Monday, April 12, 2010

Court d'Capitate: Pawns

Squint hard enough and you can just make out one of the notecards I made for the playtest.
I've made a few vague references to how I playtested Court d'Capitate back around Christmas. Here's the full story: Every year my dad's side of the family (the grandparents, their three children (all happily married) and their ten energetic grandchildren, of whom I am the eldest) all pitches in to rent a big vacation home for several days, so that we can all be together. We arrived the evening of day one, and would be leaving the morning of day five. I had dice, a set of blank notecards in different colors, and the core rules sorted out on my head. On day 1, I spent my spare time brainstorming the cards out in my notebook. I spent most of day 2 actually writing all the cards out, often while holding a week-old baby girl in my left arm (creating a rather striking clash of mindsets- Lady Macbeth quotes spring to mind). On the third day, I massaged my aching, cramped hands while roping various family members into the actual playtesting. And it was good.

At any rate, today I'll be sharing the first half of the information on the cards I made back then. Here are all the pawns I came up with. Pawns are the hapless fools under your control, whether or not they realize it. All pawns have three scores- Luck (How hard they are to kill), Paranoia (How hard it is to get a way with trying to kill them) and Ability (How many of your scheme cards you can attach). Since you have a limited number of Turn Points each round, you want to have a large number of Pawns to attach scheme cards to- that way on future turns you'll be able to do more at once, since pawns can occupy to play attached cards free of charge.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've got to say, seeing those cards laid out makes it a lot more clear what you're trying to accomplish here. Which is to say, this game has got to be hilarious. I'd like to have a chance to play it.

Dagda (Brooks Harrel) said...

You'll get your chance soon- I'll be posting the Scheme cards and the rules in a day or two. You'd have to make the cards yourself, of course.