Knife, Fork, Spoon v2

Quick followup from yesterday's post, after a playtest:

Hey it works!

I mean, not entirely, the endgame was broken, but god knows I was not thinking as far ahead as the endgame before.

Let me quickly describe the game:

• ended up being 8 people playing
• on a big table, big enough not everyone could reach the cards or see other people's chips easily
• card counting wasn't even counting, people placed the cards out so we could all easily see what had come out
• which was good, felt nice to have an extra thing to chew on, knowing that the odds of any particular card being drawn varied continuously
• the fork & spoon card got played late in all the first few rounds
• a new rule, hastily adopted: on a reshuffle, increase the stake by one. this raised the tempo, especially as some people got out and then the others got richer
• and then it didn't raise it enough, so we went to: on a reshuffle, double the stake. this felt scary. but good scary.
• people were playing fast. i sometimes challenged people on where they'd placed their pieces versus what they'd said, and then got criticised by others for doing so. maybe that's just the natural rhythm of it? i'd like it to be a slower/more tense, though (like Skull & Roses can be)
• i guess unlike S&R, the table didn't focus on a single player's bluff either succeeding or failing. instead there was a reveal & the outcome was either lots of chips but not many. but you didn't really notice where they were coming from.
• there were unclear rules around what happens when you run out of chips, but still have some in your Knife, Fork, Spoon places. we had it that you could stay in til those were gone, but that broke the endgame.
• the endgame was: two players left in, and one was always spreading their chips between all 3 spaces. grinding inconclusive ending, we broke off rather than see it through.

Lots of suggestions of things to change, but what I'm gonna do for next time is:

• make up sheets to go in front of players that look like placemats. Unplayed chips go on the plate, and then get distributed out onto the Knife (left), Fork (right) and Spoon (top) places
• make up a doubling die to show the current state of the raise (and it does double each time)
• buy a load of dried beans to use as counters. maybe these do want to be chips long term to make it easier to manipulate higher stakes, but beans are funnier & cheaper
• instead of reshuffling & raising every time the Fork & Spoon card is drawn, do it whenever the last card of any type is drawn. This should smooth some of the variance in gaps between raises, and means you never know that one card is impossible to place
• possibly this also wants a mat showing the distribution of various cards
• "last gasp": if you're out of beans on your plate, remove all but one bean from your cutlery. these beans leave the game! i'm hopeful this will fix the endgame:
  • fewer beans in the endgame, and a mechanism for them to reduce further in a 1 v 1 showdown.
  • but also removing beans from the game in a way that feel exciting rather than boring or punishing
  • harder to stay in, if you run low of beans and have a few players in
  • but if you make it to the final two, you still have a chance to snatch victory. but it's much less likely. sure, you can safely draw back your bean on your turn - but you can only really get back in the game if you bluff out your opponent.
  • i mean, maybe it won't, or won't be enough.
  • also with this rule, if you have not enough beans, you go all-in and put those in. but maybe if it needs to be dialled up, not being able to meet the stake reduces you to a single bean, rather than being completely out.
• playtest with 4 players. more interested in how it plays for fewer than how it plays for 8, so i don't want to overcorrect at this stage

And things I'm not doing but could do in the future:

• adding cards in between rounds - possibly blind, from another deck
• obviously cards can have powers on them, if they want. like raise & reshuffle could be on different cards, as a obvious step. or...
• maybe this wants to be entirely rethemed
• could have a tuned escalation curve rather than doubling, if it needs finetuning
• maybe the number of beans you start with depends on the number of players playing?
• maybe players choose to raise the stake rather than it happening automatically?
• Ricky wants to throw teaspoons around
• and Alan wants sporks

Anyway, very pleased to have a working game on my hands. And one about which people have been saying things like "it's fun" and "I'd play that again".