[Dirty Virgins] Fixing the voting mechanism

[hix]

I've written a game called Dirty Virgins which is designed to be played over a couple of hours. As Rob said over at the 20x20 Room, it's about medieval maidens desperately trying to sully their reputations before a virgin-loving dragon eats them.

The game has 2 phases. In phase 1, we play out scenes of each character spending the night trying to sully their reputations. Phase 2 is the morning the Dragon arrives, and what I want from it is to create a vicious Diplomacy-meets-Survivor elimination round.

Dirty Virgins is pretty short (about 4 pages). If you want, you can download it here.

I have a couple of questions about how the rules affect the gameplay in Phase 2. Here's a summary of the rules:

Players have 40 points that they split between their Reputation and their Skills. They spend a certain amount of Skill in each scene – and if they draw a playing card that's under that amount, then their Reputation decreases by the difference. If it's over, then their Reputation increases.

In Phase 2, players add up the number of skill points they assigned in Phase 1.  They subtract this total from their Skill score. The result is the number of votes each player has to assign to the Virgins, to reduce their reputations. You can split your Total (that is, your votes) between Virgins.

My Objective for this game was to create something with the spirit of a German boardgame, where the abilities you needed to use in the first phase actually starts to hinder you (or become meaningless) in the endgame. 

The thing is, I'm pretty sure that the current draft of the game is broken. It feels like there's an optimal strategy. Take a low Reputation, max out the amount of Skill you spend in each scene (to guarantee success). Bam, your reputation bottoms out and you're in no danger of being eaten.

1. So my first question is: am I right in thinking that that's broken? Can anyone see any quirks & strategies that I'm missing?

2. My second question is: can anyone see any problems with using voting to reduce other players' Reputations?

Anyway, that got me thinking about how I could meet my objective better. The ability you need to use in the first phase is Skill. If you use more Skill in each scene, you're more likely to succeed. The consequence of following that strategy is that when you enter Phase 2, you will have less Skills on your character sheet than someone who took a more conservative approach.

So what I'm thinking is: each player's number of votes is determined by the number of Skills they wind up with (not the number of points they've spent).

Example: 2 players each have 30 Skill points. Player 1 spends 10 points on each skill. They end the game with 3 Skills. Player 2 spends 5 points on each skill. They end the game with 6 Skills. Player 1 therefore has 3 votes to reduce the other characters' Reputations while Player 2 has 6 votes.

Now, I haven't got enough distance on this yet - so I can't quite see in my head how it plays – but I think it starts to address my concern.

3. So my third question is: anyone got any other ideas on how I can make the abilities you need to use in Phase 1 hinder you in Phase 2?

[TonyLB]

1. So my first question is: am I right in thinking that that's broken? Can anyone see any quirks & strategies that I'm missing?

Well, first, the obvious.  The best way to find if it's broken is to get some friends (or simply play all the roles yourself, as best you can), start the game up and see what happens.

It does seem like you could, theoretically, take 39 points of Skill, assign them to your first action, and be assured of at least a -28 (your reputation of 1 minus (skill 39 - maximum card 10 = 29)) reputation as soon as that skill resolves.  So I think the game may be broken a skooch before the voting phase.  Does Reputation

2. My second question is: can anyone see any problems with using voting to reduce other players' Reputations?

I'm a bit confused by how the voting goes:  Are you allowed to vote for your own Virgin?  If so, why would you (assuming you're aiming not to get eaten, and secondarily aiming to reward those who were appropriately slatternly) vote for anyone else before your reputation was mud?

If you can only vote for other people then you're entering into Baron Munchausen territory, which is a good sign:  coins are useful in the game when you're telling your story, but you don't want to have too many coins at the end, because having them at the end means they get awarded to people other than yourself!

[Jason Morningstar]

First of all, way to go on writing a 43-minute game!  I like it plenty.  I'm particularly attracted to games that can play out as a self-contained evening's entertainment. 

One suggestion - I think it would be useful to find opposed terms for Reputation and Skill, like Honor and Shame.  In fact, allow me to suggest Honor and Shame.  You're using Reputation as a synonym for Honor anyway.

To anwer your questions:

1.  Yeah, I think it is broken.  Running various permutations with friends will highlight the problems and point toward solutions.  It's hard for me to get my mind around it but it does not feel right.

2.  You absolutely need some tension between voting to lower others Reputations and your own endgame success. If hurting others also helps you there is no motivation to do anything else.

3.  See #2. 

It'd be cool if, rather than voting to lower others Reputations, you were desperately trying (as your own virgin) to smear them with goodness and virtue.  I think this would be more entertaining in play.  The better you make them look, the less likely you are to be eaten.

--Jason

[hix]

Thanks for both your feedback, guys! Hearing your opinions gave me the mental distance I needed. Now I know how to do a few self-tests of the rules before I introduce it to other people.

(Tony, I could not stop ruefully laughing for quite some time after reading your assessment of how broken the rules are.)

I'll bear all of your suggestions in mind during the playtest.

[hix]

OK, so tonight I've had a chance to do a few run-throughs by myself. The specific revisions to incorporate for the next playtest with real people are:

1. Everyone starts with 30 Honour & 30 Shame.
2. If you draw a face card, that adds 5 Honour. If you draw a Joker, that adds 10 Honour.
3. You can only bet a maximum of 9 Shame in a round.
4. Phase 1 (the night on the town) ends when everyone's Shame has reached 0. That means a player might have the only virgin in Phase 1 ... for several rounds.

5. All votes can only increase another virgin's reputation. You can split your vote.
6. Each virgin gets a number of votes equal to the Skills they used with their Shame.
7. The virgin with the highest Honour cannot be voted for, in that particular round.
8. The virgin with the lowest Honour gets double the number of votes, in that particular round.
9. There is a 'free and clear' discussion phase before each round of voting so that every player feels comfortable with their understanding of the different permutations.
10. This discussion can draw on the events that have happened in the game, voting from the previous round & general meta-discussion about alliances and cheating. However, it all has to be done at the table. Everyone's level of Honour must be known by everyone else.
11. The number of voting rounds in Phase 2 is equal to the number of players.

Oh, and the game needs at least 4 players. If there's only 3 players using the above rules, the voting process becomes extremely mechanistic.

What that all seems to do is make the player with the highest Honour try and maintain it till the penultimate round while everyone struggles to become the lowest player (which makes that position highly unstable).

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

This is very, very funny. I look forward to the next draft.