Redesigning SOAP

[Ferry Bazelmans]

The subject says it all, doesn't it?
I want to revise, expand and update SOAP to reflect actual playtesting (which has been done extensively by you guys - you rule).

It'll become a nice PDF with graphics and better (clearer) rules and alternative play suggestions (maybe even that cardgame variant I was promising).

What I need is your brutal truths. Everything you didn't like about SOAP but were afraid to say. :smile:

Gimme all you got people, I can take it.

You can either post it here (and I'll read and collect it) or mail it to me at mailto:crayne@dds.nl?subject=Remarks about SOAP">crayne@dds.nl.

Thanks for your time and effort!

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Ferry,

Endings are still weak. I suggest a very specific "condition" be applied at the half-hour mark, and then play proceeds once around the table. The condition might be something like "achieve your goal or fail dismally," so that the session wraps up.

I also think the "win" option should be based on spending tokens rather than accumulating them.

You should articulate what consitutes a good Secret (shame, atrocity, betrayal, and other such things) and also that although the character considers it a Secret, the player should consider it an Upcoming Revelation.

Give much clearer guidelines for establishing connections among the characters. If I didn't already know that rule, its brief and hidden position in the current rules would have been missed. Give an example; say there are four players.
Sylvia Flush: lover to Rock, cousin of Todd, rival of Maggie
Todd Bassingate: cousin of Sylvia, business asssociate with Rock, relies on Maggie for spiritual advice
Rock Rockwell: lover to Sylvia, lover to Maggie, business associate with Todd
Maggie Kane: lover to Rock, occult consultant to Todd, rival of Sylvia

State clearly that THESE connections ARE known to all players at the outset of play (if not to the characters).

In the last game I played, no one disputed a scene or use of their characters once. What guidelines might you give to spark more inter-player intensity that leads to bidding tokens? Or, alternately, it may be that this session just illustrates one of the many outcomes of Soap and shouldn't be considered a flaw.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Well, some of the areas that were weak will be the hardest to fix. The most obvious problem to me is trying to figure out what constitutes a hint. It is currently solely up to the player in question making the hint. The problem is that s long as you have any gamist notions like winning the game, people have an impetus to keep their "hints" as vague as possible. Everyone has problems with this. Even if you don't have gamist elements (and maybe you should), there is still an impetus to making your hints vague, which is that otherwise you are likely to have your character killed, which many a player will be adverse to. Most players will identify with their character to some extent, not realising that the character is not really theirs in this game.

Their are a couple of directions you can take to fix this. In a non-gamist atmosphere, you can set up the game where another player and character know your character's secret. At start, after roles have been assigned, each player selects another player to know his secret. That player is not allowed to reveal that secret. THe players should figure out some reason why the character who knows would not reveal it. This can be a sort of non-point gaining secret itsef.

No other player may know the secret of more than one other player's character. This can be complicated, or you can solve the problem by requiring it to always be the player on your left. Anyhow, when you hint, you suggest to the player on your left that you think that you've done so and, if that player agrees, then you get the tokens. This is a relatively easy change and is quite whithin the Soap-Opera mode. The character who knows another character's secret can be secretly blackmailing them with it or holding it over their heads if they like, but can never actually reveal anything about it.

A more complicated version of this is to say that these character's fates are linked. Either player, the one with the character who has the secret, or the one whose character knows the other character's secret, can hint. The partner of the player who hints makes the judgement. Should the secret ever come out, both characters are no longer immune from death. I'm trying to come up with a way to balance this from a gamist perspecive, but it is difficult as there are lots of conflicting motivations. Not that it can't be done. It'll just take more work.


An entirely different method is to make the reward for hinting recievable only upon a successful guess. In this case the player never indicates when he has dropped a hint, players just have to watch closely. When a player guesses another players secret, that is when the player gets his five token reward. This is a very impartial method. The problem is that players will tend to make the hints very obvious when they want their reward. There is no particular reason for them to slowly reveal facts.

One way around this is for the other players to again be the judge of successful hints. For each hint that they could identify, a player can give the player with the outed character two tokens. Play would start with the successfully guessing player and go once around the table, each player pointing out as many hints as they can think of. Players identifying hints successfully (as confirmed by the player of the outed character) are given a reward of one token for making the identification. This will mean that the guessing player will almost certainly be able to identify one or more hints making it profitable to be the one who guesses. I would then suggest a reward of one for the successful guess (can't remember what it is currently). Normal play would resume with the player to the left of the guessing player after all players hava had a chance to identify hints.

To keep things from stacking up, you might then only allow one guess per turn meaning that players have to consider which is most likely and guess that way insead of taking a stab at everyone. This might be a good rule under any circumstances.

These are just some ideas. If you work with them, you may be able to find a way to balance out the gamist side of things, or just better ways to handle them. The point is to either take out subjectivity in the rules, or have balanced consequences for subjective calls, making them as likely to go one way as another.

Mike