questions and comments on Spirited

[Paul Czege]

Hey Graham,

I really like your use of language in Spirited: "gentleman," "lady." And the vision you have for the social experience of play: players "who are very special to one another," and storymaking in which "neither character should be named." Your introductory fiction is very nicely done. I love the storyline behind it. I want to playtest the game with my wife Danielle.

But I am somewhat confused about the nuances and the mechanics:

In the third paragraph under How To Play you have the lady revealing the face down card of the current challenge, when the gentleman has guessed its suit correctly, and then setting it aside, face up, with one of the hint cards. Does she choose from the already revealed hint cards? Or from the unrevealed hint cards still in her hand? Or from both?

And then you have her taking two cards back into her hand. Should that be three cards? She started with five, right? And she just put two aside. So she should keep what she hasn't yet revealed, and all but one of the hint cards she has revealed?

And so what's she doing at this point? She's creating the hand she'll use for the next challenge? It's three cards from the prior hand, plus two more from her draw pile?

When the gentleman guesses correctly, what should the lady be thinking about when she chooses the card to set aside with the "virtue" card the gentleman just guessed? She should be thinking about what she wants to keep in her hand as the "virtue" card for the next challenge? Or how to keep the gentleman confused about the suit of the next virtue card by setting aside a card (face up) that doesn't give him important clues?

In the paragraph at the end of How To Play you write that when the lady "runs out of cards, the man has arrived at the port." You mean when the lady can't draw three cards to make herself a complete hand, or when she has no cards at all left in her draw pile, so she can't even make a partial hand?

And this last paragraph at the end of How To Play is pretty clipped. You write that there's on final challenge. Is this challenge driven by the stack of face down cards? With the face down card the lady chose at the beginning of play to represent the "man's greatest virtue" as the one at this point the gentleman has to guess?

If so, what if the gentleman didn't fail any of the prior challenges and the woman doesn't have a single card left for giving hints? Is this a problem? Or is the "admission of love" itself the final challenge?

How is the loving reunion or tragic parting result determined? Does the gentleman have to guess the suit of the first face down card, the one representing his greatest virtue? Or is it up to the whim of the female player?

In Advice for the Lady you write that she ought to withhold favour to ensure the gentleman makes all four compliments. How does withholding favour (that is, not removing one of the face down cards to the pile of face up cards after a flashback) ensure this? What happens if the gentleman gets to the port and there are a few face down cards remaining?

Also, I see it's been suggested you look at Breaking the Ice. I personally recommend that you not do so. It's clear to me from reading the game that you have a strong creative vision for it. I think looking at Breaking the Ice will probably confuse your vision. I quite loathe the indie game design community's practice of telling a designer at an early stage of game development some other games to consult. The point at which a designer might consider looking at other games is when he's identified problems with his design and has failed in his efforts to solve them. You're not there yet. Looking at Breaking the Ice or other suggested games now may fix your creativity within the realm of procedures and solutions you find in them, or it may cause you to doubt your vision. You owe it to your creative soul not to do it. You'll arrive at a place you like better if you don't look at other games until you're engaged in solving specific problems.

Paul

[madunkieg]

Paul, I'm very happy that you like Spirited and very greatful that you've provided me with these questions. Clarifying these will help with creating the expanded version of the game.

In the third paragraph under How To Play you have the lady revealing the face down card of the current challenge, when the gentleman has guessed its suit correctly, and then setting it aside, face up, with one of the hint cards. Does she choose from the already revealed hint cards? Or from the unrevealed hint cards still in her hand? Or from both?

This should be changed to, "another card from her hand, whether it has been revealed or not."

And then you have her taking two cards back into her hand. Should that be three cards? She started with five, right? And she just put two aside. So she should keep what she hasn't yet revealed, and all but one of the hint cards she has revealed?

She should gather up any cards she revealed when giving hints, plus draw two new ones to replenish her hand back to five cards.

And so what's she doing at this point? She's creating the hand she'll use for the next challenge? It's three cards from the prior hand, plus two more from her draw pile?

She is creating the hand she will use for the next challenge. It is, as you say, three she had before plus two new ones.

