Keeping up with Keeping Up With The Joneses

I've played a few more solo games of Keeping Up now, including a 3-player solo test to see how that would go. It went fine, but had the same issue I've been seeing in the 2p games: It went too long! This post might get a little bit into the weeds, but to be honest, I'm writing it for my benefit more than for yours, so here we go...

Every playtest so far has taken longer than I would like on the clock, and I'll get back to that in a minute. But the game has also consistently taken more turns than I expected -- math has been failing me! The game timer is the Jones track. After each player turn, a Jones marker advances 1-3 spaces on the Jones track, depending on the number showing on the back of the top card of the deck. I figured I could control the average amount that the Joneses (TJ) move by manipulating the distribution of numbers on the backs of the cards. For example, if all the cards had a "2" on the back, then the average TJ move would be 2 (in fact, they'd move exactly 2 spaces each time), and the game would last [track length]/2 turns per lap, and currently there are 4 laps in the game. For a 2 player game, I'm using an 18 step TJ track (3 steps per rondel space). In this way, the Jones marker on each track will advance 1, 2, or 3 times each lap.

At an average TJ move of 2, one lap on an 18 step track would take 9 turns, so that's 4 or 5 turns per player. Obviously putting a "2" on every card would not be ideal, because I want the Joneses to move 1 and 3 sometimes also... so my first attempt had an even distribution of 1's, 2's, and 3's. This worked OK, but in my first playtest or two I felt like we weren't getting enough turns to make good progress. I started thinking a slower speed would be better, so I messed around with the distribution and played a few more games. My last few tests have used an average TJ value of 1.7 on the cards, but laps kept dragging out, and getting a bunch of 1s in a row felt off. Players were consistently getting 6 or 7 turns per lap, and while the card distribution had an average TJ value of 1.7, the actual average TJ move was only 1.4 or 1.5 steps per turn!   

From my experience so far, I think 5 turns per lap feels pretty good, and 4 might be OK on the low end. 3 would probably be too few. 6 would be OK, but consistently getting 6-7 turns each lap feels like too much. Overall, I've been aiming for a 20 turn/player game, plus or minus a couple. But for some reason, my card distribution is not providing that as the math would suggest.

That brings me back to the game duration on the clock. I had been aiming for a 20 turn/player game, and assuming turns would take less than a minute apiece most of the time (sometimes it's super quick, other times you have to think a bit, but I still wasn't expecting many turns to be even a full minute long). For 2 players, that's 40 turns at 1 minute or less each, the game shouldn't take more than about 40 minutes, right? Well, so far it's taken twice that long, just about every time! It's possible that I'm underestimating the amount of time a turn takes - maybe it really does take a minute or more to grok and evaluate the three options (occasionally more if you have a Minivan), make your decision, then physically resolve it by moving a card, a rondel piece, possibly some money tokens, a track marker, another card, the Jones track mover, and then the Jones' marker on a track. Geez, when you put it like that, it sounds like a lot!

So right off the bat, perhaps I need to adjust my expectations. I had expected the game to be about 15-20 minutes per player, and therefore range from 30-40 minutes for 2 players up to 60-80 minutes for 4 players. Maybe this simply isn't a "one hour wonder," but rather a 60-120 minute game to begin with. Is that acceptable for the weight of the game? Maybe, I'll have to consider that some more.

One thing I could do to decrease the duration is to lop off a lap. Instead of playing through 4 TJ laps, scoring 2 areas each time (and all of them at the end), I could make it 3 laps, scoring 3 areas each time (again, all of them at the end). This would not change the number of times any area scores in the game, just the timing on some of them, and it would reduce the total number of turns in the game to 3*18/[TJ avg move] for 2 players. So at my current theoretical TJ avg move of 1.7 steps/turn, that would be a 32 turn game, or 16 turns per player (5 or 6 per lap). And at the observed TJ avg move of 1.4-1.5 steps/turn, that would be a 36-38 turn game, 18-19 per player (on par with my initial target)!

