Sails & Sorcery progress

I have been continuing to develop Sails & Sorcery, Micheal's "Victorian era organized crime" themed game. After a disappointing few tests with the TMG guys at Origins and GenCon, and several attempts to balance the Plunder role, I have come to the conclusion that the way the role works is too problematic -- it cannot be fixed just by tweaking the costs and rewards.

The Plunder Role

The Plunder role allows you to remove opposing pirates from the board. You get some points for this, but the captured pirates go back to their owner's ship to be re-deployed. Deploying pirates to the board helps you win majority in an area, and then they stay in play for later, while Plundering an area helps you win majority in that area for the round, but nothing more. This sounded like a decent trade-off to me, but in practice it always seemed to be problematic. Part of the problem is the ability for a player to wipe another player out of an area entirely, reversing their progress, or cutting them out of scoring. Some of this might be groupthink, but it tends to scare players away from recruiting and deploying pirates (in an area control game about putting pirates on the board and moving them around).

We tried several versions of Plunder costs (capture 1 pirate per icon, pay N icons, capture N-1 pirates, Capture 1 pirate per *2* icons...), and considered several versions of rewards as well (you can capture ships and they're worth points, you can capture ships and they're NOT worth points, you can't capture ships, you get 1 point per pirate captured, you get 1 point per COLOR of pirate captured, you don't get points at all...). Over the different iterations of the game we even tried giving captured pirates back right away, vs the next round, and we experimented with those pirates going back to the player vs back to the general supply. The point is, we tried a lot of variations, and while each idea had its merits, none of them combined to make the role work correctly!

Re-imagining Plunder

A few times it crossed my mind that perhaps Plunder should do something else entirely, but I hesitated to change the effect because I liked the idea of having a way to remove pirates from areas. After all, El Grande (one of the main sources of inspiration for this game) has effects that add and remove pieces from the areas, as well as move them around. After a recent playtest, the idea of changing the nature of Plunder altogether came p again. One player suggested that perhaps there could be some kind of set collection associated with the role. Another something to the effect of digging up buried treasure. The epiphany I had that got me interested in it this time (when I was hesitant before) was this: perhaps there could be a set of "treasure" tiles, which you "buy" with Plunder. Each one could either give you an effect similar to Davy Jones (add one of your pirates to an area and capture 1 pirate from each opponent there), or some set collection scoring icon (like a gem of a certain type).

This way, a player could "Plunder for control" by going for the tiles with effects, or "Plunder for points" by going for the set collection stuff. My first attempt at this format was to make a bunch of tokens like that, put 4 of them on each area during setup, and make the cost of plundering an area go up each time one of them is taken. I figured that matched the Summon and Build cost structure, so it made some sense. I wasn't sure whether to go with the more strategic option (placing the tiles face up), or the more thematic option (face down), so I sort of compromised -- the tiles were face down, and when you plundered an area, you got to look at all the remaining tiles there and choose one. I tried that version last week, and it had some good points and some bad. Nobody missed the thought of having all of their pirates wiped off the board! However, it was weird that the choice went down as the cost went up (assuming the best tiles get taken first), and I would have preferred less setup anyway.

Thinking about it some more, I decided that this new format is similar to the old one, but limited in how many pirates you can capture, so maybe better than effect or points, it should be effect and points. So for the next playtest, I will try a tweak: I'll put 2 tiles on each area, each with a random plunder cost (between 2 and 6). Then I'll have a deck of treasure cards to the side of the board, with 4 of them face up. Each card will have both an immediate effect, and a gem for set collection scoring. This way, the plunder cost doesn't escalate like it does for building or summoning, but it'll still matter where you are when you Plunder, and it'll still be worth having plunder in your deck to afford the higher cost opportunities. And you'll get to capture or add pirates according to one of the available cards, plus you'll score a few points. We'll see if this version feels better.

If that doesn't feel right, another idea is to make the cost "2 + 1/player with presence in the area" -- which would scale in a potentially interesting way, but might not scale well with player count. But it would save the plunder cost tiles, and a little setup hassle.

A word on theme

At the top of this post I mentioned the theme was supposed to be Victorian era organized crime. Michael did mention that when he dropped off the game, but as far as I could tell, the game was a generic pirate game with monsters you can summon. If he hadn't told me he intended the players to be pirate captains backed by countries, doing espionage and etc, then I would never have guessed it. When I told him about this "buried treasure" version of plunder, he suggested we do something more in line with the Victorian era organized crime theme... which made me consider theme in general...

I think it's good to have a specific or interesting theme to a game. The less generic, the better. However, if the interesting, unusual theme looks the same as a more common, generic theme, then Occam's Razor would suggest that people won't even see the interesting theme.

So it's not a surprise to me that a player actually suggested a buried treasure sort of mechanism in this game, which is not intended to be a "pirate" themed game, but which clearly looks and feels like one.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and plays like a duck...