When the gentleman guesses correctly, what should the lady be thinking about when she chooses the card to set aside with the "virtue" card the gentleman just guessed? She should be thinking about what she wants to keep in her hand as the "virtue" card for the next challenge? Or how to keep the gentleman confused about the suit of the next virtue card by setting aside a card (face up) that doesn't give him important clues?

Her first priority should be to keep cards for the virtues that she enjoys watching him play. Beyond that, it is up to her personal taste for competitiveness to determine whether she wants to make it easy or hard on him by discarding cards he has seen or not seen. If the gentleman is smart, he will always get every hint he can before making a guess.

In the paragraph at the end of How To Play you write that when the lady "runs out of cards, the man has arrived at the port." You mean when the lady can't draw three cards to make herself a complete hand, or when she has no cards at all left in her draw pile, so she can't even make a partial hand?

When she can no longer make a complete hand.

And this last paragraph at the end of How To Play is pretty clipped. You write that there's on final challenge. Is this challenge driven by the stack of face down cards? With the face down card the lady chose at the beginning of play to represent the "man's greatest virtue" as the one at this point the gentleman has to guess?

The final challenge is just like every other challenge, except that instead of the lady choosing a card from her hand to place face down, she uses the card she chose at the start of the game as the suit to be guessed for the challenge. Any other face down cards are simply left face down. She uses the cards in her hand to indicate hints, just as she did in other challenges.

If you have ever played the boardgame Clue, you'll be familiar with this mechanic, guessing the solution by process of elimination. If the gentleman has been wise and gotten every hint from the woman he can, the only cards he should not have seen by this point (besides the one she set aside at the start) are the ones he failed to guess in challenges. If he has been good with his flashbacks/compliments, he should have revealed all the ones he failed to guess in challenges, leaving only the starting card still face down. If he has been attentive to all that, he should know the suit of the card that was chosen at the start of the game. Still, he may not have succeeded in doing all that, meaning there are still cards face down, cards he hasn't seen. In that case, the hints are there to help him guess which suit to guess.

If so, what if the gentleman didn't fail any of the prior challenges and the woman doesn't have a single card left for giving hints? Is this a problem? Or is the "admission of love" itself the final challenge?

The "admission of love" is how he solves the final challenge. The challenge itself involves describing the process of finding her, but when the Lady runs out of cards with which to give hints, he should find her. At that point, the Gentleman should make his admission of love, styling its presentation based on what he thinks the suit of the final card is, then declare his guess out-of-game, just to prevent any confusion.

That said, your interpretation gives me an idea...but use this for now.

How is the loving reunion or tragic parting result determined? Does the gentleman have to guess the suit of the first face down card, the one representing his greatest virtue? Or is it up to the whim of the female player?

If he guesses the card's suit, it is a loving reunion. If he fails to guess it, there is a tragic parting. It's sort of a "both players win or both players lose" situation. This is a game about seduction, not defeating one another.

In Advice for the Lady you write that she ought to withhold favour to ensure the gentleman makes all four compliments. How does withholding favour (that is, not removing one of the face down cards to the pile of face up cards after a flashback) ensure this? What happens if the gentleman gets to the port and there are a few face down cards remaining?

I answered the latter part of this question above when clarifying the process for the final challenge. Imagine that the Gentleman has progressed three challenges and failed only one. Right now there are two cards face down, the one chosen at the start, plus the one he failed to guess. The Gentleman decides to do a flashback to reveal the one he failed to guess. The Lady decides that he is doing well, and also wants to hear more compliments, so she decides to deny him (purely on a whim) and leaves the un-guessed card face down. After the next challenge he will have to try again with another flashback. As long as the Gentleman continues to guess correctly, the Lady is safe to withold her favour until the last flashback the Gentleman can play, since only one card need be revealed.

If, however, by the third challenge the Gentleman has failed to guess all three and decides to try a flashback, the Lady may choose to take accept his compliment him and reveal a card, encouraging the gentleman to not give up hope.

It is a matter of the Lady "playing hard to get" trying to get as many compliments as possible without discouraging her Gentleman suitor.

