Game Changes

I needed to have a better idea about flow of our game, so I explained the game to a friend and we played it today. It was quite an educational experience to play with another designer with whom I could discuss possible improvements to the game.

One of the first things I noticed was that the game moved really slowly. I was surprised at just how slowly the game pace was, even when both players understood the rules. We changed some rules in the middle to see how the game was affected. As a result, I definitely want to make some permanent changes in the game.

There were several major things we think made the game cumbersome. First of all, we found that waiting to collect 2 Mortals or 5 Venials before moving down a circle made the game drag. We changed the rules to 1 Mortal and 2 Venials for moving down a circle. This sped the game up significantly. It also made it much, MUCH easier to keep track of how many Sin Cards a player still had to discard in order to move back up a circle. This was particularly important because one of the reasons we were playing the game was for me to figure out how to handle the climbing of circles upon paying Penance cards (Glory Be, Hail Mary, & Our Father cards). Since a player has to drop a circle every time he/she receives 2 venial sins, I needed to decide whether a player should have to get rid of both venial sins to climb a level or just 1 of them. My friend and I decided that whenever the number of Venial sins dropped back to an odd number, the player could move up a level. I am still pretty stuck about how to explain that clearly on the
instructions, though.

Anyway, some other things that need to be addressed include the paying of Penance Cards, the proportions of the Penance Cards to other cards in the Redemption Card draw pile (formerly "Action Cards"), and determining the final order of play during a turn. I had an elaborate list of combinations of certain Penance Cards that had to be collected in order to "pay off" given categories of venial sins. Not only were the combinations difficult to remember (nor did I know how to present them effectively on the bottoms of the Penance Cards), but it took forever to collect enough Penances to be able to pay off even one venial sin. My friend and I changed the rule: collecting 1 of each type of Penance Card is sufficient to discard any 1 venial sin. The change made the game immediately seem better, but it also slowed the game down because players could move back up the circles more easily.

I don't think the cards were shuffled very well when we played, but nonetheless, the proportions of the Penances to the other Redemption Cards seemed a little high. Also, the proportions of the Bonfire Log cards to the other Sin Cards seemed rather low. So, I know the proportions need to be changed, but I'm not sure what they should be. I'm thinking that the only way to really find out is by trial and error (I'm sure game-makers probably do alot of tests, statistics, etc), and there isn't much time for that, unfortunately. I think they can certainly be tweeked to be better than they are currently, though.

Play order of the turn is difficult as well. I like the idea that a player can (and must) spend Penances at the beginning of his/her turn. This makes it so that the player has the opportunity to reduce the number of sins accumulated before being required to draw another Sin Card. This might keep someone in the game (and in suspense) for at least one more turn. I like that the player must next draw a Sin Card, before having the opportunity to draw or play Redemption Cards. Somehow, this seems to match the "You just can't get away from sin!" and "Sin will always find you!" and "You're a sinner first, before all else" doctrines. PLUS, it keeps the players in a little bit of suspense about whether their next Redemption Card draw might allow him/her to climb further from the Abyss (in case other players try to finish him/her off) or knock someone else out of the game. A little twisted, I admit, but it seems fitting. :) The two problems with it are: 1) It's really hard to remember to draw the Sin Card and satisfy it before drawing/playing a Redemption Card 2) Since a player has the option of not playing a Redemption Card during his/her turn, it's hard for the subsequent player to know when the previous player's turn has ended. I guess they'll just have to ask.

During the course of the game, I also realized that the Mercy Redemption Card is useless. It states, "Draw an additional Redemption Card." This is silly because the result is the same as never having drawn the Mercy Card. So, I changed it to "Draw 2 additional Redemption Cards." I also added a new Redemption Card or two...there was a Bubonic Plague Card, among others. I also changed the Intercession Card to be a card that doesn't necessarily help other players (as is, it's a card that you give to another player that allows that player to discard some Sin Cards); it's now more self-serving.

We're still working on formatting the cards. We need to do the icons for the following cards: Bonfire Log, Glory Be, Hail Mary, and Our Father. We also want to move the titles of these cards to the bottoms of the cards so that the symbols would be dominant and the titles wouldn't be in the same places as the sin titles (they have different actions associated with them, so I don't want the confusion).

Some additional ideas my friend suggested were:
-Allowing the bartering of Penances, Sin Cards, etc. between players
-Dropping two circles for drawing any one of the Seven Deadly Sins
-Not drawing Redemption Cards unless you drop a circle during the turn
-Offer a variety of "Collect a Bonfire Log" Cards in the Sin Card draw pile - the number of Bonfire Logs to be collected might be 1, 2, 3, or perhaps even equal to the number of mortal sins in front of the player. We decided this is a good idea after neither of us collected more than 4 Bonfire Logs throughout the entire game (and we kept giving them back, too).
-Require that a Redemption Card be played/dicarded every turn. Don't like that, though, becuase then you can't easily collect Penance Cards.

So far, I'm most interested in his Bonfire Log suggestion. I didn't really have a chance to test the other suggested rules to see how they would affect the game.