Making the Rounds: Gen Con, PAX, and XOXO Fest
Well, while we're all waiting for production and shipping news, I thought I'd share a few stories about teaching Emperor's New Clothes and a little more of the ideas behind it.
I was fortunate enough to go to Gen Con and PAX Prime last month, where I
was able to meet a lot of people in person, play a bunch of great
games, and have some really fun conversations. While I'd been hoping
that I'd have a finished copy of Emperor's New Clothes to take to
these shows, that didn't happen, so I took my prototype copy with me
and managed to play a few times when I wasn't walking around gawking at
all the other shiny stuff everywhere.
Whether people had seen the Kickstarter or not, they did tend to
give me skeptical looks when I first got out my pile of blank cards and
dice and pile of white cubes. However, once we started playing, most of
the folks I taught ended up enjoying the game. I love introducing new
players to the game because it's particularly fun to see the sorts of
cards they'll make up as they play them, and how they manage the memory
portions of the game. But I also really love the conversations that
I have after playing the game. My hope was to get people thinking about
game design and play, and that definitely happens.
The box itself will come with a blank "rulebook"—stapled glossy
paper that fits in with the whole ROOS story, and a prop you can use
when you want to be a rules lawyer during play. However, I've also got
my version of the rules listed on my website. Right now you'll find rules for two games: Emperor's New Clothes and The Boy Who Cried Wolf
(which requires three marked dice). I plan to add other rule sets here
as backers submit them, so that you can see what other people are doing
with their game sets.
My goal with the rules is to provide just enough structure for
people to play a game. If you choose, you can just take the box of
components, sans rules, and come up with whatever you want with your
fellow gamers. Or, if you need a nudge in some direction, you can start
with my basic order of play: Draft Roles, Roll Dice, Reveal Roles, Score
Points. Still not enough? Then follow my instructions for what
specifically is on each die, what the three types of resources are, and
the list of roles. And if you want even more, I've given detailed
scoring rules for each of the 14 roles included, assuming you want to
use my list. The only thing I haven't spelled out is the action cards,
although I've given a few examples of cards you could play.
What I've found is that when I'm teaching the game I generally set
the types of resources, what's on each die, and a few of the roles.
However, I've had some friends teach the game with even less spelled
out: in those games there have been people playing the Professor or the
Doppelganger. Sometimes the resources include fabric, or wood, or food,
rather than my list of gold, dignity, and gullibility. Sometimes there
are more than three types of resources.
What happens over the course of play is that the actions that
players take and the things they make up set precedents for the rest of
the game. Whoever's first to move their scoring marker on the (blank)
scoring track determines things like where the track starts and how far
apart the spaces are. If somebody rolls a 5 on a die because I haven't
explained that they have only 1s and 2s, then from now on that die has a
5 on it—and necessarily has one fewer of something else. Each player's
decisions collapses the possibility tree a little more, until by the end
of the game nearly everything has been defined.
This is particularly true of the role selection. Although at the
start you pass around cards and pretend to choose roles by each taking a
card, the real role selection happens later. When the first player
announces that she's the Emperor, suddenly it means that all of the
other players (who may have thought they were the Emperor) must choose a
different role on the spot. For me, this is where a lot of the real
strategy in the game appears: how do you select a role that maximizes
your score and minimizes somebody else's, based on the resources
everyone gathered before they actually knew what roles they were?
At both Gen Con and PAX I also played a few rounds of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. This is a bluffing game along the lines of Liar's Dice,
in which you take turns being the Boy, trying to trick the other
shepherds. The (visible) dice determine whether or not a wolf comes, but
you don't reveal until the other players have decided whether to come
to your aid. Guess wrong, and you'll lose sheep. Guess correctly, and
your sheep are safe—and you might even gain sheep as a reward. I've
still been tweaking the rules a little based on playing with different
numbers of players, but it's a quick game that I've really enjoyed
playing as well.
One last thing: If you happen to be attending XOXO Fest this coming weekend, come see me at the Tabletop event on Saturday evening. I'll be there to demo and talk about Emperor's New Clothes for a few hours alongside other game designers with their games and prototypes. You can see the full lineup here.
I'll be there toward the beginning of the evening starting around 7pm, but parenting duties prevent me from staying until 1am!
