Battle Mode with Gabrielle and my daughter Arianna (age 9), who expressed an interest in giving it a go.  We added the procedure that you discussed above:  if a player wanted to narrate, he would hold out his cards (or Tyranny chip) to queue up to narrate.  No one was allowed to talk over someone else's narration.  If your planned narration didn't make sense after someone else spoke, he would just withdraw his cards.  But no one had to wait to get "in line" again.  This worked really, really well, to the point that I'd say that it should be a formal written rule.  Once again, I was the Tory, and this time, I crushed the Patriots under my iron heel.  This is mostly because I was burning Tyranny to steal face cards from the table

(Also, there needs to be some way for the group to say, "Stop talking!"  Narration should be short and snappy, but there are no rules to insist on that.)

It was all the awesome that I remembered from GenCon.  In fact, my son Samuel (age 6) wants to play now, and I'm going to try to do that later today.

Some other questions that came up:

--for purposes of final narration and Cut Scene, are Aces low or high?
--if two people have tied cards for final narration or Cut Scene, how do you resolve the tie?

My faith has been restored.  So, again, let me stress:  some sort of explicit "traffic cop" rule is absolutely vital to the enjoyment of the game.

[DainXB]

--for purposes of final narration and Cut Scene, are Aces low or high?
--if two people have tied cards for final narration or Cut Scene, how do you resolve the tie?

Seconding Seth's question to Joshua, with extras:

In our playtest, we assumed Aces to be low, but we also had the issue come up of ties for setting the Cut Scene.  In particular, ties between a Patriot and the Tory.  I declined to set the Cut Scene as the Tory in that case, so Maude got it.  I read the instructions for setting the Cut Scene as the Tory, and it sounds like a cool opportunity -- but does the Tory pick the Patriot's next objective, in that case?  That seems sort of... deprotagonizing to the Patriots.  Maybe if the Tory gets low card, the Patriot with the next-lowest card picks the next objective -- then the Tory puts the screws to them in the Cut Scene. (Wicked grin )

------
DainXB

[Keith Sears]

It seems like the biggest problem at your table was the lack of a traffic cop.....I know in a lot of my playtests, players have defaulted to a sort of "hold out the two cards I'm going to play, and thereby get the attention of my other players, so they know that I have something to say next" thing.  This may be something that they picked up unconsciously from me as I demonstrated how to play, since I never made it part of the explicit rules overview.  Maybe I should include that in the book, rather than leave it out!

My faith has been restored.  So, again, let me stress:  some sort of explicit "traffic cop" rule is absolutely vital to the enjoyment of the game.

And this is why you should hand the rules out for cold playtesting. It seems this tiny, little, insignificant, microscopic rule that you incorporated into your actual play but left out of the written rules actually holds the key to this being an enjoyable game. If we had known the right way to play it, we never would have found this bug.

[Josh Roby]

Wow, Seth, thanks for giving it another go!  This is great and hugely useful  feedback!

I will certainly add the "hold out cards" procedure to the text.  It appears to be rather essential!

Regarding the other questions:

Aces are always low.   You can "loop" a straight (QKA23), but when comparing cards, aces are low.

Resolve ties with the next-highest card.  Both if these need to go into the rules as well.

Yes, the Tory picks the next objective-- usually by smacking the Patriots around with it.  "Rescue the senator... who's your cellmate!"  I'll add this to the example text.

Thanks again, guys, for playtesting, and yes, this is exactly the kind of feedback I need to hear, so don't skimp on the "negative" reports-- how else can I fix problems?

[GreatWolf]

Wow, Seth, thanks for giving it another go!  This is great and hugely useful  feedback!

I will certainly add the "hold out cards" procedure to the text.  It appears to be rather essential!

Yay!

Now, granted, both of our games were played with children, but using this rule kept the real-time aspect, which forced you to think quickly, while allowing a proper pause so that each contribution to the game could be embraced and appreciated.  Cranked it down to that Light Speed pace of play that I discussed earlier.

Regarding the other questions:

Aces are always low.   You can "loop" a straight (QKA23), but when comparing cards, aces are low.

Resolve ties with the next-highest card.  Both if these need to go into the rules as well.

