Week 5

Hey everyone,

Coming back 'atchya a little bit later than usual, but our devlog for week 5 got a little delayed, as you can see. We did a final playtest at Gamers Universe, a small con held in downtown Chicago, about a week before our final devlog (posted earlier today). It went super well, and provided us with a ton of information that informed the (effectively) final form of the game - at least for class.

So immediately, it was made clear that the way that the two teams (that's right, I forgot to mention that instead of having GMs, we moved into teams - a "participant" team, and a "keeper" team. This was to help... well, the exact issue that we encountered this time) needed a way to help meter their interactions. I'm so used to having a group of at least somewhat experienced role-players in my groups, so realizing that people feel reluctant to jump in and just start talking was a little jarring! I ended up acting as a facilitator for a game that wasn't supposed to have a facilitator this time, but that ended up being a good thing: having someone to both act as a team member (on the keepers side especially) as well as a rules judge ended up helping the play experience quite a bit, however like I mentioned, definitely made me also see that the game, while intended to have no facilitator was still stuck in "facilitator needed mode." Note taken (and adjusted later).

As for player emotions, we ended up having a pretty spot on experience for what we were designing for this time - The "participant" team was told that they should "Draw a card that represented them" - something they immediately had to erase, and redraw, erase and redraw, erase and redraw. There was that palpable frustration, and one of the playtester's (on the keeper's side) had a really good line at the beginning of the game "Prepare to have feelings about the keepers." Even that setup was really good, as it set up essentially what we were aiming for the keeper team as "simply upholding the rules" - as also judge and jury of the participant's card's "flaws," and the object of their frustration. 

Overall, I think our week 5 went really well. 

Read our previous devlog for some more information.

Signing off, 

Team Shapely