Senators - First Playtest

Putting an idea to the test is a scary, daunting prospect. You invest hours of your time into an idea all while the spectre of collapse and failure looms ever present. You won't know if your newly hand crafted chair will work until you sit on it. You won't know if your book is any good until someone reads it.

You don't know if your game works until someone plays it. Even then, it's not even just someone, it needs to be a whole group of people. The wheels can fall off of even the best sounding ideas and concepts once they've been exposed to actual people; Thinking, unpredictable people.

Last week our regular gaming group played the very first iteration of my card game Senators (a placeholder name until a better one comes along). The primary goal of this playtest was to determine whether there was any mileage to the concept; Was there any fun to be had? Can the game actually be played?

I explained to the gang that the version we'd be playing was as basic as it could get; a sponge cake with no flavouring, no icing, no jam and definitely none of those wonderfully colourful sprinkle things.

This is not the cake you'll be eating.

Senators is a game about passing laws. Each player is randomly assigned a 'State Card' which lets them know what their voters like and dislike from an array of 25 different political topics. These topics range from 'Art & Culture' through to 'Religion' and 'Education'.

Each turn the controlling player, the 'Sponsor', randomly selects 5 topics from which they choose 3 to draft a 'bill'. The draft bill is then discussed with the other players: depending on the topics chosen (and their colour) players will either lose or gain voter confidence (the game's currency for winning) according to their 'State Card'.

In addition to this, each player is also issued a secret 'Corporate Card' each turn which, if a vote successfully passes, can generate 'Funding Tokens'. Funding Tokens can be used to bribe other players or make them lose or gain voter confidence.

Once the Sponsor has locked in the bill players vote to pass or reject it, and subsequently work out any gain or loss in funding or voter confidence. Play continues for 10 turns, at which point the player with the highest voter confidence wins.

There are a few more nuances to the rules but the preceding breakdown provides a simplified overview of the game.

So, did it work?

I'm pleased to say that for the most part it did. Play generally proceeded as I expected it would. After a couple of turns the general play procedure had sunk in and interesting things started to occur (which is exactly what I wanted!); Players would pool resources to gang up on a winning player, draft bills that would try to appease as many players as possible and sometimes draft bills that would screw as many players as possible.

What lessons did I take away from the playtest session?

• Turns became stagnant after a while - every turn followed the same cycle: there was no random element. I have already figured out the solution for this - it should make the game more fun and less repetitive whilst also massively increasing the flavour element.
• Spending Funding Tokens should be done at the start of the turn rather than the end. This is especially relevant for the last turn since it alleviates the situation we ran into; The player with the most Funding Tokens could effectively 'buy' the win at the end of the last turn.
• A cap on Funding Tokens may be necessary, or perhaps a penalty for hoarding too much. Currently it is almost nonsensical not to sit on a massive pile of Funding Tokens.
• Change State Cards so that it possible to lose Funding Tokens from them as well as gain them.
• Rework the way in which the colour of a topic affects loss or gain of Voter Confidence. 

With these lessons in mind I am currently working on putting together the second playtest iteration of Senators, ready for another playtest session (ideally with at least one person who wasn't present for this one).

Who said politics was boring?