So does anyone want to playtest a card game?

The Game Room
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I keep trying to design card and board games, and I have one that I think actually works.

It’s a light, quick, vaguely medieval or renaissance themed game using a nonstandard deck of 40 cards. It has a betting and bluffing element to it, (though what is bet is not a separate money resources, but rather the cards themselves)* and some cards with special powers, such as ones that allow a player to change the rules (for one round) concerning how to determine a round’s winner, or allow a player to take cards from other players for future rounds, and so on.

It’s the bluffing and betting elements of the game which make it very difficult for me to evaluate its playability on my own. I can’t bluff myself… Which is why I’m looking for playtesters. (I have a gaming group of about six people and I’ll be asking them, but they are friends and it’s best to have strangers look over these things if possible.)

As for how to acquire the required deck, you could just quickly make one out of index cards since there are just 40 cards. However if you like I am willing to make you a deck and mail it to you. (It’s just a matter of writing a letter and a number–or a word–in the top left corner of each card. Nothing fancy even in the slightest.)

Also required is a set of six to twelve markers (depending on the number of players) sorted evenly into three different classes. (For example, two each of three different colors.) Again, this can easily be done with index cards, and if you prefer, I can make these markers and mail them to you.

If you’d like to participate, I’ll be asking not only for your impressions but also for responses to some specific questions about, for example, the readability of the rules, the existence of a dominant strategy, the replayability and so on…

I am also interested in finding out whether the game works with two players as well as the more probable three and four.

The ruleset (four page docx) can be downloaded here or viewed here. I am happy to email you a copy as well if you PM me or reply to this post to signal interest.

Thanks for any response!

*ETA: This is a bit of a misstatement. You don’t bet cards, but rather, each card played risks the loss of some potential points so there’s a “betting element” in that sense.

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A brief description of the game (so you don’t have to read all the rules to know what kind of game it is) follows:

The deck consists of four suits—soldiers, merchants, priests and nobles. The merchants and priests have number values. The soldiers are all identical. The nobles are each unique. The players take turns laying cards down in front of them one at a time, and eventually one may decide to “call” either merchants, priests or soldiers. The other players must then call a suit in turn. By calling a suit, the player is declaring how he intends his score for the round to be calculated—in either a merchant-centric way, a priest-centric way or a soldier-centric way. Then, they can continue laying down cards one at a time. Eventually, everyone will pass, and once they have, whoever has the highest score in the cards they laid down wins the round. An interesting bit is this: If you win having called Merchants, then you get no points, but your hand size is increased by one in all future rounds. This is important not only because it adds flexibility to your play in future rounds, but because the cards you keep in your hand each round score points for you as well. Each card laid down, then, is a kind of bet—and having more cards in your hand each round gives you more to bet with.

The noble cards, meanwhile, allow the players to change the rules of the game for a round. For example, laying down the “Smuggler” card changes the rule for counting score so that players are now encouraged to play a lot of low value merchant cards instead of a few high value merchant cards. The “General” card, as another example, allows you to use soldier cards as a substitute for cards of a different suit.

A round goes pretty fast—I’m sure less than two minutes a round in general. The game, then, is a pretty quick fast paced one.

Lemme know if you’re interested. I’ll mail you a set and some questionairres, or tell you how to make a set of your own. (It just takes five minutes or so, with a set of blank index cards and a pen.)

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Hey Frylock!

This sounds interesting. I love games, and inventing games, but haven’t ever been one for collectible card games like Magic The Repeat-Purchasing or what have you.

You may have seen my Ghostbusters game thread going. We use a system called Roll20.net (completely free to make an account) for the mapping aspect of this game, and one thing I wasn’t expecting was that it has a cards function.

It comes with a standard deck of playing cards pre-loaded, and you can shuffle the deck, deal cards to each player, and lay them on the gaming surface either face up or face down.

This came in handy for my game because it happens to use cards to indicate items the players might have with them, which I wasn’t expecting to do.

The neat thing about this is that you’re able to make your own decks. I just photoshopped pictures of the various cards the game came with, and the Roll20 system allowed me to make an entirely customized deck, both front and back, with whatever cards I wanted.

I say this because you may want to take a look… I think it would be pretty easy for you to build a deck for your game with it. Then you could try live games over the internet with real people in real time, and can even videoconference while you’re doing it.

Not saying it’s a perfect solution, but it’s an idea for you. And I’d offer to play a round of your game, if I had anyone in real life to play with (I don’t know many GamerGeeks in real life, unfortunately.)

If this sounds like something you’d like to do, feel free to PM me for help or suggestions, and if it’s something you DO end up doing, please let me know and I’ll gladly play a round or two with you!

And no, I don’t get kickbacks or anything for getting new people to sign up. Just something I like, thought you might be interested.

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I’ll be interested!

And using Roll20 to test board games is a genius idea.

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I’m interested. I’d be up for trying an over-the-internet version with some others if that works out. I also bet I could wrangle some coworkers into trying it over a lunch break.

I have some feedback from reading the rules:

  1. The interaction of the Smuggler and Sorceress is confusing. One is played, can’t do A, the other is played, can’t do B. Both are played, can do A and B, and also the rules for scoring change.

My suggestion: Add a new card that changes how the scoring works to just count number rather than value. Changing the win condition is of the more confusing things a game can do. It probably shouldn’t happen as a side effect of playing some other cards. Change the Smuggler and Sorceress so that only the last one played has effect. I suggest making whoever played the previous one just discard it to ease memory issues.

  1. I suggest making cards that have the values for both called and uncalled points printed on them, color-coded. So, a Soldier would have a red 1 and a grey 0 printed on it, representing 1 point for calling “red”, and 0 points for calling another color. A merchant would have a green 1,2,3, and a grey 1 on it, and so on. Nobles would have grey numbers (usually 0, but sometimes 2). Then you can get rid of all the called/uncalled verbiage in the rules.

  2. I may understand this more after playing it, but Soldiers seem boring and/or underpowered. They are the most restrictive (you can be forced to not get to score them by another player who plays his chip early and you don’t get points for the other cards you play) and the least interesting (no bonus for winning with them). My first impression is that any round I draw a Soldier-heavy hand is going to be a round with very few strategic decisions for me to make.

  3. Do you shuffle the deck after each round? Or do you play with the remainder until you need to shuffle to get more cards?

  4. I suggest against having two cards with different names that do the same thing. Just make it two copies of the same card. Fewer things to learn.

  5. What happens if players’ hand sizes increase enough that there’s no longer enough deck to deal out initial hands?