Big in Italy
Well, not big exactly, but played in Italy. The first playtest of my (award winning?!?) Game Chef game House of Masks has happened. And it was on a different continent altogether. In Italy specifically.
Anyone who reads Italian or wishes to trudge through Babelfish generated Itanglish can read the promo page here. And it is scheduled to be played again, at some sort of gaming convention.
The playtest report came back pretty positive, too. Which is good, as I had a slight dread the entire game would be entirely unfeasible in play. Reportedly, they had some trouble getting the hang of the conflict rules. But most players had only read an Italian translation of the Overview section, and my Italian contact thinks it might work better if they actually read the entire Conflict section, or at least some examples. This matches the sense that I got during our abortive playtest attempt (and when writing the game, too).
The Aspect pairings seemed to each work differently, but each generated entertaining play in their own way. One group worked together well, and switched In and Out for tactical advantage. One group swapped In and Out when it was most entertaining to do so, but didn't work together to achieve their goals. The last pair never quite trusted each other, and sometimes worked together and sometimes tried hard to prevent switching. This pleases me, as that sounds to be in the spread of relationships I hoped the pairing would generate.
If I were better at organizing people, we could have played at least once by now. Of course, that having a child born in there threw our schedules into whack for a little bit
Anyone who reads Italian or wishes to trudge through Babelfish generated Itanglish can read the promo page here. And it is scheduled to be played again, at some sort of gaming convention.
The playtest report came back pretty positive, too. Which is good, as I had a slight dread the entire game would be entirely unfeasible in play. Reportedly, they had some trouble getting the hang of the conflict rules. But most players had only read an Italian translation of the Overview section, and my Italian contact thinks it might work better if they actually read the entire Conflict section, or at least some examples. This matches the sense that I got during our abortive playtest attempt (and when writing the game, too).
The Aspect pairings seemed to each work differently, but each generated entertaining play in their own way. One group worked together well, and switched In and Out for tactical advantage. One group swapped In and Out when it was most entertaining to do so, but didn't work together to achieve their goals. The last pair never quite trusted each other, and sometimes worked together and sometimes tried hard to prevent switching. This pleases me, as that sounds to be in the spread of relationships I hoped the pairing would generate.
If I were better at organizing people, we could have played at least once by now. Of course, that having a child born in there threw our schedules into whack for a little bit