Saturday’s playtest confirmed that Villanostra has become far more complex than is practical. It took over an hour to play a single year. So this morning I stripped out all the components that didn’t seem essential. Here’s what the game looked like Saturday morning:
And here’s what it looks like now:
This will require substantial rules changes, of course. But it has already led to some interesting ideas. One of my biggest struggles with this design has been to represent the morals, so each of them feels important in a different way. I have been trying to demonstrate their value through the buildings, but I think instead I should be demonstrating their value through threats to the village. My next step is to make event cards that are drawn each year, each representing a threat that can be ameliorated by one of the morals. Then I can give each building an ability to deal with its matching threats.