The Emperor’s Heart- Long term play

Though the game is maximized for short term play, I know some folks will want to play a campaign to free the Empire from all 7 Immortals.

So here’s the idea for the rules. First Immortal gets four base dice in conflicts. After you kill or remove him, the next one gets five, then the next six, etc. The last Immortal gets a whopping ten base dice in every conflict.

How can you win? Keep snagging Resources. Each Resource counts as an additional Trait for your Faction. Don’t forget to Go All Out- a lot of heroes will die, but that’s how wuxia works.

I plan on having a total of six Scenario cards, with 3 Resources on each- meaning the hardcore group will have played at least 17-18 sessions and earned as many Resource Traits. Because the games tend to be short, this probably could be done in half as much time easily, or even less if you play ridiculous marathon sessions with games back to back.

Oh, wow

As I’ve been reading the playtest reports and thinking about my own games of The Emperor’s Heart, something occurred to me about Award Tokens as pacing.

They measure how many times someone contributed something awesome that someone else at the table bought into.

So if your group is really good at tossing out things everyone else loves?  Those Award Tokens are going to disappear quickly, and the game will end sooner as you’ve been making completely awesome play for each other.  It will always be short and sweet, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, given how easy it is to simply set up another game right after it.

If your group is bad at hitting each other’s buttons?  Then the game will slow down until someone (or hopefully everyone) figures out how to give each other awesome story.  Then it’ll speed to conclusion.  I’m not sure I could imagine how to help this group out more, between using Drama Cards as Flags, “What if?” as direct input, and Award Tokens to let each other know what they like.

Assuming everyone is awarding honestly, I can at least say some portion of fun has to be had in any given session of play.

This has lots of implications I’m going to be thinking about during playtesting.

The Emperor’s Heart- more playtesting!

Last night I finally got to play with 4 people in a game!

It was great to check out the resource economy as well as some fascinating differences in player demographics.  To context- I’ve played with 2 casual roleplayers, 3 traditional roleplayers, and 2 non-gamers who were writers to date.  So far, the traditional players have had the hardest time with setup and rules, the biggest sticking points being Award Token flow, creating scenes, as well as looking to each other’s Flags.  I’m looking forward to more play to really get a better idea on that kind of thing.

That aside, I’m starting to get ideas for how to a) teach the game and b) demo it.

Expect an actual play report some point in the near future, and yes, finally a damn update to the rules!

Emperor’s Heart Playtest Tracker

I should probably start a link list of AP reports for playtesting. As more folks write up reports, I’ll link them from here:

The Library
The Princess
A Pair of New Lungs
Uh… who needs names anyway?
Love & Death in the Imperial City
The Imaginary Heroes Project- Emperor’s Heart part 1

The Emperor’s Heart, playtesting

Want to help playtest my game? Here’s the rules and basic cards you’ll need to print out (or at least scrawl legibly on index cards) to play.

What I’m looking for at this point in playtesting is whether the rules work or not. Obviously, if something is really horribly written and you can’t even parse how to play it (or something crucial left out), please let me know. But otherwise, don’t sweat the writing style, layout, etc. since all of that will probably see change later down the road.

Feel free to either post actual play reports online (and send me links) or email me directly at yeloson at an address that ends with dot net and has earthlink before it.

Also, if you play, please send a list of the names of everyone who has played! I want to credit my playtesters.

Update: Newest version of the rules (12/20/07) updated! Alas, I’m working on a friend’s archaic PC and can only save it as a Word Doc at the moment.

The Emperor’s Heart playtest rules (12.20.07)

Drama Cards, set 1

Drama Cards, set 2

Outlaw Faction Cards

Hero Archetype Cards

Scenario Cards

Villain Cards