Game Chef 2011 Review: The Temptress
The Temptress
Paul Lyons
Temptress is a game of a dangerous courtship on a remote island. Five suitors seek their perfect match among a sorceress and her three daughters, but they much correctly guess which is their perfect match and which is the sorceress. If they fail, they are trapped on the island with the sorceress, FOREVER! Cool.
The theme of the game is strong throughout the rules, although in my inexpert opinion*, it seemed more like a magical Jane Austin story than Shakespeare. The ingredients (Exile, Daughter, and... Forsworn, I think?) were all concentrated in the situation/setting elements rather than the mechanics.
I love game mechanics, and the combined dice, card and chip system here is both interesting and compelling. In fact, I was thinking of potential re-skins for the rules before I'd even discovered how the game was “won”. That's a big plus in my book.
At some points the rules were a little unclear, but in most cases I was able to work out the intent with a bit of flicking back and forth through the text. For example, I thought the card maths was off until I realised that the face cards (rather than the non-face cards) were the face-down piles. I have included some other questions about the rules at the end.
My first major criticism with the game as it stands is that for what is essentially a competitive game between five players with a neutral moderator, I was struck by the degree of explicit GM fiat in the text. For example, the GM is to award rapport chips for “interesting” failure, control awards for good roleplaying [“to any player who contributes well to the mood, makes compelling character-relevant choices, and pushes the group’s experience to greater heights”], and select which woman is the perfect match for each suitor (especially problematic as any suitor whose match is the Temptress herself has a much harder victory condition!).
This leads into my second concern, namely that the game seems to involve a daunting degree of GM prep. Because the suitors have to base their guesses as to their perfect match and the identity of the sorceress on the narrator's clues, the narrator must balance a fine line between obfuscation and revelation. Fair warning is given at the start of the text that this is the case, and perhaps narrators more familiar with this style of game would have less difficulty, but I think additional play aids would be necessary before I would be comfortable running this.
That said, the setting and the rules are both compelling. I think my first criticism could be easily solved by simply removing those elements of GM fiat. If the chip economy is sound (which playtesting will show), the GM shouldn't need to tinker with it in play. The problem of matching the suitors to the women is more difficult, but it, along with the degree of GM prep required, could be mitigated by the generous inclusion of oracle-style charts of sample daughter and suitor personality traits, new events for subsequent rounds, etc. I'm interested to playtest this game myself for two reasons: first, because I really like the look of the mechanics in theory and want to see how they work in practice, and second, because I'm particularly interested to see how long it takes to play!
* (DISCLAIMER: I know little about Shakespearean comedy or about Jane Austin!)
Other Rules Clarifications:
Paul Lyons
Temptress is a game of a dangerous courtship on a remote island. Five suitors seek their perfect match among a sorceress and her three daughters, but they much correctly guess which is their perfect match and which is the sorceress. If they fail, they are trapped on the island with the sorceress, FOREVER! Cool.
The theme of the game is strong throughout the rules, although in my inexpert opinion*, it seemed more like a magical Jane Austin story than Shakespeare. The ingredients (Exile, Daughter, and... Forsworn, I think?) were all concentrated in the situation/setting elements rather than the mechanics.
I love game mechanics, and the combined dice, card and chip system here is both interesting and compelling. In fact, I was thinking of potential re-skins for the rules before I'd even discovered how the game was “won”. That's a big plus in my book.
At some points the rules were a little unclear, but in most cases I was able to work out the intent with a bit of flicking back and forth through the text. For example, I thought the card maths was off until I realised that the face cards (rather than the non-face cards) were the face-down piles. I have included some other questions about the rules at the end.
My first major criticism with the game as it stands is that for what is essentially a competitive game between five players with a neutral moderator, I was struck by the degree of explicit GM fiat in the text. For example, the GM is to award rapport chips for “interesting” failure, control awards for good roleplaying [“to any player who contributes well to the mood, makes compelling character-relevant choices, and pushes the group’s experience to greater heights”], and select which woman is the perfect match for each suitor (especially problematic as any suitor whose match is the Temptress herself has a much harder victory condition!).
This leads into my second concern, namely that the game seems to involve a daunting degree of GM prep. Because the suitors have to base their guesses as to their perfect match and the identity of the sorceress on the narrator's clues, the narrator must balance a fine line between obfuscation and revelation. Fair warning is given at the start of the text that this is the case, and perhaps narrators more familiar with this style of game would have less difficulty, but I think additional play aids would be necessary before I would be comfortable running this.
That said, the setting and the rules are both compelling. I think my first criticism could be easily solved by simply removing those elements of GM fiat. If the chip economy is sound (which playtesting will show), the GM shouldn't need to tinker with it in play. The problem of matching the suitors to the women is more difficult, but it, along with the degree of GM prep required, could be mitigated by the generous inclusion of oracle-style charts of sample daughter and suitor personality traits, new events for subsequent rounds, etc. I'm interested to playtest this game myself for two reasons: first, because I really like the look of the mechanics in theory and want to see how they work in practice, and second, because I'm particularly interested to see how long it takes to play!
* (DISCLAIMER: I know little about Shakespearean comedy or about Jane Austin!)
Other Rules Clarifications:
- Are the cards which are made face up by Faux Pas chips chosen by the player or are they random?
- In an arguments between suitors, does each side has their own stakes?
- What is a “'pour on' expenditure of Rapport”
- Do daughter cards go into your hand and thence into the discard pile when drawn?