[GC11] Prospero Station

[Paul B]

So I wrote a very rough alpha draft, which you'll find here if you're interested: http://www.zcomcreative.com/content/igc

I think there's some interesting stuff going on in the game, and it looks like all the cool kids are starting threads here, so here I am!

[Paul B]

Wow! Okay, I'm finally on-board with what's going on here. Sure wish I'd known about the design threads prior to submitting but...well, there's always next time. It was a rough few weeks anyway.

Stuff I want to hammer on because I'd really like to produce a more finished work:

* Audience: After reading my first feedback/critique, it jumped out at me that my (weak, tossed-off) "elevator pitch" may have bitten me in the ass. The Audience is really just intended to be sort of a combination tiebreaker mechanism + decentralized GMing duties, while giving non-scene players something to be invested in paying attention to. So does anyone else think the game is actually "about" performing before an actual audience? Totally not my intention.

* The token economy: This exists largely as a timing mechanism, to ensure some scenes take place and that Discovery and Secret revelations can kind of be metered out -- the players have *some* control over the pace at which their stuff gets revealed, and the Secret is a two-edged sword (depending on which Secret you get). So ... are there any obvious holes or flaws in the economy? I'm thinking about adding a Challenge option: "add a token to your Secret." But this is one of those things I totally can't eyeball without some AP.

Those are my only two standout items. I know the whole thing is poorly organized, such is the nature of prealpha drafts. But these two are on my mind.

[Paul]

Wow! Okay, I'm finally on-board with what's going on here. Sure wish I'd known about the design threads prior to submitting but...well, there's always next time. It was a rough few weeks anyway.

Stuff I want to hammer on because I'd really like to produce a more finished work:

* Audience: After reading my first feedback/critique, it jumped out at me that my (weak, tossed-off) "elevator pitch" may have bitten me in the ass. The Audience is really just intended to be sort of a combination tiebreaker mechanism + decentralized GMing duties, while giving non-scene players something to be invested in paying attention to. So does anyone else think the game is actually "about" performing before an actual audience? Totally not my intention.

* The token economy: This exists largely as a timing mechanism, to ensure some scenes take place and that Discovery and Secret revelations can kind of be metered out -- the players have *some* control over the pace at which their stuff gets revealed, and the Secret is a two-edged sword (depending on which Secret you get). So ... are there any obvious holes or flaws in the economy? I'm thinking about adding a Challenge option: "add a token to your Secret." But this is one of those things I totally can't eyeball without some AP.

Those are my only two standout items. I know the whole thing is poorly organized, such is the nature of prealpha drafts. But these two are on my mind.

I think the Audience thing is pretty clear. From your text:

The Audience
Any player whose character is not present in a scene or challenge is in the Audience. The job of the Audience is to approve the stakes of a conflict or challenge, and to break ties when two sides have played all their various Natures, Secrets and Vows. Any Audience member may spend a token off their character's Discovery (whether revealed or not) onto a character to declare them the winner of a conflict. They can also spend their character's Discovery tokens during Challenges, as described above.

I could kinda buy the thought that those players are just considered to be in the rest of the audience, but I think that's an assumption rather than something stated in the text. And that assumption goes out the window when you read the Discoveries section:

The panel facing out, hidden from the player, has further explanation of that fact that will be discovered
during play. Everyone else at the table, playing as the Audience, can see this fact.

It's the same as the majority of other role-playing games - the people who witness your role-playing are basically a default audience whether you think of them that way or not. You just openly acknowledged it and gave that table role some mechanical oversight.

[Paul B]

Well...groovy then. I guess I'll just wait to hear what the rest of the feedback says. If it comes up again I'll definitely make it more explicit.

Thanks!

[Wilper]

Woha, the premise of this game is very strange "Far future reality TV", but somehow it works. I could definitely see myself playing a game in this setting. :-) 

I'm not sure I have gotten all the details right, if you expand on the game now that the 3000 word limit is removed it would be great to have examples. Before you send it to the printer's have someone edit the text for better pedagogical flow.  Make the text about 60% or less of the width it has now, the lines are so long that they make the game hard to read.

It would be great if the discoveries were multiple choice somehow, perhaps three different ones on the audience side, and check boxes to indicate which is the one used in this game.  That would give better replayability, and it would be more fun for whoever assembled the components for the first game.

Good character sheets would be helpful in keeping track of everything, there are a few different pools of tokens, and it is important to keep them separate. Also I think everyone should have a cheat sheet of the rules, mostly for the stakes and effects in conflicts.  I would have made a board to keep in the middle of the table and moved much functionality there, perhaps a track for the episodes in the season.  In spite of the game's simplicity there are many things to keep track of, best to push as many of them as possible out of the heads of the players as possible, so they can free mind resources for actually playing the game.

[Paul B]

Hello reviewers! I sincerely hope the folks who gave me such good feedback over at the official Review page check in here again -- thank you especially to David and Nolan for their good feedback, and thank you Wilhelm for giving it a read and giving me your thoughts.

I do hope to get something playable and more "complete" together, and I look forward to blowing right past that 3k word count to do that. :-)