Feeling the wet (d)ark
Benjamin Keightly and Morgan Dontanville were both kind enough to blind playtest ‘Ohana Proa recently. Both played 5 player games. Both had similar and related complaints and praise. Paraphrasing and summarising heavily:
- The early game is too procedural
- The game doesn’t get started fast enough
- The first third of the game seems like setup for the real game
- It takes too long
- Kahunas are wonderful (A neat quote here that I hope the poster doen’t mind me revealing: Nowhere is your famous line about torquing the incentive grid more palpable than with the way kahunas operate. Every one of us thought they were fantastic.)
- Income rates were far lower than usual for here (eg about 2-3 whole turns lower)
- The turn order auction is too chaotic
- The network is too large
- There are too many currencies and currency bookkeeping tasks
The first four complaints clearly form a set which can likely be summated as Slow Start. The lower income is probably explicable by inexperience. The last three also seem a set which I’ll generously lable Opaque/Confusing.
After getting over the traditional they’re criticising my baby reaction I think they have a point or three and likely very good ones. They’ve made a variety of proposals for addressing the Slow Start none of which appeal directly as they lose other qualities I still (wrongly?) feel significant. Ben also has a bunch of quite credible suggestions for the Opaque/Confusing which make sense but also head off in the woods from the problems I’d like the game to address. It will take a bit to digest that impedance.