At long last, after a few delays, version 1.1 of The Prince’s Gambit awaits your tender ministrations. You’ll need the following files.
If you have any feedback, please leave it below, or in the comments at the Google Drive Rules file.
I tried to keep them as concise as possible, as most of the gameplay is actually the interaction between the players.
The Essential Experience
The Prince’s Gambit is a social deduction game. The intent of the system is for each player’s action or presence to share some amount of information, but to leave a great degree of ambiguity. It’s not purely a logic puzzle, like Clue, it’s more like being caught with your hand in the cookie jar and then convincing your mom that it’s actually your little brother’s fault.
If you’re a Camarilla player, you’re at an information disadvantage. You have numerical superiority, but you don’t know the other players with whom you share that superiority, and they have the same lack of information about you. That makes everything suspect. Player actions are deliberately ambiguous, and have a value both to your fellow Camarilla players and the Sabbat players. You’re not looking for a single suspicious event, you’re looking for a pattern of suspicious behavior.
If you’re a Sabbat player, you’ll probably want to bullshit like it’s going out of style. You may even want to let the Camarilla win certain Intrigues that you’re part of, and you’ll definitely want to cast aspersions on the other players — but don’t oversell it, or you’ll be conspicuous.
For the Camarilla players, the tension comes from needing to work with other players, but not knowing which of those other players’ goals align with yours.
For the Sabbat players, the tension comes from being able to be effective without being recognized, and being effective enough before the Camarilla’s numerical advantage yields them enough Intrigues and therefore Praxis.
Ultimately, each player’s actions speak for themselves, and help paint a greater picture of that player’s motive. In that sense, fulfilling the Prince’s gambit is a question of time: Can the Camarilla identify the Sabbat before the rivals steal praxis?
Version Notes
The initial round of feedback (version 1.0, not 1.1, to which you have access), focused on two key areas:
Streamlining Play
- Version 1.0 included a voting mechanic by which proposed Intrigues could be negated by the table. It created an extra step that didn’t offer much in terms of play, but required extra activity. Adjustments to the Prince’s Favor tranference have addressed this.
- The “seat” mechanic arose as a result of the clunky manner of awarding Prestige to other players at the end of each Intrigue. I’m not sure this is the best solution, but at the very least, it’s an unambiguous step in the proper direction.
More Prestige Sinks
- Raised the stakes of bidding Prestige in order to claim the Prince’s Favor. (now everyone pays what they bid, regardless of if they successfully stole the Prince’s Favor.) This still needs work, as a player who has run away with Prestige gains can still powerully affect gameplayer, but a) that’s what Prestige literally represents and b) a table that allows a single player to cultivate too much Prestige is creating its own problem. I actually think this is a self-correcting issue that’s very much in keeping with the Vampire setting, but if it creates too many fait accompli games, it’ll need some addressing.
- It’s easy enough to acquire Prestige, but it’s still a bit hard to do anything with it that’s not a huge declaration. We need more sinks for “smaller” declarations of using Prestige (which I think the clan mechanics will satisfy nicely).
What’s Next?
Once I’m satisfied with the core game loop and its affordances, I’ll add the clan and Discipline mechanics. Clans and Disciplines create a variety of system effects and informational noise, such as giving one player a bit of information, but calling into question her motive for gaining that information.
But for now, take it for a spin and tell me what you think!
On the “seat” mechanic: Will Clans be player-unique in the final game? That is, will more than one player be able to choose the same Clan? If not, maybe you can come up with some sort of hand sign for each Clan. That might also get around the awkwardness of having to use two hands to signal seat 6, but only one hand for the others.
I believe the clans will be unique per game session, but can’t yet as say for certain. I’d like them to be unique, to guarantee a non-duplicating array of special actions and Trait spreads, but we’ll have to see how everything balances out.
We had originally played with each player _pointing_ at the player who should receive his Prestige grant, but that… was a muddled affair, very difficult to keep straight. I like what you’re proposing here: an unambiguous declaration that takes no additional time to parse mentally.
What about Anarch cards? Will you make cards for that sect as well?
The initial conflict for the essential experience is that of Camarilla vs Sabbat. But adding an Anarch presence certainly sounds like something that could be used to create informational noise and give the players other suspicions to harbor. We’ll see where we can fit them in.