Recent playtesting: Apotheosis (FKA Worker Learning)

Apotheosis

Since I last posted about it, I've had the opportunity to play Apotheosis (the current title for my Worker Learning game) about a dozen times. We've quickly iterated on a couple of different aspects, going from 8 starting workers (one level 1 and one level 2 of each type) to 4 (one of each type, some level 1, some level 2, depending on turn order), adding a space to recruit more workers (I'm torn on this), adding a space to pay a chunk of resources for steps on the victory tracks, and tweaking the resolution of the Recall turns and the requirements and rewards for adventures.

The current version looks something like this:

You start with a Fighter, a Cleric, a Mage, and a Thief, 0/1/2/2 of them are level 2 at the beginning if you are player 1/2/3/4 (the ones that start leveled up are dealt to you randomly, and no two players will have the same combination of upgraded starting workers).

You take turns either placing a worker and gaining the benefit of that space (your worker must be at least tied for the highest level in that area), or recalling your workers and sending them on an adventure. Most spaces are better if you are higher level, or the right class. You can gain resources, train (level up), claim adventures (so nobody can do them out from under you), buy progress on the victory tracks, turn resources into blessings, which are like wild resources, visit the Throne Room to earn royal favors, or visit the tavern to recruit more workers.

When you place a worker, you have the opportunity to play a Side Quest card for either of 2 effects (one cares about what type of worker you are placing that turn, the other doesn't). When you recall workers, you earn steps on the three victory tracks, and if you qualify, you may do an adventure to earn more steps. The adventures have 3 tiers, and the higher the tier you do, the better the rewards. After returning from an adventure, your workers level up, becoming better at their jobs.

When you do certain Side Quests, or tier 3 adventures, you get a special resource called Spoils. You can visit the throne room to turn those Spoils into Royal Favors, which you can use at certain points on the victory tracks to take a "shortcut" as well as earn a Boon (reusable power card).

Design concerns

I'm noticing a real tightness in the design -- a difficulty creating adventures that are both doable by a player who has not recruited any new workers, but also doable by a player who has. The current level cap is 6, and so I wanted the adventures to require max 6 levels of any one class. If you hire a worker, then place it, and recall once, then you have 2 workers who's levels total 4 or 5 -- that's almost maxed out already! I am considering making the level cap 8 instead of 6, but d6s are easier to use in the prototype. Doing so would allow for more variety and more texture in the adventure requirements. It's also possible that not every adventure needs to be doable without recruiting another worker.

With just 4 types of worker, many of the tier 2 adventures require 3 of the 4 types. So you basically need to train up all of your workers if you wan to use them at all, there's not really such a things as choosing a class and neglecting it. I'm considering adding a 5th worker type to help with this -- it would allow the adventure requirements to be much more diverse.

Another thought is to add Split and/or Prestige classes:
Split classes would be like regular workers, that count as either one or the other of two types (like a Fighter/Thief would count as either a Fighter or a Thief.
Prestige classes would be like super workers that count as BOTH of two different types (Paladin = Fighter AND Cleric). For these you would probably have to discard your previous worker, therefore they BECOME a dual class worker.

Brainstorming possible solutions

Split/Prestige class workers would be pretty cool. but that sounds like expansion content to me. However adding a 5th (maybe even a 6th?) class to make the adventures more different from each other sounds reasonable. But that idea comes with its own challenges...

In the current game, each worker type is associated with 1 resource, and 3 of them are associated with one of the victory tracks. When you recall a fighter, you advance on the Crown Imperial track, and adventures that require fighters advance you further on that track. Thieves are associated with the Prince of Thieves track, and Mages are associated with the Mastermind track. Clerics are great supporting characters -- they aren't associated with any particular track, but instead give you Blessings, which are sort of like a wild resource that can be used in various different ways.

So if another worker type is added, do we need another resource? That might be a pain, but would be doable. Another victory track? I don't necessarily think that's a good idea (though I suppose it could work). What is another iconic adventurer class anyway?

One possibility is to make this 5th class a sort of Split/Prestige class like I mentioned above. Like a Paladin, which could act as either (or both) of a fighter or a cleric. But that would simply overload the fighter related stuff. So maybe better if whatever the new class is, it doesn't advance any of the tracks, but is otherwise "better" than a normal worker (counts as all types when placing?). Or perhaps it advances the track of your choice, and has some other drawback (doesn't count as any type when placing?).

As for the level caps, one way to fix that situation is to not use dice as workers (even though it's super convenient for prototypes). Instead, perhaps a mini or standee, with a base that has a little pointer, then a dial could be attached to the bottom such that the pointer points to the number on the tile corresponding to the current level. This is a user friendly way to not have to use dice, and therefore not be as limited in their value. The level cap could easily be 8, or even 9!

Another, different possible solution to the over-leveling issue is to limit the level-ups to only 1 per recall turn. This would slow things down considerably, and it would probably matter quite a bit which one you choose to gain levels and which ones you don't. It might also make a much bigger difference between playing 1-2 workers then recalling vs playing 3 or 4 before recalling. I'd be afraid this is TOO slow, but it ought to be easy enough to test. If it works, then that would make a level cap of 6 potentially viable after all.