Hey Chris,

I plan on doing some more play-testing, probably next week, and I had a few questions and comments on the <a href="http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/the-emperors-heart-rules-update/">rule changes.

1) Goals/Stakes: I guess I'm curious as to how you do goals and stakes.  Do you have players decide their goals *and* stakes?  Or do the players and the Scene Player work together on them?  Do you set out ahead of time what will happen if they fail their goal, or just play it by ear?

2) Award Tokens:  I like the new method.  Seems more streamlined, having a set number per player.

3) Drama Cards: Ouch.  No bonus dice for Drama Cards.  Actually, I think this will make it more likely that characters will go All Out by the Endgame.  Plus, it takes away the temptation to try and shoehorn a Drama Card into a conflict to squeeze out an extra die... I know I did it in the game I played.

4) Raising Base Dice for Villains and Supporting Cast:  I like it.  Again, it'll make things tougher, but that's cool.  Ratchet up the tensions and make character's burn Traits and Award Tokens before Endgame.

That's all I have for now.

-- joe

Hi Joe,

The goals and stakes are set by the players controlling the conflicting characters in the scene.  If the scene player happens to have passed along the villains to some other player, then let that player work out the goals.  I'm still very hesitant to add "changing stakes" rules, if only because the stakes, the means and the Traits people use go hand in hand.

The Drama card rule actually was how they worked in the first place, but I felt obligated to making Drama Cards more mechanically relevant.  Actually though, as flags they work fine- there's not a lot on the table to distract you and work very well when you need to come up with a scene for someone else.

We'll also see if things are too tough with Villains & Supporting cast getting extra dice.  I'm hoping it's just right, or at least very close :)

Chris