G’Day you,

While traveling to Perth by way of Dubai, I’ve been working on the spy cards for “Shaken, Not Poisoned”. Here’s another one, Kitty Abounds:

So as you can probably see, I’m trying to get a poker card motif going. Going to be using black for male spies and red for female spies. I’ll probably put some colors behind the spies for the target and protect versions of the card, maybe put their favorite drinks on the cards as well for the attack versions of the card.

Hoping to get most of the rest of the cards sorted out next week. Not sure if I’ll be able to hit the 1st of December to get this ready, as my brother’s wedding is this Saturday. Should be a good time.

Hope you like the card, let me know what you think about it in the comment section below.

G’Day there you.

Ok, following the round start and basic rules write up from yesterday, here are the turn rules, and some description about why the rules are the way they are.

After a lot of thought, I’m trying to simplify this game as much as possible, while still making it interesting after multiple plays. I’m aiming for a party game sort of thing which will be easy to learn, but hard to master. I’m hoping that this game will be most interesting in guessing which spies are after each other, which spies are protecting each other, and trying to figure that out through acting as spies around the table, watching were player’s spies are moving, their body language,  and what everyone is talking about. You can feel free to accuse people of wanting to attack each other.

Thanks to http://christmasstockimages.com/

I think that having attacks only possible after everyone has had their turn 4 times will hopefully bring more tension into the game, as spies might miss their window to attack, and you can watch where spies move to try and figure out who they will be attacking. I thought that just having the spies attack after each turn would have too much setup for very little game play. I’m interested to see how spies would attack as well. Would they wait until defenders show their hand and reveal their defense cards, or will they attack straight away? I’m also wondering if I should let a few spies be killed before a round is over, so that there’s some knowledge of who is attacking or defending what before the round stops and everything is set up again.

Turn order:

1. The group that started furthermost from the bar gets to have the first move, then play is clockwise from there.
   Each turn, decide which of your corporations spies you want to move. Then move that spy clockwise or anti clockwise, switching the two dance partners around.
2. After each player has had their turn 4 times, everyone close their eyes, and if they want to attack or defend a player, they should put their attack or defend card on the table.
3. Everyone should open their eyes and see what happened.
4. If an attack card is played without a defend card, the spy is killed, the round is over and the corporation that made the kill gets a point.
5. If an attack card is played and a defend card is played, the spy that attacked is killed, the round is over and the corporation that defended the kill gets a point.
6. If multiple cards are played at once, here’s how it will work:
   1. Mutual attacks cancel each other out. Both attacks are discarded.
   2. Attacks on different organizations all happen at the same time. Points are added to the relevant players.
7. If a defend card is played without an attack card, everyone closes their eyes and the player can pick up their defend card to use again.
   If no one is killed, each player then takes their turn again, and play and attempted murder every 4 turns continues until the round ends.

These might change a little, there might be a round end after every 2nd or 3rd kill, so that there’s some meaning to having a spy killed, reduce the amount of setup time versus game time, but doesn’t keep a player out of the game for too long.

Round end setup is basically the same as round start setup, just without figuring the starting position for the characters again.

Round end:

1. The attack and defend cards are reshuffled.
2. Players take turns to pick up a card from the attack deck.
3. Players take turns to pick up a card from the defend deck.
4. Play then begins as before.
5. First Organization to 5 points wins.

Not a whole lot there, might tweak the amount of points needed to win after trying the game a few times, but this looks pretty good so far.

The following rules are probably the most important part of the game, where players need to be placed to attack and defend other spies. This will be the crux of the game play.

Attacking and Defending

Players can only attack if their character or organization is dancing next to their target.
Players can only defend if their character or organization is dancing with the character they are trying to defend.

So players will need to jockey for position but not give away their targets to attack or defend. Players will have a number of turns to get into a position they want. If two spies are moving together, you can probably guess that one is protecting the other. It could be kind of hard to get one of your spies into a position to attack another spy without them being tipped off to your goal. I’m guessing that players can bluff each other as well and say they are going to protect a player when they are really going to attack the player.

Well that’s it for now, thanks for reading, hope these insights into rule creation help other people out there. As always, feel free to leave comments and questions below!

G’day there you.

So, in the last post I wrote the initial design for Shaken, Not Poisoned,  a I think the simplified version of the game is the way to go.

But, I need to have something about poisoned martinis in the game, otherwise calling it Shaken, Not Poisoned doesn’t make much sense.

So here’s the current idea for how cards could work in Shaken, Not Poisoned.

On the dance floor,  there is also a bar, if a character is close enough to the bar, they can be moved to the bar to pick up a drink. Drinks have special powers, allowing you to move extra characters around the board, switch places with other characters,  etc. Drinks can also be poisoned, which could knock your character out, or be assassinated.

The thing that I hope will make this interesting, is that the players will be the ones that will make the deck. Each round, players can pick up 4 cards from their deck, and get to choose 2 they will stock the bar with.

Players take turns to stock the bar with a card. Each card will have the players team name on the back, so players know who poisoned or helped out whom. Cards not used will be discarded. So this should give the player an meaningful choice: should they stock the bar with drinks that will help them, or poisoned drinks.

If you poison the person you are meant to protect, you lose all the points you have collected so far.

So I can see this being a little bit more complicated, but I think it could add a lot to the game. Players can move any character to the bar, so they can make their target drink poison, or they can protect their ally by drinking something that powers them up.

If a player knows their next card placed by another player is poison, and knows who that player’s ally they need to protect is, they can use that poison to remove all the points for the other player.

So I hope this adds another layer of bluffing and information hiding and gathering that people can do playing this game. I’m hoping to see some memorable bluffs and mistakes that come from this.

In terms of teaching this mechanic, it might be good to play a game with just the dance floor, then add the bar and the drinks in later play throughs.

So I’m interested in hearing your thoughts? Could this system be easily broken? Does this sound like fun, or something that is just too complicated? Any drink effects you’d like to see?