Saturday night, my local group got together for a full game of 44: A Game of Automatic Fear.
There is so much going right with the game that it's exciting. I can see why the "contribute three details" works. And, I can see that strategy curve where the Director is a bad ass, but then as people team up together they can defeat him. Maybe. This is exactly what I want to happen.
Unfortunately, that curve isn't working right, which is another way of saying the game has a balancing-act problem. As it stands, nearly all playtests to date result in the Director just smashing the main characters to pieces. Win after win results in him gathering far too much Control and Program scores, which results in even greater effectiveness for him.
I've done a couple things help the balance tilt the other way. So far, its ineffective.
So! Here's the latest.
In this most recent playtest, we played 4 hours and had 5 players plus the Director. That worked out very nicely for an evening of play, so I'm inclined to get rid of "longer term" play as offered in the playtest and just say that's it, that's all there is. The downside may be that becoming an Operative happens so late in the game that you don't do much. (So, perhaps it needs to be "easier" to become one.)
I let a friend be Director, which was a nice perspective for me. (Previously, I had never, ever played one of my own games!) At my request, he used a couple new rules. Most importantly, we eliminated the Director's ability to increase any Quality, Agent or Secret by 1 after each player's scene. Instead, he was able to incrase only Agents by 1 point or add a new Agent with rating 1 after each scene. (He was not allowed to just increase Control, Program, or any Secrets by 1 after each scene.) The idea was that increase Qualities in particular made the Director too powerful too quickly. Just up that Control rating a couple times, and he's basically invincible.
So, it didn't really work. He STILL had a nearly invincible Control rating (it reached 8 quickly, then later 10 after which the Director just let it go, becuase it was overkill) and also a very high Program rating. This happened after he rolled well with lots of Agents, and then used Reserve dice to buy up Control and Program. Clearly, it's too easy for the Director to do.
I haven't yet nailed how I'll remedy the situation, but even writing about it now is helping my brain sort it out.
We also tried another rule: We allowed players to spend any Reserve dice to "deny" a specific agent from entering a scene. The idea was that a player can avoid the big bad agent, or maybe one they just want to avoid for "story" reasons. This only happened once during the game, an it was early one. I may have helped some in that case. I do not think it would have done much of anything in a later scene.
Instead, what may have to happen is that 1) The Director is limited to a number of Agents equal to his Program rating (just like Operatives are (see below), 2) BUT ALSO that there is some reasonable cap on Program. Otherwise, the Director just ups his Program and brings on the legion of zombies, er robots again.
ANOTHER ISSUE!
There is no limit in the rules for how many Agents the Director can introduce into a scene/conflict. When I was a player, I kept thinking "HOLY SHIT! That's too many. Stop it already!" Now, we did limit the Director by saying an Agent could not participate in two subsequent scenes. But, by Countdown 2 it didn't really matter. They were legion.
More to come as I think through it. Comments welcome, of course!
Have you played Shadows Over Camelot? It makes liberal use of a very cool balancing mechanic relative to quests. If a card comes into play that would normally be played into a quest that has already been completed, the card instead causes a siege engine to be arrayed in the field facing Camelot. Effectively, what this does is dial up the tension. Players think they're getting out ahead by completing quests, but the cards keep getting played and suddenly they're facing a threat from the siege engines.
You might consider a similar pacing mechanic for 44. Only under certain circumstances does the Control rating get increased. Repurpose the points elsewhere if those circumstances aren't met. Something like that.
Paul, right on. I have no played Shadow Over Camelot, but I have always wanted to check it out.
Anyway, yes, that is very much in line with my vague ideas. For example, the only specific change I've considered is that the Director only adds when he loses to keep him "up" OR (possibly) when he wins to incentify him. It's stupid of me to admit I'm not sure which way to go on that, if any, as they seem pretty contradictory. I just need to think through it some more.