Fable Rules- Post 2
We play-tested the first prototype thrice and iterated over some rules here and there. Like we worked on a few rules concerning the betting system. But we tried to keep the basic system somewhat similar throughout the first prototype. We wanted to keep the freedom of creating story as much as we could. So we went forward in our testing with the following questions in mind-
Did the players have a hard time coming up with characters and stories?
Did the players get confused between stories and rules?
Were the players able to form cohesive interconnected stories between themselves?
How did the inclusion of power cards affect their play? Did they want more cards like them?
Was it fun coming with stories?
Our main aesthetic that we are aiming for is narrative, so we were very focused on the joy of storytelling and the freedom in doing so. Even though we wanted this fundamental to be something that was prevalent in our game, we soon came to the realization that this might not be the case. People are not generally inclined towards creating stories on the go. In our prototype play-tests with other people we came to the following observations-
We observed that people were getting confused with the point system.
Even Though people enjoyed making stories, they had some hard times with building their own characters.
Some participants forgot what rules they had created before and had a hard time merging them up with present rules.
People were not able to follow the story line of the game that everyone was coming up with.
They did not have much of an idea as to what rules they had to come up with.
They had really good times making up their own story.
Power cards we created to make them help for creating story were less.
We also observed that while playing games if there were less people they would have enjoyed more than in a group with more people.
People really had good time while making alliance and even enjoyed breaking each other’s alliances.
Even though our observations were within the realm of our expectations, it did help to reinforce or doubts and pushed to work on mechanics that will be more helpful to the players in creating their stories and creating fun situations. The players that we used for our first play-test were sadly distracted, the game itself wasn’t capturing their attention. They kept forgetting stuff and wanted to get the game over soon. It was late so that might have been a reason, but it can’t be rejected that the game itself wasn’t able to incite interest in them. However this play-test did still spark fun and excitement in the players about their characters and their stories from time to time. Our 2nd play-test grouped shared somewhat similar experiences, they had to leave early and tried to finish off the game as quickly as they could. In our 3rd play-test group we found an interesting shift, the players were invested into their characters and their stories from the start till the finish. They wanted to get things done their way, so they did whatever to get their way. They formed alliances, betrayed and just full on turned to the dark-side even though their character started off as a hero.
So based on these observations we came up with a bunch of new things, and scrapped a lot of our previous mechanics in our quest to balance the game and make it more accessible to a wider audience. We also came up with a new board that goes more with our narrative aesthetic. “The story unravels” as the game progresses. One of the things that we are getting rid of is the points system. In effect our betting mechanic will also be removed. Also we have to replace the power cards system with a different set of card-decks.
The card decks that we came up with-
Character cards- This deck will be drawn from at the very beginning of the game to decide on the characters of the player. Explanation- To help the players come up with characters. They pick up one card from the deck during the first arc’s beginning.
Story cards- These cards will direct the player's story and will be following the customary 3 act story structure. Explanation- The board will be divided into a 3 act structure, entering the 1st act player picks up 1 story card. Entering the 2nd act they pick up 2 cards (which they use on 2 different turns in the same act). Entering the last act on the board they pick up one card.
Animate cards- The players are no longer capable of making their own rules. Instead they will have to pick from this deck, which will define the rule that is played onto the game. The rule can be anything and it is employed only once. But before picking a card they have to decide on whom to apply this rule (themselves, some other player, or everyone). This will give a little chaotic randomness as to what happens, since this rule might be beneficial or not on the player drawing them. Now the fun part of this card is that they have to actually do the thing that is written on the card in real life. They have to “animate” it. For example- The rule says to move 2 steps forward, so the card will say that the player who drew the card has to run 2 laps of the room they are playing the game in.
More on the Board- The Board is designed in a spiral structure and is colored in 3 different colors to mark the 3 acts of their story. The inciting incident (1st act), the character arc (2nd act) and finally the climax (3rd act). The players will start off from the middle of the spiral and have to make it out through its end on the outside.
On the matter of Disputes in the story- The players initially start off by only telling their own character’s tale, they are not allowed to include other player’s characters into their tale until they get an animate card that gives them the permission to do so. Once this phase starts the players are allowed to discuss the stories they are telling on each others turn and come up with the tale for both their characters together. If a dispute occurs and they are unable to come to a resolution. The player will have to roll a die at the same time and the one who has the bigger number wins this dispute. But this die roll has to emulate as to what is happening in the story. For example- If the players are in an actual battle they have emulate a battle and throw the dice at each other. Or maybe if it’s a dramatic scene where one character is trying to convince another to do something they have to play out that scene in real life and then throw the dice to see if they managed to convince the other player or not.
Over the Goal of the game- The goal of the game is still the same as before, the person who gets to the end first gets to tell the resolution of the communal tale. However, in this iteration the game just ends and the winner doesn’t have keep to telling the story and doesn’t have to wait for the other players to reach the end. The game is over once we have a winner. They tell the ending and that is it.
About the number of players- we have decided on keeping the number players 2-4 only. From our previous play tests we came to the conclusion that we more the number of the players harder the story is to follow. So we are trying to keep this under controlling by limiting the number of players.
These about cover the new inclusions to our game, these new mechanics still have the heart of our aesthetics, they complement the narrative aesthetic by actually giving something to the players to build. They hint on what is to be done and leave it to the player as to where they want to take the story. Hopefully with all this players have a better sense of what stories to tell. Also we hope that the Animate cards help to brings more chaos by introducing randomness, the same goes with the Dice-dispute System. All the other aesthetics still are prevalent. The players are still competitive and cooperative from time to time. The fantasy aspect still remains and the submission aesthetic is even more concrete now by removing the challenge factor from how the other players ended the game against the winner.
The only lagging mechanic that seems to come to mind right now is the merging of the stories. If we are to use the animate cards to allow players to merge stories, we have to make sure that players get to combine stories and are not left out. After all telling stories together is the actually fun part. What we have been thinking, is maybe making the deck in such a way so that the players always draw a story merge card at some point or another in the game. Or maybe we could decide on which character gets to meet which characters at what time in the game. We could do this by marking the character cards that players pick in the beginning with this kind of information.
Our brainstorming session proved to be very helpful, very more so than our previous session during the last prototype since this time around we actually knew what we had focus on. Hopefully we can continue on this improvement to deliver an excellent experience for the players who play our game.
