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September 15, 2005

Pachisi Mod Review

First of all, I want to say that this was the first game design assignment we've all had together where we weren't allowed to explain anything to the players, and I at least did not understand the full weight of that in terms of production value. I'm not saying that as an excuse, because obviously this was an important learning experience in terms of presenting your game in absentia. But I do think it was unfortunate because all of us came up with really neat ways to twist the rules and experience of Pachisi, and that was what I really wanted to get out of the demonstration more than learning how to write rules and design boards and pieces. Also, I was unclear as to what standard we were being held to in terms of production design. My team (Circle-of-Life/Prey) is getting criticism for having pieces that were too abstract, that hindered the metaphor we were trying to adopt. I'm not saying that the criticism is unjustified at all, but personally I had never understood that there was any metaphor to Pachisi, and since we were basing our mod on that game (which has very abstract pieces - after all, why are you enemies with everyone else? who is your game character?) I don't think it should be a surprise that some of our class's projects erred on the abstract side. I guess my suggestion would be that in the future this assignment not have two lessons - maybe have an in-class assignment on designing rules and pieces, and then follow it up with the larger mod assignment. I think that combining the two caused unneccesary strife and the loss of understanding some neat mechanics.

1) Cops & Robbers
This game was based on a great metaphor, and introduced some new ways for players to interact with each other (e.g. the robbers set fires, the police set blockades). Unfortunately, a lot of things were unclear on the board and the instructions for setup were incomplete. For example, you couldn't tell the difference between your and your partner's pieces on your team (i.e. all the robbers look the same). But perhaps this was a mechanic that I missed - on your turn could you move any piece on your team? It was also unclear as to which neighborhoods were the good ones versus the bad ones. Another question was what was the incentive to start fires or lay blockades? It just seemed like a huge hassle (production note: particularly without counters to keep track of how long they had been in place) so my test group just avoided it. As a game experience note, the policemen get the satisfaction of catching a robber, but the robbers get no similar satisfaction - I don't think it's the same feeling to say "Ha! You didn't catch me this time" as to say "Ha! I caught you and now you're out of the game!" As a robber, I really wanted to rob the houses that I landed on - then chance would have helped me to gain something, rather than simply evade things. Overall, I think this game had some really good ideas and interesting player interaction that were hindered by a few basic logistical questions - I would like to know what sort of gameplay and strategic situations the designers imagined and intended.

2) Coattails
This game took a while for me to understand - or at least come to my own understanding of it. But when I did, I really liked it. All my remaining uncertainty comes from the rules on movement of pieces, which I would love to have explained in person because they may have been written clearly but in a descriptive style that doesn't click with my brain. Anyway, once the interactions between the placement of pieces started to emerge, I thought that it turned into a fantastic strategy game. I'm not sure if I quite got the metaphor, because you really only rode coattails for one turn before you overran everyone and pulled the rug out from underyourself so to speak. But I really enjoyed the experience of playing this game.

3) Pachisi of Verona
This game had a really cute concept and a metaphor I could understand. The rules seemed clear, though it turned out later that we probably misunderstood the rules of how to read the dice, which in turn probably led to some of the difficulties we encountered. But I'll stick to my thoughts at the time. The fact that you had to declare which piece you were going to move didn't seem to make much of a difference - my test group ended up discarding that rule. It took too long for any player's pieces to get within range of another's - this was probably due to the dice issue. The biggest question I ended up with about the mod was how probable or even desireable were the new mechanics? In other words, how probable was it that you would land on someone's space and couple with them, how probable was it that you would have a sibling in the right area to break it up, and how probable was it that the couple and the sibling would ever meet up? Wouldn't all couples just get set back to the beginning? There didn't seem to be any real incentive to elope, and most players who got in range of each other avoided it. Which I guess is where declaring becomes important, but otherwise it seemed extraneous. But again, if we had known how to read the dice perhaps we would have ended up completely mixed with each other and declaring would have usually been necessary.

Posted by rosenblj at September 15, 2005 09:59 AM

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