The following are questions I hope to answer with prototyping for our (Team 28’s) negotiation game about an emperor and his court of nobles:
- Do players intuitively begin to lie about what resources they need? Does the addition of a privacy screen or similar component create an affordance for lying and increase this behavior?
- A core element of our fun is dipping into the persona of a sleazy used car salesman and ripping off your friends. We want people to start trying to exploit each other from day 1.
- We should experiment with different components that could create this affordance, using a simple, tested ruleset as the base (such as Liar’s Dice or BS). Components could include privacy screens, a reminder card, something to tuck/hide cards under, etc. We could then compare rates of deception to detect the best method.
- I suspect explicit instruction that lying is encouraged is sufficient. However, it would be interesting to see how much that can be reinforced using game components, and the extent to which physical affordances for lying increase the Fantasy fun of our game.
- Are trades with the emperor for resources in high demand (players are making concessions) or in low demand (the emperor is making concessions)? If we adjust the mechanics such that both of these dynamics take place, which one creates a more scheming, raucous atmosphere?
- Our core mechanic relies on the asymmetry between the emperor and his nobles. Depending on how we set up the distribution of resources, this could put the emperor in a position of power or a position of weakness. Managing this power balance is key to keeping negotiations fun.
- To prototype this, we could create a mod of Settlers of Catan where one player is the source of all resources, and try out different power dynamics in that environment. Alternatively, we could build up the required components for a single round of our game (resource and crisis cards), and experiment in an environment closer to our end project.
- I suspect negotiations are most fun when there is a relative balance of power. Still, I would lean towards empowering the emperor: making this role highly valuable encourages coups and leans into the Fantasy element of our game—lording over your squabbling friends is fun, as long as it is temporary
- How different does each round feel from the last when the only things changing are the objectives of the nobles and the resources of the emperor? Do new patterns emerge or does the “good enough” strategy stay the same?
- If negotiations ultimately only have surface-level differences from round to round, we risk our players becoming bored as they recognize the same pattern over and over.
- This largely requires a full prototype of our game to test. However, the fact that trades in Settlers of Catan (which don’t vary much from game to game) remain fun is a good sign.
- I suspect that as long as the number of nobles the emperor needs to sway varies from round to round based on the crises present, this variation in bargaining strength will create sufficient variety. If not, we could explore more persistent changes to the decision space from game to game or round to round.
- Do stable alliances form? How frequently are they disrupted?
- If players form stable power blocs, those players outside the alliance(s) could have a poor game experience. We need to ensure this does not happen frequently.
- This again largely requires a full prototype to test.
- We can look to other games with substantial negotiation (like Twilight Imperium) to reveal that as long as objectives and relative strengths shift regularly, alliances tend to as well, unless the game offers an explicit affordance for long-term cooperation.
