Further Feedback and Changes for Belle of the Ball


Wow, I'm so pleased to see the feedback for Belle of the Ball so far. I've got feedback from Fred Hicks and Jason Innes (designer of Empyrean, Inc.) Here are some findings:
  • It's Fun: Response has been really good from a mixture of gamers. The mechanics fit the theme and it's lots of fun to build clever combos of guests, then see how they stack up later in the game. There are some edits that could be made to make it a little more accessible, case in point...
  • Edit for Clarity: There is some wording that could be a little bit more clear, such as "a single guest's powers may not be activated, it must be in a group." Whenever I run into those issues in a rules document, my impulse is to just remove that rule rather than re-write it for clarity. This will be the case in the next draft, so "You can activate the powers of any guest in one group, in any order." I'm also going to restrict the "Mingle" power to a your own clique.
  • Adjust Power Distribution: When you're lucky enough to draw guests with high popularity, it's overkill if that guest also has a useful power. So, I'm redistributing the powers so that they mostly go with guests who have low or negative popularity.
  • Broaden the Friend Bonus: The Friend bonus counts for each other guest in the group. So, yes, it does stack. 
  • Remove the First Player Token: This is a tentative change. I introduced the First Player token in an earlier prototype when the threat of dueling made any singleton very vulnerable. Thus, turn order was very important. Now, the token may not be as necessary, especially in a two-player game.
  • Increase Power Density: A lot of the game's fun comes from building clever synergistic combos, so I'm adding some more powers and making them much more common in the deck. These include:
  • Reject: Discard your whole hand.
  • Shove: Move one guest from your clique to your opponent's clique.
  • Breakup: Remove one or more of your guests from one of your groups.
  • Befriend: Combine two or more of your guests to form a group.
  • Peek: Draw the top three cards from the draw deck, re-arrange them as you wish and return them to the top of the deck.
  • More extra invites.
And that's about it! If you want to test out the game and offer your feedback, please check out the links here. Soon, I will export a new set of cards and get them printed out along with a new rules doc.

Comments

  1. fredhicksJune 18, 2012 at 2:21 PM

    "The friend bonus applies to each other guest in a group" is probably better than saying "The friend bonus applies to every guest in the group".

    ReplyDelete
  2. fredhicksJune 18, 2012 at 2:21 PM

    The First Player Token is still important -- you need to know on whom a round starts, and on whom it ends. It just wouldn't be passed. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. DanielSolisJune 18, 2012 at 2:21 PM

    Ah, fair point. So I'll nix rotation in the next iteration. Actually, this could be a new power!

    "Preen: Take the first player token. You will be the first player in the next round."

    ReplyDelete
  4. DanielSolisJune 18, 2012 at 2:21 PM

    Consider it done.

    ReplyDelete
  5. fredhicksJune 18, 2012 at 2:21 PM

    I'm nervous about that for reasons I can't quickly quantify. Maybe hold that one for a later revision cycle / expansion.

    ReplyDelete
  6. DanielSolisJune 18, 2012 at 2:22 PM

    Alrighty. In any case, if first-player position doesn't rotate, I think I can get by without a token.

    ReplyDelete
  7. fredhicksJune 18, 2012 at 2:22 PM

    Maybe! But depending on how many cards per sheet work for a given printer (not the same from mfr to mfr), you might have a few spare slots to fill; having a first player card in there would use up one of those neatly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. DanielSolisJune 18, 2012 at 2:22 PM

    Presently, the first-player token is the 108th card. (I removed the sword ribbon to make room for it.)

    ReplyDelete
  9. DanielSolisJune 18, 2012 at 2:22 PM

    How about this as a new power:

    "Peek: Draw the top five cards from the draw deck, re-arrange them as you wish and return them to the top of the deck."

    That could be combo-ed with the draw powers or just used offensively to prevent an opponent from claiming a ribbon.

    ReplyDelete
  10. fredhicksJune 18, 2012 at 2:29 PM

    Yeah, that's cute. Five may be overkill, though. Assume its use as a single power in a 4-player game where folks are only drawing one at a time, mucking up the order of the top 5 affects more than one full round's worth. I'd probably angle for more like top 3.

    ReplyDelete
  11. DanielSolisJune 20, 2012 at 5:29 PM

    Okay, here's a controversial idea: Remove dueling as a normal player-action. Instead, it's a power that behaves much more intuitively.

    Duel: Choose one of your guests and one of your opponent's guests. These guests are dueling. Each player pulls a card from his hand and reveals it. Add the popularity from your drawn card to the popularity of your dueling guest. The player with the higher total wins the duel. The losing player must discard their dueling guest. The drawn cards are also discarded.

    ReplyDelete
  12. fredhicksJune 20, 2012 at 6:58 PM

    I am not necessarily into it. While we didn't use it much, I think that's part of why the scores ended up so lopsided. Dueling is an important tool for busting up the opposition's groupings, depriving them of group bonuses and strong power combos. And having it available to anyone with a singleton in play means that the underdog has a shot at messing up the top dog's day.

    If you get rid of it or powerize it, you need to figure out a way -- possibly multiple ways -- of enabling one player to mess up the groupings of another. Otherwise you risk some real steamrollering.

    ReplyDelete
  13. DanielSolisJune 20, 2012 at 8:22 PM

    Hm. Alright, I'll backpedal on that then. I think there's enough powers here so that all the guests worth up to three popularity has a power and no one worth four or more gets any.

    ReplyDelete
  14. fredhicksJune 20, 2012 at 8:28 PM

    I'll be interested to hear how a more power-dense Belle tests out. :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. DanielSolisJune 20, 2012 at 9:24 PM

    Regarding Friend Bonus: Currently it's randomly distributed. You think it always ought to be inversely proportional to the actual popularity, so if a -1 guest has a friend bonus, that bonus always ought to be +6?

    ReplyDelete
  16. fredhicksJune 20, 2012 at 9:27 PM

    I'd regard friend bonuses as their own kind of power. The ones that don't have a county requirement are extra potent.

    Maybe think about assigning (in the back end -- just for your designing, not for exposure to the players) a "build point" value for each card element -- popularity, group bonus (count county requirements as only half value), and power, and see how things are spread out across your cards. Maybe you have a particular build point total all cards are made out of, maybe you have a range you want them to fall in; but it may pop out to you that some cards have too many build points spent on them, while others have too few -- the ones outside of that range. It may be a good lens for understanding what your outliers are, and asking yourself whether they *should* be.

    ReplyDelete
  17. DanielSolisJune 20, 2012 at 10:26 PM

    Funny you should mention that. I just unpacked the build values underlying the Quests in Lords of Waterdeep. The engineering under those is really well done.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Zirong ZhangDecember 12, 2012 at 1:57 AM

    Sure
    enough, the
    particularDiablo III items Kickstarter sections
    let
    you obtain
    one
    recreation
    or
    even the complete
    package
    deal at
    a advanced.
    At
    this point that
    is a
    fascinating type
    from
    the long-term, particularly
    for modest
    video
    games that
    will get
    lost Buy Guild Wars 2 Goldin the
    particular sounds
    on
    the average
    game
    retailer
    ledge.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more