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08 Ağustos 2023, 22:59
Chapter 2 ? Playtesting
* * * *
Part II of the Perfect Game
Wherein we give the game a second try.
* * * *
If you've read the first part of this story, you know how I went about inventing my "Perfect Party Game", and the initial overwhelming success we experienced with it.
Plans were going ahead to try it in a group of 7, instead of the original 5, and all the original participants were eager to see if we could corrupt two more friends.
We knew Frank and Delara casually. He was a bit older, in his mid 30's and she was foreign, though I'm not sure from where, maybe Greece or Turkey.
We had been seated next to them at a company function, and I was afraid the grey haired guy next to me was some corporate stick-in-the-mud, with a trophy wife. We were pleasantly surprised to find they were a fun, talkative, and irreverant couple and ended up having a really good time. Frank was charming and worldly, and his prematurely gray hair gave him a look of maturity far beyond his actual age. He flirted brazenly with both Cheryl and Denise, but never quite overstepped the boundaries of good taste. Delara was a quiet young mediterranean beauty, but friendly, and very touchy-feely, which I thought was a good thing, and Dave didn't disagree. She was a tiny brunette with long dark hair, which she wore down to great effect. A few weeks later they had invited us to an event at their home where once again we'd had a terrific time. The wine had flowed easily and the conversation was all over the place. We owed them a social invitation, and this seemed like as good a time as any.
* * * *
During it's first trial, the game play seemed to have been effective. More than I would have ever possibly dreamed. But I was confident it could be improved.
A brief recap of the game might be in order.
The object of the game (nominally) was to collect seven different colored Reward cards for successfully completing a variety of Challenges.
During play we used two decks of cards, one containing challenges, the other containing penalties/rewards. Each person would pre-select which type of Challenge they wished to perform, either knowledge based (trivia, word meanings, obscure questions), or activity based (charades, celebrity improv, pictionary).
After selecting the Challenge type, they pulled a Challenge card and performed the challenge. If they were successful, they received a Reward card which had a colored border, one of seven colors they were trying to collect. If they failed the challenge, there was a Penalty on the card that had to be peformed, then the card was discarded.
There were several supplemental rules, involving avoiding penalties, reassigning penalties, selecting partners for the activity challenges, and other small rules, but the basic game was pretty simple:
Pick the challenge type, draw a challenge card, perform the challenge. Succeed, get a color. Fail, perform a penalty. Collect 7 different colors and win.
The trick was that the questions and activities got tougher, and the penalties got more personal, intimate, and then downright naughty, as the game advanced.
The concerns I had from the first game were several.
1) I thought the game had taken too long. We didn't get into the action until almost 3 hours into the game.
2) The specials were not used at all in the beginning, and were used a lot at the end where it seemed like people had either forgotten about them or were hordeing them.
3) I still wondered what would have happened if Denise had gotten her last color earlier. Would everything have ended abrubtly?
4) The wording on the cards was awkward for some, trying to generalize a card so that it was good for men or women was very tough for some of the activities. In some cases I had even forgotten to generalize.
5) Impersonations were the least used, and Charades was used early but not much later. Maybe that wasn't a problem, it certainly pulled the ladies into the game.
6) The Pictionary questions went well, but needed bigger paper.
* * * *
My first pass at tuning the game including postponing some of the specials until the later play, and adding fewer specials early. For the next pass I was planning on adding only 2 additional chicken-outs and proxies for the first two decks. I created and added several more specific proxies, and some new specials that could change the game dynamics some.
I realized that the game would end sooner with smaller groups, without really advancing to the naughtiest rounds, and may not have a chance to get very far with bigger groups. So I played with a lot of ideas for adding cards in groups, fixed numbers, or per player. I finally decided on making many smaller decks of ten cards and adding those as needed. This accomplished two things. First, it allowed fine tuning of the game during play, and secondly, it allowed adding gender specific cards.
If a card face was printed in Pink with the female symbol Karaköy Escort (https://www.pompaci.net/istanbul/karakoy) in the corner, it was for women only. If a card face was printed in Blue with the male symbol in the corner, it was for men. Printed in black, with the joined male/female symbol, the card was for anyone. This had the added benefit of chewing through more cards in the later rounds, when gender specific activities were more common.
The seven colors were possibly too attainable. I did the math, figuring it would average 16 correctly answered challenges to pull the 7 colors. They would typically get three colors in the first 4-5 correct turns, the next two in 4-5 correct turns, the next one in 4-5 turns, and the last one was a one in 7 chance. Then I had my brainstorm; I would make two of the colors harder to get, and not let anyone know. By reducing their frequency just a little, I could make the game last about 30% longer on average. Then, my evil mind delved a little deeper. I would make the gender specific cards carry shortages of different cards. There would be 5 colors of about 16% commonality each, and two colors with about 10 percent commonality. To make things worse, the 7 percent for two of the colors would be distributed only between the common cards and one of the gender's cards. On a whim I decided to make orange rare and not available in the male-only Challenge cards, and green rare and not available in the female-only Challenge cards.
Finally I eliminated the Mystery category, and the Impersonation category and added a Potpouri, which was listed under the activity group.
With the game play dynamics worked out, I rewrote many of the cards to be gender specific, added some new ideas into the card play, and got everything ready. I playtested it myself with some imaginary scenarios, and then recruited Denise and Dave to give the game another go with us, just two weeks after we'd had our first game, and a week before our scheduled dinner with the Shaws.
