First Tabletop Playtest

[Eliahad]

The first tabletop play test of Godball was started last night. It was a Short Family extravaganza, with my mom, dad, brother and myself playing as Aphrodite, Hera, Hermes and Athena respectively. We played about 2.5 rounds. (About 12 times around the players.) And we still have not scored a point. The game began with a lot more tokens being placed on the board, and a lot fewer HP being spent. Until we got closer together. There were clever plays from everyone involved. It did not move much faster than the Online game, as the game was being taught and cards were explained. WE played about 2.5 hours. No points were scored

Dan's favorite was at the end. Just kidding, it's mine. Where Hermes had the Godball, an ocean to his right, Aphrodite and Hera (who was knocked down) creating a wall around him, and Athena behind this mess. Hermes was about 4 hexes from his own shrine so something simply had to be done. Athena had imbued her Hero with magic that would let the Hero create a mountain that would knock another hero down...Hermes was knocked down, fumbling the ball to Aphrodite. Athena's Hero made a grab for the ball, forcing Aphrodite to drop it, to a hex, where Athena could step over and pick up the ball. The game ended with Hera puzzling out what the possibilities were of winning it back.

Things I learned:

1. I have lots of good information about some of the Hero Interactions and additional cases that need to be considered. (For example, what happens if multiple Heroes 'Grab an ankle' where do they get pulled to? And...what is the maximum number of HP a Hero can have?)

2. My dad wants to add 'Move an extra hex' as a Hero Action. My initial reaction is that this isn't a great idea. Though my brain just flashed the idea of, "Well, they're sprinting...they would lose a little stamina and not be able to take other actions." The counter argument is that a) That's what God Powers are for, and b) Hermes has that covered as his strength, it might weaken him a bit.

3. I have no idea who is overpowered and who isn't. The balancing and tweaking of decks is going to take a very, very long time. And we're going to have to test them in several different ways. As in, I'm going to want a couple of people who become experts at a single God...and a whole bunch of people that are not an expert, but familiar with all of the Gods. (And it has to be multiple people who are the experts, because while we want the God to have a distinct play-style, we don't necessarily want to tune it to a single individual.)

4. I /thought/ I was out of the game yesterday, stuck behind everyone, but it turns out that I had the ability to make the play I described up above. The game can flip in a single move.

5. Scoring is still difficult. Flame and I came up with a new possibility for scoring, which is just that you have to grab the ball and get it to the outer ring of hexes that are on the sides opposite your shrine. (So instead of one scoring goal, you have 11, you still have to get through the Heroes in your way) Also, in large games, you would have sides that were shared with other heroes, so the idea of cooperation as it suits you increases.

6. The depth of strategy is much bigger than I initially thought. There will be points where the game slows down as players puzzle out what to do.

7. The cleverest play might not be the optimal play.

8. Card wording will need to be consistent, and definitions will need to be worked out, and proofreading passes for consistency will also need to be made, beyond the proofreading for clarity.

9. Just because you don't see how a card is useful, doesn't mean someone else won't. So many of the cards /become/ useful when the situation warrants it, don't discount something just because it isn't working this particular round.

10. It's fun moving a pillar of heaven and creating an ocean around it.

11. I was anxious before we started playing, and after the first Round, that went away.

12. Who gets to pick where the ball is placed after it is dropped will need to be hardcoded into the rules to get those words off the cards.

13...um...other things! I'm running out of things that are jumping into my head. We've entered the difficult phase. Because the cards are the game, and how they interact is what will make the game fun or not fun. I haven't had a bad hand yet. I think my Mom did. My Dad says he did, but I don't always believe him. So how can every card stay useful in (almost) every situation? That's going to take a bajillion and a half more plays to start to weed out what is working and not working. We will need to create a set of questions to ask ourselves that are specific to the cards so we can answer those questions after every play. That's where the data will be for what is working and not working with the cards, I think.

Anyway, SUPER POSITIVE experience, but gosh can I see the challenges that are ahead.

[Mike]

In no particular order:

Grab an ankle may have to go. No matter how much I love the idea.

Alternately, maybe only the last grabber has the ankle and knocks loose the previous grabber.

A standard action for taking an extra move for 2HP is a good idea. Maybe Hermes hero only needs 1 for it. Or Hermes has cheap imbuements that allow more swift movement.

Usefulness of cards. This is tough. I want everyone to feel (most of the time) that at least 2 or 3 of their cards are immediately useful. Imbuements that come with no set time limit (i.e. counters or single conditional trigger) for use are extremely good for this.

GIFTS! Imbuements are Gifts of the Gods. If they can be imagined as limited use magic items we bestow on the heroes, I think that works well flavor-wise. The Shield of Poseiden. Helm of Wisdom. Shit like that.

[FlameBlade]

Ankle grab created a situation where a wall was formed between Eli and me. Basically made it easier for heroes to gang up on me. It can be used cleverly. But yes, leads to some complications.

[Eliahad]

I do feel like I should be keeping game logs. Who moved when, and played what, and just keep track of the flow of the game. That might be too detailed. But I play by feel more than anything else. (Most of the cards were created by feel, too.) I feel like having a log would let me go back and analyze things more after the fact. I don't know.

[Eliahad]

[Eliahad]

Flame helped me crunch a couple of numbers:

142,506 the number of combinations for 1 God's initial hand from their deck of 30 cards.

The initial draw for a 6 player game has 8,375,271,612,966,428,266,010,148,526,656 possible combinations. (Magic: The Gathering combinatorics must be insane.)

We have our work cut out for us.

This also highlights, to me, how important the feel is going to be. We're not going to be able to test every single combination of cards. But the feel is going to help us get as close as we can.