Game a co-worker made, and thoughts thereon
So, several of my coworkers are also gaming geeks of various persuasions.
One of them recently made a new game, Political Agenda. We played over lunch; this is an overview / thoughts raised from playtesting.
The setup is that each player has a board with 8 categories on it, rated from +10 to -10. There's an additional board, similiarly marked, for the state of the nation. The player's boards show their voting records, while the state of the nation shows the results of passed bills.
Each player also has 3 randomly selected categories, which compose their Agenda. At the end of the game, you get points for fulfilling your Agenda (that is, if the nation shows higher than 0 in your Agenda). You get 5 points for your primary Agenda, 3 points for your Secondary, and 2 points for your (hidden) tertiary Agenda.
Going in a round, each player rolls 3 dice. 1 to 3 are positives, while 4 to 6 are equal to negative 1 to 3 (IE 4 = -1, 5 = -2, 6 = -3). They then draw the top three cards, marked with the categories (these same cards are used for determing your Agenda at the start of the game; forgot to mention that), and align them with the dice however they want. The players then go in a circle and vote for or against the bill. A simple majority of votes carries.
Voting for a bill applies it's positives and negatives to your record; voting against it applies the reverse of the positives and negatives. If and only if the bill passes, it applies it's positives and negatives to the state of the nation.
After each full round of play (each player has proposed a bill), there's an election- but the mechanic of which is in heavy flux. As tested, it was you rise up a level (which comes with more 'votes' for getting bills passed) if you're voting record is positive on both the lowest rated issue for the state of the nation and a randomly drawn category.
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Thoughts: There was a lot of random in the game, without a great lot of meaningful choices. The only decisions the players get are arranging the categories they draw for the bills they propose, and wither to vote for or against a bill. There was no resource management, nor any ability to meaningfully predict what would happen in the very near future.
There was no direct competition between the players- everyone wanted things to go up (albiet different thigns), which lead to an inflation problem in the nation as nothing got worse to counterbalance the bills that passed, and on player's voting records, as they could casually vote for/against solid bills and solidly negative bills.
Also, there were solidly negative bills. These were boring; there was no reason to support them. It actually hurt you to do so- if they passed, they lowered the nation's categories, and your own- making you more likely to lose elections.
Thoughts for the future:
* Resource management, in the form of money, seems like an obvious thing to tackle. Not certain how it enters and leaves the system yet, though.
* Reducing or eliminating the randomness from the upcoming bills would be a Good Thing. Thoughts here are along the lines of a hand of agendas the player can choose from and draw back to (probally between 5 and 8 cards would be enough); having an 'upcoming issues' docket of revealed Agendas that were used to form bills, like an open and public hand, or even eliminating the random entirely- bills are always selected from any of the eight Agendas.
* Getting rid of the +/- dichotomy in favor of a Far Left - Far Right dichotomy. Players, when they select their Agendas, would set them on the left or right side of their record to show where they stand on the issue. (This also opens up the possibility of a player 'flip flopping', switching an agenda from one side to the other at some cost)
* Better define the end condition. We basically played for an hourish over lunch.
* Make it easier to win elections at first and harder as you rise higher and easier to lose elections at higher levels and hard on the way down. As was, one guy happened to win two elections because the Agenda that was the lowest in the country stopped coming up.
* Simultaneous votes. The round robin voting made me sad. Although a way to 'cheat' and wait to see what everyone else does would be welcome.
Still. The kernal of an interesting idea is definitely present.
One of them recently made a new game, Political Agenda. We played over lunch; this is an overview / thoughts raised from playtesting.
The setup is that each player has a board with 8 categories on it, rated from +10 to -10. There's an additional board, similiarly marked, for the state of the nation. The player's boards show their voting records, while the state of the nation shows the results of passed bills.
Each player also has 3 randomly selected categories, which compose their Agenda. At the end of the game, you get points for fulfilling your Agenda (that is, if the nation shows higher than 0 in your Agenda). You get 5 points for your primary Agenda, 3 points for your Secondary, and 2 points for your (hidden) tertiary Agenda.
Going in a round, each player rolls 3 dice. 1 to 3 are positives, while 4 to 6 are equal to negative 1 to 3 (IE 4 = -1, 5 = -2, 6 = -3). They then draw the top three cards, marked with the categories (these same cards are used for determing your Agenda at the start of the game; forgot to mention that), and align them with the dice however they want. The players then go in a circle and vote for or against the bill. A simple majority of votes carries.
Voting for a bill applies it's positives and negatives to your record; voting against it applies the reverse of the positives and negatives. If and only if the bill passes, it applies it's positives and negatives to the state of the nation.
After each full round of play (each player has proposed a bill), there's an election- but the mechanic of which is in heavy flux. As tested, it was you rise up a level (which comes with more 'votes' for getting bills passed) if you're voting record is positive on both the lowest rated issue for the state of the nation and a randomly drawn category.
---
Thoughts: There was a lot of random in the game, without a great lot of meaningful choices. The only decisions the players get are arranging the categories they draw for the bills they propose, and wither to vote for or against a bill. There was no resource management, nor any ability to meaningfully predict what would happen in the very near future.
There was no direct competition between the players- everyone wanted things to go up (albiet different thigns), which lead to an inflation problem in the nation as nothing got worse to counterbalance the bills that passed, and on player's voting records, as they could casually vote for/against solid bills and solidly negative bills.
Also, there were solidly negative bills. These were boring; there was no reason to support them. It actually hurt you to do so- if they passed, they lowered the nation's categories, and your own- making you more likely to lose elections.
Thoughts for the future:
* Resource management, in the form of money, seems like an obvious thing to tackle. Not certain how it enters and leaves the system yet, though.
* Reducing or eliminating the randomness from the upcoming bills would be a Good Thing. Thoughts here are along the lines of a hand of agendas the player can choose from and draw back to (probally between 5 and 8 cards would be enough); having an 'upcoming issues' docket of revealed Agendas that were used to form bills, like an open and public hand, or even eliminating the random entirely- bills are always selected from any of the eight Agendas.
* Getting rid of the +/- dichotomy in favor of a Far Left - Far Right dichotomy. Players, when they select their Agendas, would set them on the left or right side of their record to show where they stand on the issue. (This also opens up the possibility of a player 'flip flopping', switching an agenda from one side to the other at some cost)
* Better define the end condition. We basically played for an hourish over lunch.
* Make it easier to win elections at first and harder as you rise higher and easier to lose elections at higher levels and hard on the way down. As was, one guy happened to win two elections because the Agenda that was the lowest in the country stopped coming up.
* Simultaneous votes. The round robin voting made me sad. Although a way to 'cheat' and wait to see what everyone else does would be welcome.
Still. The kernal of an interesting idea is definitely present.