[GB] Klubhaus Playtest

[Mike]

We played at the Klubhaus tonight. Me (Hera), Noah (Zeus), Yancey (Hermes) and his wife (Athena), Jake (co-owner of the Klubhaus)(Aphrodite), and another patron there (Poseidon) who may be joining the boards soon.

6 players. 13 rounds. No one scored.

New rules for this session: No God Points, so no refresh phase. Players gain HP each round. Play 1 card on your turn at no cost. People had a good time, but it ran too long. No one wanted to leave, but you could tell everyone was very ready for it to end. They all had great feedback.

[Mike]

First page of notes

Todo list:
Need to create Turn Order cards to explain the process.

Need to clarify adjacent vs contiguous. Wording has to be unambiguous. Someone else pointed this out during play.

H-3-3 This should be a barrier, not a mountain

H-2-3 Should be a Gift

Need to remove "turn marker" wording from cards.

Grab an ankle still says "Pay 1 HP or…" and we need to remove that. You either pay the 2 HP to reduce the attack or you suffer the consequences.

Speaking of grab an ankle, we all had colored tokens to match the color of our cards. Whenever someone grabbed an ankle, they laid their token on the other player's Hero Card. Worked really well.

Need to clarify that Reactions must be played immediately after triggering event..

When you grab an ankle, you should have the option to let go at any time. Need to include that in the rules.


Discussion topics:
I started everyone with 6 HP. But since you gain one at the start of your turn, maybe reduce this to 5, or even 4.

Player suggested better wording for Attacks with extra HP on them. For example, he wanted to Shove and didn't want any other effect, but also wanted to add a couple extra points to it. He suggested wording of "Shove plus 2".

H-3-5 Is the fumble defensible on this card?

In general, can you defend against card effects that are the same as hero attack effects? (I say, no… unless the card specifies otherwise.)

R-3-2 Aphrodite card to force people to only play random cards. Can you still pick WHEN in your turn to play the random card, or does it just go at
the start of your turn? (I suggest random card is chosen for you at start of turn, and you must play it before your turn is over.)

If multiple people have a "choose where the ball lands" card, who gets to choose?... First person to play? Last?

M-1-3 Reduce the cost of 1 hex of movement by 2 HP. Does that apply to Sprint? Can I play this card to get a free Sprint?

Moving barriers were SOOOO hard to track. Even the running of the bulls card just became a confusing mess. Everyone in this game was in favor of not allowing barriers that automatically moved, but DID like cards that allowed movement of barriers. This may have been due to Noah's extensive use of multiple moving barriers.

[Mike]

I'll post more tomorrow. I'm tired now.

[FlameBlade]

Gonna reserve my judgement until I see the rest of the notes.

[Mike]

[Mike]

Last page

Chain-shoving. Can you shove a hero to an occupied hex and force the other occupant out? We ruled that you can only shove to unoccupied hexes and if no such hex was available, you couldn't shove.

We always took shoving as shoving to one of the 3 hexes "away" from you. Can we just shove them to any hex adjacent to their starting position? Equivalent to just grabbing and tossing your opponent.

Hey! Can we have special Hero abilities or Gifts to throw people farther? A double shove OR grab them and drop them in any hex adjacent to yourself. I'd like to see more of these maneuvering/repositioning cards/abilities.

R-1-9 needs rewording. Don't know specifics.

H-1-13 popular card. Name it Kick 'Em While They're Down. When someone is knocked down, this card let's you shove them a hex in any direction.

I did in fact use the strategy of letting myself get knocked down so I could guide the landing of the ball. I let someone else pick it up so I could recharge and then snatched it back the next round.

Need to make the decks more differentiated and focused. A terrain manipulator. Attack specialists. Maneuvering/repositioning. Path-clearer.

Player suggested that maybe the board has a track to count total number of rounds and then after X rounds things ramp up--thats when you shuffle in the level 3 cards, or after that point you can play 2 cards per round, or after that point some actions become cheaper.

Players also wished for more HP as ball carrier. Suggested that the ball carrier gets a bonus 1 or 2 HP if holding ball at start of your own turn.

[Mike]

Btw... new forum member Wowie was our sixth player in this playtest. He had lots of ideas and feedback.

[Eliahad]

Awesome, lots of good things here to process! A lot of specifics, too! What was your general impression? What did you like not like, or did it pretty much track with your notes?

[Wowie]

Hi! I'm Wowie, player of games. And I'm terrible at introductions, but here I am.

I'll sit off to the side for the moment and let you guys continue your conversation before throwing my observations into the ring.

[Mike]

[Mike]

New weird thought:

I think some of the level 1 cards need some bolstering to make them a little more appealing and fun. But what about the cards formally called level 1 and level 2 are played as normal, but the truly epic level 3 cards require drawing on the strength and faith of your followers so that you need to spend 1HP on them? 1 HP is tiny, and you start every turn by gaining 1 HP, so will always have it if you need it, but now you have to weigh it against other possible action costs. It makes them more strategic and meaningful and allows us to stick with just one action point pool without putting too much strain on it.

[FlameBlade]

Starting to see stronger appeal for team game.

[FlameBlade]

[Wowie]

I'll answer based on my thoughts:

1. The pacing is good, the length is not. But you're already aware of that. Once everyone learned what they were doing, turns went fast. 6-8 turns rather than 13 would probably be more ideal though.

2. I feel like you've found a potential gem of a concept. All that remains is cutting and polishing it to make it shine. Emphasis on cutting, because some parts and cards are too complicated for their own good. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think you have potential though, so take my feedback as "honest", not "derisive".

3. About halfway through the game the ball got so far away from me that I didn't even bother to chase it anymore. Aside from the occasional god card, I became a spectator at that point, just waiting for the ball to come into my area of the court again. It never came.

[Eliahad]

Okay, I have a much longer post in my head, that I outlined last night in bed at like midnight, because that's what my brain was working on. The gist of it is this:

1. We are having trouble scoring points.
2. The players in the last 2 playtests have wanted to do all these other things with the Heroes. (Including play on teams.)
3. Generally, they have suggestions for the God Powers, but mostly they are okay.
4. Godball is ultimately a Sportsball Game, and the God Powers are there because the Gods are cheating.
5. Our general mechanics are actually okay for these things.

Which led me to this conclusion: Our main issue with Godball, as it currently stands, is that we don't know what the Sportsball part of it should look like.

So I would like to, actually, run a playtest without God Powers to see what happens and see if we can solidify this question:

What does the contest of Godball look like?

We had a good thematic idea for this, now we need to make it a good game.

(I'm just trying to get thoughts down quickly, I have an outline of things I want to flesh out later. Just wanted to make sure the idea was here first.)

[Mike]

Good thinking. I'm really fond of this idea.

Let's play ball.

And the more we get into the sportball part, the more it will inform what sorts of cool cards will augment and complement it well when we finally get back to the putting them all together again.

[Mike]

More: plus a sportball-only test is way simpler to run in Roll20.

[Eliahad]

Oh Goddess, yes! I think it will be fun

And I think we can do this using the elements we already have! So, I'll flesh out that post later and we can try things!

[FlameBlade]

Should be getting a new laptop very soon. 17 inches of godball goodness as opposed to 12 inches. So roll20 will be easier to use.

[Eliahad]