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Home / Playtesting / Beta 2.0 Informal Sessions Session 7 Players: Forest, Isaac, Cybil, myself Overview: Seeing patterns evolving, common mistakes, cards that people misinterpret, or don't bother to interpret. We did this experiment with our second game. In the first game Forest and Isaac died too fast, leaving me playing with Cybil, and she hates playing with me. Our experiment I entitled Dragon Duel: Melee. It's a multi-player variant played with 1 life card, but every time you die you come back. The last dragon standing gets a bonus kill (or 2) and the winner is the dragon with the most kills. Feedback: Minor note: Something has to be done about Reckoning. Forest didn't understand it so he didn't play it. Add that to the fact that it is occasionally too powerful, but usually just mediocre. It just has to be changed. Broader changes: Flight Cards, everyone who hasn't played in a bit forgets them. I think they need more than their own icon, I think they need text boxes. In fact, I think they could actually become Manuevers themselves. Session 6 Players: Mona, myself Overview: Extremely helpful for her to play the game, came up with a bunch of ideas for the art. Feedback: Hands - need to stress importance of drawing new hand immediately, before even resolving the last card you played. Flight Cards - should have text boxes. this would facilitate goose's idea of having the option of using them to subtract from distance flown. Session 5 Players: Goose, Alec, myself Overview: Nice long game, like 11/2 - 2 hours. Very competitive, balance holding up well. Feedback: Wander Cure - make more clear when it kicks in. Maneuvers - make clear that use as a # or as a maneuverer, but never both. Flight cards - suggestion: option to be used to subtract from distance flown. Hermit - move to any un-occupied dot, remove outside circle. simplifies card, had been forgetting the outside circle thing anyway. Timing - Gotta go with first card down happens first, and pull cards back into hand if not first. last in first out is just way to complicated, where the rules for this need to be short and sweet. Illusion - make it one of last 3 cards to avoid discarding order conflicts. Life - suggestion: 1 life card face down, 10 life points on top. makes it more fair if you draw a bad hand. also, ties up less cards as life cards. not sure about this though, since way i'm doing it now works, and that might be too much life, since i'd like to make the game shorter if possible. in beta 2.1 playtesting i'll have to experiment with life as is now, life like suggestion, and maybe even just one life cards, make the duels shorter. Fonts - keep font size constant, size that Dive is, and have text area flex. Tarot Names - ditch them. Convention - Bring game board as a poster (2 81/2 by 11 inch poster board taped together) to sell ($1.50) or give to play testers. Also, I've been thinking I could start selling them online, that way start doing interstate commerce and could file my Trademark. Session 4 Players: Erin Snyder, myself Overview: He catches on quickly, likes the new flow of the game (since removal of most of dice), and finds the powerful cards exciting. Feedback: Reckoning - get rid of the no spellcasting, it's powerful enough as is. watch out for confusion with Justice (1/2 value of two cards). Inferno - ditch "at any time." rules determine timing, this sounds like it is over-ruling, meaning that you can attack someone twice from one dot. Pact - work on the wording (which i have). Session 3 Players: Deet, myself Overview: A bit about Deet; she counts cards, cheats, and is a poor sport whether she wins or looses. Not that I consider any of these bad traits in a playtester (seriously). We push the rules hard. I try to create conflicts and arguments and give the rules a run for their money. Feedback: Timing is of course an issue. But the game is much enjoyed for the shear conflict and novelty (Deet is a traditional board and game player) Session 2 Players: 2 strategy gamers, 2 system admins / card game players, 2 non-gamers Overview: Everyone was a good 30 years older than my estimate of my target audience. Where they are looking for intellectual stimulation, my game is a light-hearted competition. Also, 6 is way too many people, especially to learn on. It's just too long between turns for each person. Feedback: Card Drawing - strategy gamers didn't like the way the cards flow, not enough strategy. Player/Dragon Association - need to visually associate players and their dragons, probably through peices / life stone color. Session 1 Players: Forest (13), Noah (10), Cybil, Isaac, myself. Overview: Noah and Forest are my target audience, and they love the game. Forest would draw his hands one at a time and marvel at the power of each card. We had this great 4 player game, Noah was the only one not there, where we passed Justice around the table, and everyone knew who had it, so nobody would attack them. Except once I attacked Forest, he thought I'd play something small, thinking I'd get hit with Justice, so he defended with a low card, but I had anticipated this and recklessly played a high card. Feedback: Forest - when can I buy a copy? |
