Playtest - The Game Works!

It is the deadline of the game jam. At least, it's the original deadline, and I had timed myself to complete by this date and take a break.

So, the game works. Not only does the game work, the players had fun, and their experience was the experience that I was attempting to curate. I wanted them to have an absurd experience, to facilitate unproductive infighting, all while the Foreign President was attempting to build a utopia.

A few other things that worked. 

- The one-sided phone-call mechanisms (while a little technically janky in discord) worked in the way intended. It built suspense for their end, and facilitated a fascinating 'privacy' for discussion, which ultimately lead to [desirable] confusion on their end. 

- All the effort that went into cross-referencing what the players knew about the world, what they knew about each other, and how the actions of the Foreign President aligned with those worked perfectly. For example, there was a mechanism set in place whereby if I got the President to say a certain word, I got some resources. But the Chief Intelligence Officer believed the President - when using certain words - was speaking in code. The President, of course, had no idea about this. So when I succeed in getting the President to say the word 'flop', the Chief Intelligence Offier started arguing with the President about whether he could be trusted, the President in turn denied everything, and this eventually devolved into a referundum in which the Vice President attempted a coup.

- The absurd 'secrets' they all had about each other eventually came out, and as the game progressed they simply started slinging more dirt at each other in a very funny-to-listen-to kind of way. 

- The secret motives worked. These were on a randomized table, so even I didn't know what those were. For example, the Chief Intelligence Officer had to, somehow, play 5 minutes of house music in the War Room in a way that others wouldn't simply tell him to 'shut up'. He did this, artfully, in a way that no-one called him out, and it was a very funny moment in the game. (Plus, you know, music in a game is good generally).

- The General of the Armed Forces, played by my partner in the audio, was secretly a drunk. But rather than play it cool as a secret drunk, she just started slurring her words from the very beginning and admittedly openly to drinking on the job. This just devolved leading to some very silly moment. That is to say, that the secrets and other information led players to interesting decisions in how to play the game.

A few things that need revision.

- Playing as the Foreign President can be a little bit dry. I had hoped to make this part more interesting, but it's ... just fine. It did work in the sense that about 70% of the time I was very engaged with my resource management task, and attempted to balance the international optics of my actions. But this game won't 'sell' on the weight of that experience. So instead (in addition to fixing a few things) I'm going to have to frame it as a GM-like experience, were the 'sell' is based on listening back to the recording of your friends being silly and backstabbing you. For example, I believed during the play-test that they a) were trying to assassinate me early on, and b) that they eventually wanted disarmament. When upon listening back, I learned a) they weren't trying to assassinate me, and b) they wanted disarmament because they were going to unleash an untested zombie virus on my country. It was very funny to have my experience re-cast upon listening to them.

- The resource management part of the game is, in principle, a fine idea. But the numbers are impenatrable. They need to be simplified. Probably just as percentages. 100% is a good level of resources. More than that is great. Less than that is increasingly bad, and below 40% leads to coup. These are easy things to simplify and fix. There should also be a way for this game to be played without a digital component, which I think can be done with a little planning.

- The 15 minute interval is too long. We actually used a 12 minute interval which was better. This can probably be shorted to 10 minutes, in all reality. The players agreed they felt 'under pressure' (in a good way), so no less than 10. I suspect most of the Foreign President's game play takes about 5 - 8 minutes, so this is more agreeable all-round.

- The 'Doomsday Clock' part of the game was not as well integrated as hoped. This is a framing issue, I think. 

- The President (as chief negotiator) needs clearer instructions on that role, even if they don't know anything else.

- As expected, my intuition is that players can never learn what the Foreign President is actually doing. If they know, it will ruin their game-play experience (in future games; it's hard to be silly when you know others are being serious). At least, in this N=1 experience, I don't think my friends can play the game again knowing what they now know about what I was doing. So the 'fix' for this is to maintain the intended secrecy of the the role.

Going Forward.

This game can easily be streamlined. It'll take a lot of work, but it can be. As  result, I'm not releasing my full workings because they are far to unpolished for them to be informative or interesting right now. I welcome feedback from anyone who wants to listen to the playtest... but with a little more work I can produce a far more 'download and play at home' experience, but not just yest.