Okay, that's helpful.  We've been using bridge rankings on the suits, but that doesn't really fix the problem, given that using two decks means that there are two of each card.

Yes, the Tory picks the next objective-- usually by smacking the Patriots around with it.  "Rescue the senator... who's your cellmate!"  I'll add this to the example text.

This actually turned up in one of the playtests on Saturday, and it was hugely fun.  I'll also note that, at least with three or four players, if the Tory called the question, it's almost impossible that he will get the cut scene.  Nice touch.

Thanks again, guys, for playtesting, and yes, this is exactly the kind of feedback I need to hear, so don't skimp on the "negative" reports-- how else can I fix problems?

Sure thing.  I'd like to give Campaign Mode a whirl, but that may not be possible.  If so, I'll let you know about it.

[GreatWolf]

Oh, by the way, I did end up playing with Samuel.  He can't read very well yet, so I put together his character for him:  John Adams, with an emphasis on the power armor.  So, we got John Adams pitching monkeys at the redcoats.  Which, as Gabrielle noted, wasn't quite as nuanced play as some of the rest of us, but it still worked out pretty well.  (She also thought that describing anything connected to Sons of Liberty as "nuanced" was pretty funny.)

Crystal played again, and she enjoyed herself quite a bit.  I don't think that it's really her thing, but the fear-and-loathing from the previous playtest was erased.

Also, the Tory won both playtests by making use of Tory Figures that can steal face cards off the table.  I'd like to try the game with older folks who can understand this strategic point.  Conversely, we took a perverse pleasure in using "I can draw a new hand" and dumping face cards.

[Josh Roby]

Yeah, the "Steal Face Card" or even "Steal a Spade" may need to be restricted to one per level.  Not sure, though; need more data!

[GreatWolf]

Yeah, the "Steal Face Card" or even "Steal a Spade" may need to be restricted to one per level.  Not sure, though; need more data!

Well, let's see.  When I was the Tory, I used both Benedict Arnold and General Clinton.  That gave me the ability to steal Jacks and Queens (IIRC).  As a result, I tended to scoop up face cards pretty quickly, which resulted in blowout scores.

On the other hand, the other ability that each have is "Draw New Hand", which is pretty much only useful before beginning to steal cards.  (I'd start my entrance to each scene with General Clinton striding in and bellowing, "I am in command here!"  Fun.)  Also, when winning this way, I hadn't had enough time to spend my required Tyranny, so the impact on the Primary Objective was minimal.  I netted maybe one or two Tyranny in each of those Opportune Objectives, which also meant that they weren't major victories or losses, despite the blowout in points.

Honestly, though, I homed in on those Tory figures with the "Steal" abilities as being the best way to go for a win, and they did result in powerful play.

Aside:  it might be nice to have cards or something that the Tory player can put out to display his Tory Figures to the Patriots.  There were times when I was a Patriot that I wished I knew exactly what abilities the Tory could access.

[Gabrielle]

I don't actually have any hard playtest feedback to give, but I wanted to poke my head in here and say I had a lot of fun. I played on the Patriot side once and the Tory once and both times were a blast. John Hancock loaded Benedict Arnold full of explosives and threw him into the oncoming robot army. Good times.

As to the "Steal a Card" ability, when I was a Patriot I felt it was too powerful and when I was the Tory I felt it was too restrictive, but by that point Seth was coaching the others on what cards not to play. If you're playing with others who know how to play the system and you tell them what special abilities you're taking the current rules might be just right.

[Josh Roby]

Good to hear from you, Gabrielle, and thanks!

If the Steal a Card is a balanced thing, where it's useful but not overpowering if both sides understand the rule's implication, overpowering if one side understands it, and a non-issue if neither side gets it, I'm not too worried about it.  Such is gamism, right?

And yes, Arnold and Clinton are balanced with the Steal Cards / New Hand thing.  If I recall correctly, other Tories with card-stealing abilities are more restrictied (Bloody Mary can only steal queens, frex).  That's an interesting insight, Seth, that the Tory wants the scene to play out long enough to spend and reap Tyranny, and an early win is actually a mechanical loss.

Tory cards might be an interesting downloadable play aid, Seth, and relatively trivial for me to set up (basically tearing the Tory Sheet to pieces and putting that content in a different order).  Interesting...