Also, I see it's been suggested you look at Breaking the Ice. I personally recommend that you not do so...

I looked at a pretty decent review of the game and it was enough to tell me a couple of things. Firstly, I understand what the judges were trying to get at. It was something I had thought about while designing, but had abandoned due to the contest's constraints. I will revisit those ideas as I revise the game. Secondly, I understand that Breaking the Ice and Spirited are very different types of games, that what was done there will not work here for both conceptual and mechanical reasons. I do still want Breaking the Ice in my collection, eventually.

Have no fear, I will stay true to the spirit of this game. I hope you and your wife find it enjoyable to play.

[Eero Tuovinen]

For what it's worth, my suggestion about BtI did not concern general approach to romance in game design; the specific point I wanted to make was that this game might benefit from similarly loosening up the fictional situation; players of BtI gain much value from the initial character generation step that allows them to mold the characters and their issues to their liking. I don't know if a game that requires you to play to predetermined conventions can work as well when it comes to something as culturally sensitive as romance. Could of course work even better for the right audience, what do I know.

[Graham W]

We mentioned Breaking The Ice, but we didn't actually suggest looking at it. I agree with Paul that you shouldn't.

Graham

[madunkieg]

For what it's worth, my suggestion about BtI did not concern general approach to romance in game design; the specific point I wanted to make was that this game might benefit from similarly loosening up the fictional situation; players of BtI gain much value from the initial character generation step that allows them to mold the characters and their issues to their liking.

Yes, I have been thinking about that and how it relates to the romance formula. Character design is very personal to gamers, almost sacred. It is the first step that people take to express themselves in a game.

Harlequin novels have been translated into 26 languages and sold in 109 countries. They find success in many cultures. The formula for the stories is rather precise in some ways and loose in others, and the most restrictive part of the Harlequin formula is the character design. While the descriptors for characters may vary a bit (businessman, prince, cowboy, soldier, etc.), the qualities of the characters are pretty constant (loyal, strong, compassionate, successful career, etc.). It is largely true for romances published by other companies, too. That is why I created the fixed set of character qualities.

What this all means for game like Spirited is something I'm still thinking about. Spirited puts the task of character design in the hands of the other player, with the Lady designing the Gentleman's character and vice versa. The characters (each stat/virtue's rating, if you want to compare to other games) are partially predetermined and partially the result of play, hopefully inspired by qualities found within the other player. Character actions within the game aren't to change the story's path so much as they are a method of expressing qualities, which is why I feel the narrow scenario can work. Thankfully, I didn't use the contest's keywords in the rules, so the mechanics are somewhat generic and will be able to support a variety of scenarios.

[madunkieg]

I've been fiddling about with the game, both rules and layout (it's taking some time and practice to draw the ornamentation). In particular, the suggestion to put a little more flexibility into the rules has had some traction. I'm not opening it up all the way, but I thought maybe the system could be redesigned to allow a touch more variation.

First, though, a clarification:
I am separating the card set aside by the lady at the start of the game from the face-down pile, so as to prevent them from getting mixed up.

So, here's the variant to flashbacks, should you care to try it (and don't be afraid to ask for clarification):

At the start of the game, the lady collects all aces, faces and deuces from the deck. The gentleman has no cards. Play then continues as normal until the gentleman misses one of his guesses.

When that happens, as long as drawing the next two cards will not deplete the draw, the man his may search his memories for something that the woman did to win his heart, something to strengthen his determination. The gentleman gathers the cards revealed in the last challenge and the lady's hand. He chooses one to discard, draws back up to five cards, then sets one face down in front of him for the lady to guess in a challenge, much like she has been challenging him. The gentleman begins to describe a scene from the man and woman's shared past that calls for the woman to act virtuously. If, at the end of the challenge, the lady is able to guess the proper virtue, the last card placed upon the face-down pile is revealed and discarded along with the card chosen by the man. If not, the man reveals and discards his chosen card.

Either way, the cards are returned to the lady and the main story resumes.

In this variant the story hasn't changed at all (yet), but the possibilities for variation in different scenarios are much greater since the system is not quite as lopsided.