So this sounds like an attractive move. In addition, after the first playtest, my wife suggested that scoring only 2 areas at a time seemed lame to her, so scoring 3 at a time could address that comment as well. However, it does present one challenge, but it's one that should be easy enough to overcome... One thing I liked about scoring 2 areas at a time is that each player (up to 4 players) could start at a different rondel space, give them a track bump in that space, and none of those spaces would score at the end of the first lap. This feels to me like a nice setup, differentiating players from the outset, and keeping anyone from getting a potentially unfair advantage from starting at a space that will be scoring in short order. Scoring 3 spaces at a time, that scheme still works for 2 and 3 players, but not for 4 players. What to do about 4p setup?

1. I could let someone have that advantage... I could try and figure out whether early or late turn order is "better," and compensate with that small advantage, but even if that were properly balanced, it's the kind of thing players would scoff at as obviously unfair.
2. I could stop giving players a free bump in their starting space, so it wouldn't really matter if you start in a space that will score first or not. This would simultaneously address the lingering question of which track to bump when starting at KIDS or HOME, since those spaces have multiple tracks. This might be the way to go.
3. I could modify setup for 4 player games such that only 2 spaces score the first lap, and the other 4 score the 2nd lap (and of course, all 6 score at game end). 

As I type out those options, I am leaning toward number 3, even though it involves a setup exception for player count, which is lame. In the end, number 2 (don't give players free bumps) might be the simplest solution, and I should probably just go with that one.

In any case, if I can cut out 25% of the turns, then it stands to reason that the duration should come down by about 25% as well, so those 80 minute 2-player games should come down to about an hour, which is better, if a little long.

Jumping back to my thoughts on the distribution of TJ movement numbers, there is one other issue that concerns me: In order to get the average move down below 2, I need to have a higher concentration of 1's in the deck. And by definition, there are fewer 2's, and there aren't very many 3's at all. I suppose that means if any 3's are on the first 4 cards of the deck (which aren't used for TJ movement), or the last few cards (that won't ever come up), then that could account for a much lower actual TJ average move than my calculated one. One thing I've noticed about that is that there are times in the game where a bunch of 1's come up in a row. Not only does that slow the game down a lot, but it also means the TJ markers on those tracks shoot up very quickly. Now, I'm not sure that's a problem really, but it feels a little weird to hit so many 1's in a row. I'm not sure if there's really anything I can do about that though if I want to maintain this elegant TJ move mechanism of just referencing the top of the deck.

That said, I did have an alternate thought about that. What if the TJ track didn't move a random amount, but rather the same amount that the player did. In other words, if I choose the card in slot 3, then I move 3 spaces, and the TJ marker moves 3 steps. That would add a 3rd consideration to your choice each turn: Which card do I want? Which space do I want to land on? Which space do I want the Joneses to advance on (and maybe also do I want to slow the game down, or speed it up?) In a way, that sounds interesting, however I'm skeptical of it for a couple of reasons. I think it would overwhelm the main decision point with too much information, inviting AP (and therefore slowing the game down even further), and it would have an unpredictable effect on game length - if players frequently move 3 spaces, the game will be very short, and if they often move just 1 space, the game could drag on too long. But it's an idea, and is probably worth trying at least once.

Side note for anyone following along with the math, especially if you want to tell me where I've steered myself wrong, here's the rest of the data needed:

• For 2p I'm using an 18 step track (3 steps per rondel space)
• For 3p I'm using a 24 step track (4 steps per rondel space, one of which is marked "no bump" to help avoid the Joneses getting too out of control - though maybe that's not necessary)
• For 4p I haven't tried it yet, I was going to use the same track as for 3p, but the math suggests that won't be long enough, so I'm considering making a 30 step track (5 steps per rondel space, 2 of which marked "no bump)

Unrelated to movement, the point of the Jones marker on each track is to disqualify players from scoring if they are too far behind it, and I'm considering defining "too far" as "more than N spaces behind, where N is the number of players." So in a 4 player game, you'd only have to be within 4 of the Joneses to score. Hmm... typing that I'm wondering if those "no bump" spaces are even necessary. Maybe I WANT the Joneses to advance a lot on the tracks, especially if they're only making 3 laps! I should probably get rid of that for my next test and see if I miss it!