Rule 0

I finally got Walsingham to the table again, following my last round of changes. Once again, the mood at the table was subdued as it ended… and then suddenly passionate about the different ways the endgame might have played out. I’m now a little bit worried and maybe unsure what to make of this? But I suppose that for now, I’ll just keep making the improvements that are in front of me. Points is points, as they say, and better is better.

A rundown of the changes made, how they went, and what further changes might be on deck:

• I tried a new auction mechanism, which was a little difficult to explain but completely satisfactory in execution. The new mechanism is this: You get two chances to bid. On your first bid, you can bid any unique amount. (So if Alice bids 4, and Bob bids 6, then Cindy can bid 0, 3, 5, 10… anything except for 4 or 6). On your second bid, you can either hold your previous bid or increase, but if you increase, you have to bid yourself up to first place. This keeps the auction fast and prevents people from weaseling into second, say. The last place bidder pays nothing (and gets a stipend). First place pays full price, and every other bidder pays half.
• We played with rebalanced endgame scoring: 5 VP for stopping the Spy. The player who won this award (me) didn’t win the game, but it was very close, and to some degree I was punished for bidding mistakes.
• The Spy felt… oppressed. It’s very difficult to subtly pick up Intrigue and not make it obvious to the other players. I don’t know how to deal with this. I could put more emphasis on the Spy’s chance for a VP victory (fine, but seems to take away from the drama of the game). I could give the Spy an easier time, for instance by making Accusations less punishing, but then the Spy has no incentive to play cautiously, again subtracting from the drama.
• The players generally felt that the Rewards and Secret cards both needed “something extra”. I’m cautious about including new mechanics just for fun, but I think I agree. A little more texture is called for.
• One of the improvements is that the money awards in the Rewards deck need to go. It makes no sense to bid money and then maybe get money back. I’ll probably adjust the last-bid stipend to compensate if more money needs to be injected back into the game.
• A card that reduces the sting of Accusations. Of course, buying this card is itself suspicious! Alternatively: a card that provides a VP incentive for being falsely Accused. You have a lot of Intrigue and buy it. Are you a Loyal player hoping to score cheap VP, or a brazen Spy?
• A card that is worth a lot of VP, but penalizes you if your Accusation is incorrect.
• The “Big Reveal” card that requires you to reveal your Loyalty cards led to an interesting auction (the Spy bailed to avoid getting stuck with it) but having a Loyal player reveal reduced the drama and mystery for everyone else. The card needs to either be removed or reworked, perhaps to reveal only one of your cards.
• A set of big-VP and big-Intrigue cards, but you can only score one of them. Some of these could even be Secret cards, which would add some more interest to that deck. Unless I have a better idea, I could theme this as “Political Marriage”.
• The card that lets one player spy on all of another player’s Secrets is definitely too powerful for 4p; it just adds too much information. It might be OK for 5p or it might need to be toned down or reworked.
• A card that blocks spying in some way. My brainstorm was: Block the next attempt to Peek at your Loyalty cards or Secrets. Both you and the blocked player gain $10.
• A card that allows you to either Peek or gain some kind of resource.
• Finally: Instead of money on cards, there could be some kind of intermediate currency or goal–having at least one, or having a certain amount, or having the most, could gain you a reward of some kind. That reward could be VP or Intrigue or one of the previously mentioned rewards–maybe the biggest Political Marriage?

Thanks to Ed, Josh, and Zach for playing and providing feedback!

Too many weeks after putting together the latest prototype, I finally got Walsingham playtested. I’ll confess that I had been procrastinating a little bit (pulling out Invasion instead, and so on) out of dread that it would fall as flat as last time. But I’m pleased that this playtest went well. I did a bit of tripping on the rules explanation, but I seem to have ripped out enough cruft that it flowed pretty well once we got rolling. The mood at the table seemed not super excited near the end, but, after it was over there was about 10 minutes of spontaneous discussion/arguing over who should have done what, who would have won, whether some elements weren’t worth enough points, etc.. That discussion was energetic, protracted, and not instigated by me (I was just taking notes) and it made me optimistic that at least the game was engaging and interesting. Here’s a rundown of my notes from both the game and follow discussion:

• Both of the core mechanics–the auction and the secret agendas–were interesting, and they worked fairly well together.
• The auction rule I used was the dollar auction from For Sale: you must bid higher than anyone else if you want to bid at all; you choose rewards in reverse order from drop order; non-winners pay only half of their bids, and lowest bidder pays nothing (and wins nothing but gets a $2 stipend instead). This worked well enough to be interesting but was very problematic when several players had enough for a bid but they were all edged out by one high bidder early in the turn order. Somehow, the bidding needs to allow players to enter a non-highest bid. I might end up choosing the system from Santiago that only goes once around the table, but you can make any non-duplicate bid.
• The peeking mechanic (look at one of the target’s loyalty cards; the target doesn’t know which one was viewed) worked pretty well and there were an appropriate number of peeks in the deck to give interesting, but not complete, information.
• The accusation mechanic (lowest showing Intrigue has to choose their accusation first) worked pretty well; I might need tokens for “successful accusation” to keep track of the points easier. The way it shook out in this game, one player went all-in and was pretty obviously the Spy (accused by everyone). I knew he was and vocally supported his accusations, and in the end, his Intrigue tied another player’s. Whew! I ruled that neither player had the most Intrigue, so neither the Spy’s auto-victory nor the VP bonus kicked in.
• Apropos of this, I need to clarify all endgame ties, including who has to accuse first in case of tied Intrigue, which will probably happen a lot.
• The cash allotment I went with was $15 at the beginning of the game, $10 after the first and second thirds of the game. The cash needs to be split up like this to prevent novices from blowing all their money early and being helpless the rest of the game. This kept the auctions interesting and nobody broke. It’s close enough, but I’ll need to recalibrate it if the number of rounds or the auction mechanism changes.
• Speaking of the number of rounds, I actually only had the cards for a 4-player game. I had planned 12 rounds of 3 cards each, but went with 9 rounds of 4 cards each. (One player doesn’t get a card every round.) This duration actually seemed just right. I may be able to use the same number of cards for 4p, or maybe 9 rounds is the right length and I’ll just cut some of the cards out in 4p. (And add some more for 6p, which should work; I don’t think I’m going to try to shoehorn 3p in.)
• The strongest disagreement in valuation was: how much VP should the player who prevents the Spy from winning get as a reward? It needs to be enough that this player has a chance to win and isn’t just “taking one for the team”; on the other hand, it needs to be small enough that you can’t win by ignoring VPs. I suspect the current value of 3 VP might not be enough. (The 2nd place player in this game had only 4 Intrigue, which was the same as the reckless Spy minus 4 accusations.) Brainstorm: This player gets 2/3 of their Intrigue as VP.
• One of the minor mechanisms is that I have colored tiles with VPs and Intrigue on them that are part of the auctions; these colors tie into the Loyalty cards, and if your mix of tiles matches your mix of Loyalty cards, you get a VP bonus. The idea is to add some texture to the auctions and provide a little bit of information–is a player going for tiles that don’t seem to match their card you peeked at? Perhaps it’s a spy! The mechanism worked pretty well I think, but my explanation was very difficult, and because the cards are hidden, you can’t ask clarifying questions. I’m not sure what to do about this. One player suggested a cheat sheet/player aid. This seems reasonable, but I’ve still got my eye on the mechanic.
• Minor notes: Find the colored meeples that I was planning to use for player/bid markers; indicate on the bidding track who pays what; assemble player aids.

Thanks to Nevin, Ed, Michelle, and Josh for playing my game!