On Saturday I playtested Villanostra again, and it didn’t go as well. For whatever reason I did a very poor job of explaining the rules. I need to write and practice a script to do that better.
Most significantly, based on feedback from Protospiel Online, I put rules in place for players to vote by placing one token at a time. It destroyed the character of the game. There was no debate or discussion, only strategic choices for how to earn the most votes. The newly-added threat mechanisms were ignored. (I’m sure this was partly because I explained the game so poorly.) The collaboration that is supposed to be key to the play experience simply didn’t happen.
I also changed how the players increase their influence. At the end of the year, you could spend two unused influence to unlock one new influence. The analysis phase was dominated by discussing other ideas for how this should work. Only later did I remember that increasing your influence was supposed to be compensation for a turn in which your influence didn’t seem to matter. By abstaining from placing your influence, you acquired more influence that should make a future turn more effective. Instead I was now incentivizing players to not play so they could maximize future power.
What am I doing about this?
- Go back to the previous rule of gaining influence only by abstaining from a vote. Mechanically it is similar to turning in unused influence at the end of the year, but psychologically it feels different.
- Add a rotating chairman role that walks the other players through the steps, and explicitly starts each vote with discussion. I’m not sure it will work, but it’s something to try.
- Write a script for introducing the rules.
We’ll see how it goes next Saturday with my local playtest group.