* * * *
Denise and Dave showed up on Saturday in the late afternoon, and we caught a movie and dinner before heading back to our place for a little R
* * * *
Part II of the Perfect Game
Wherein we give the game a second try.
* * * *
If you've read the first part of this story, you know how I went about inventing my "Perfect Party Game", and the initial overwhelming success we experienced with it.
Plans were going ahead to try it in a group of 7, instead of the original 5, and all the original participants were eager to see if we could corrupt two more friends.
We knew Frank and Delara casually. He was a bit older, in his mid 30's and she was foreign, though I'm not sure from where, maybe Greece or Turkey.
We had been seated next to them at a company function, and I was afraid the grey haired guy next to me was some corporate stick-in-the-mud, with a trophy wife. We were pleasantly surprised to find they were a fun, talkative, and irreverant couple and ended up having a really good time. Frank was charming and worldly, and his prematurely gray hair gave him a look of maturity far beyond his actual age. He flirted brazenly with both Cheryl and Denise, but never quite overstepped the boundaries of good taste. Delara was a quiet young mediterranean beauty, but friendly, and very touchy-feely, which I thought was a good thing, and Dave didn't disagree. She was a tiny brunette with long dark hair, which she wore down to great effect. A few weeks later they had invited us to an event at their home where once again we'd had a terrific time. The wine had flowed easily and the conversation was all over the place. We owed them a social invitation, and this seemed like as good a time as any.
* * * *
During it's first trial, the game play seemed to have been effective. More than I would have ever possibly dreamed. But I was confident it could be improved.
A brief recap of the game might be in order.
The object of the game (nominally) was to collect seven different colored Reward cards for successfully completing a variety of Challenges.
During play we used two decks of cards, one containing challenges, the other containing penalties/rewards. Each person would pre-select which type of Challenge they wished to perform, either knowledge based (trivia, word meanings, obscure questions), or activity based (charades, celebrity improv, pictionary).
After selecting the Challenge type, they pulled a Challenge card and performed the challenge. If they were successful, they received a Reward card which had a colored border, one of seven colors they were trying to collect. If they failed the challenge, there was a Penalty on the card that had to be peformed, then the card was discarded.
There were several supplemental rules, involving avoiding penalties, reassigning penalties, selecting partners for the activity challenges, and other small rules, but the basic game was pretty simple:
Pick the challenge type, draw a challenge card, perform the challenge. Succeed, get a color. Fail, perform a penalty. Collect 7 different colors and win.
The trick was that the questions and activities got tougher, and the penalties got more personal, intimate, and then downright naughty, as the game advanced.
The concerns I had from the first game were several.
1) I thought the game had taken too long. We didn't get into the action until almost 3 hours into the game.
2) The specials were not used at all in the beginning, and were used a lot at the end where it seemed like people had either forgotten about them or were hordeing them.
3) I still wondered what would have happened if Denise had gotten her last color earlier. Would everything have ended abrubtly?
4) The wording on the cards was awkward for some, trying to generalize a card so that it was good for men or women was very tough for some of the activities. In some cases I had even forgotten to generalize.
5) Impersonations were the least used, and Charades was used early but not much later. Maybe that wasn't a problem, it certainly pulled the ladies into the game.
6) The Pictionary questions went well, but needed bigger paper.
* * * *
My first pass at tuning the game including postponing some of the specials until the later play, and adding fewer specials early. For the next pass I was planning on adding only 2 additional chicken-outs and proxies for the first two decks. I created and added several more specific proxies, and some new specials that could change the game dynamics some.
I realized that the game would end sooner with smaller groups, without really advancing to the naughtiest rounds, and may not have a chance to get very far with bigger groups. So I played with a lot of ideas for adding cards in groups, fixed numbers, or per player. I finally decided on making many smaller decks of ten cards and adding those as needed. This accomplished two things. First, it allowed fine tuning of the game during play, and secondly, it allowed adding gender specific cards.
If a card face was printed in Pink with the female symbol Karaköy Escort (https://www.pompaci.net/istanbul/karakoy) in the corner, it was for women only. If a card face was printed in Blue with the male symbol in the corner, it was for men. Printed in black, with the joined male/female symbol, the card was for anyone. This had the added benefit of chewing through more cards in the later rounds, when gender specific activities were more common.
The seven colors were possibly too attainable. I did the math, figuring it would average 16 correctly answered challenges to pull the 7 colors. They would typically get three colors in the first 4-5 correct turns, the next two in 4-5 correct turns, the next one in 4-5 turns, and the last one was a one in 7 chance. Then I had my brainstorm; I would make two of the colors harder to get, and not let anyone know. By reducing their frequency just a little, I could make the game last about 30% longer on average. Then, my evil mind delved a little deeper. I would make the gender specific cards carry shortages of different cards. There would be 5 colors of about 16% commonality each, and two colors with about 10 percent commonality. To make things worse, the 7 percent for two of the colors would be distributed only between the common cards and one of the gender's cards. On a whim I decided to make orange rare and not available in the male-only Challenge cards, and green rare and not available in the female-only Challenge cards.
Finally I eliminated the Mystery category, and the Impersonation category and added a Potpouri, which was listed under the activity group.
With the game play dynamics worked out, I rewrote many of the cards to be gender specific, added some new ideas into the card play, and got everything ready. I playtested it myself with some imaginary scenarios, and then recruited Denise and Dave to give the game another go with us, just two weeks after we'd had our first game, and a week before our scheduled dinner with the Shaws.
* * * *
Denise and Dave showed up on Saturday in the late afternoon, and we caught a movie and dinner before heading back to our place for a little R