Diversity Trumps Democracy

Second playtest

Tom and Jeffrey negotiate the corridors of Starship Rex.

The second public playtest of Starship Rex was held on Sunday, June 24th, 2012 at Guardian Games in Portland, Oregon. Whole sections of the rulebook were smashed, but in the end, we made the game way more playable. Thank you to Ken, Tom and Jeffrey who powered through to the end of game one and helped to confirm that the council/voting system at the endgame was just too, as Tom put it, "muddy".

I've suspected from the beginning that the council thing might add more complexity than fun, but that first game Sunday proved it. Ken remarked that the change of pace from map exploration and pod-retrieval to the council phase was too jarring. "They feel like different games," he said. He had a point, so I decided to try an alternative for the second game of the day.

Diversity over democracy

Rules revisions on the fly.

The second game was a three-player session between Jamey, Jeffrey/Sasha tag-team and me. Thanks to them, not to mention our cheerleaders and idea fountains Will and Paula, for helping me prove out the streamlined rules. For this game, I changed the endgame drastically from "nominating and voting on the colony council" to a system of "tabulating diversity". Points were gained by counting all of the unique traits in one's own set of rescued colonists, plus all bonus points gained during the game by venting Creeps out the airlock, plus all points gained directly from the bonus Bequeathment cards. The process was a welcome simple math problem, contrasting starkly with the chaos of voting/nomination we had before.

Pacing

The pacing of the second game was also changed to give each robot more actions per turn and to allow robots to roll through the "special rooms" instead of treating them as dead-ends. These two changes alone dramatically increased the number of Colonist and Bequeathment cards flowing into players' hands, resulting in more fun. Who doesn't like more fun?

Cooperation 

Jamey and Sasha enjoying the accelerated
pace and accentuated cooperation.

Also changed for the second game was a more direct emphasis on cooperative play. Instead of the implied vague notion that variety in Colonist traits was good for self/everyone, the rule was made clear -- the players as a group must accrue all of the Colonist traits, by rescuing Colonists, by the time the starship runs out of energy or everyone loses. The "everyone loses" concept is common in cooperative games, but I was hesitant to put it in the rules because many of the games of that nature end up being mutli-hour slogs. To have those many hours end in defeat for everyone is a bummer. However, if I can get Starship Rex down to under an hour, a we-all-lose scenario would be a lot less discouraging.

As it was, we easily satisfied the goal, getting all 13 traits long before power ran out. The goal for individuals then shifted focus to bolstering their own crowd of Colonists, diversifying their collection of traits. Venting Creeps also became important, as each Creep dispatched granted a victory point.

Moving forward

I'm so confident in these second game rules that I'm going to roll them through to the next playtest largely unmodified. There are some things that I might change to speed up the game a little more, though. The energy-drain of the ship slows to a trickle after players have rescued two or three colonists each and are assigning those Colonists to the "energy efficiency" task. I'm thinking of raising the energy drain rate and the minimum energy drain. It was also suggested that there be a wider variety of tasks for  rescued Colonists to engage in. I'll have to think about that, but it seems like a fun idea. I even have a concept that might slot nicely into that role -- steering the ship.

Setting sites

Steering the ship would require adding extra cardboard pieces the game, which makes me reluctant to pursue it unless it results in some quality fun. The idea is still gestating in my brainfolds, but the basic concept is that players could influence the actual founding site of the colony in such a way that it gives a bonus to their particular colonists' traits. The founding site would be represented abstractly by a set of traits on three parallel tracks. Players could task Colonists to move the tracks up/down/around, ideally lining up all three tracks in such a way that it closely matches one or more of their Colonists. Having the one Colonist that exactly matches the founding site will grant a victory point bonus, bragging rights, and the rights to name the Colony.

We'll see if it is worthwhile.