I rewrote the cards of the game by cutting down on the numbers. I aimed for 24 cards, down from about 60 or so. This allowed me to more easily try to get a good balance of cards based on power level, complexity, and tags.

For this playtest I have the following changes

• There are 24 cards. 6 basic, 8 medium, and 8 majors.
• Scheming is not automatic at the start of your turn

Lives Notes

Scheming requiring an action seems fine. One of the Power 3 cards lets you draw an extra Dark Deed, which seemed cool.

I seem to have a lot of Power 2 and Power 3 cards. It’s a bit overwhelming right now. Could just be luck of the draw.

Having the prophecy “verses” be a certain number of cards down in the deck seems to be working well, but the number will need to be fiddled with.

The +1 Hand Size from Demonology level 4 almost feels like enough of a boost by itself. I think the Discipline’s abilities would be better as simpler things. The ability to peek at the top cards of the deck is neat, but it slows the game down too much.

Gnashed Skull’s ability seems weak. I think it would be better as just “Advance a Dark Deed. Dem 3+: Instead, advance all of them.”

The peeking at cards ability on Demonology definitely needs to go. I just don’t want to do it on my turn, it feels so tedious. For simpler Discipline bonuses maybe we could have:

• Increased hand size
• Dark Deeds start with 1 card on them
• You may discard a card from hand

It should be possible to have both “left most” and “right most” prophecy verses active at the same time.

I’m liking the VP cards.

Should the cards from a completed Dark Deed be discarded later in the turn, to avoid messing up the top discarded card activating the prophecy verses.

Feedback

The Power levels match the card’s abilities better.

Joel liked the advance symbol.

Red Mage was not very fun as an ability. It’s also not as fun as the others because it takes an action.

Idea for power: Dark Deeds take one fewer card to complete.

Idea for power: sacrifice a power 2 cards to double-play a different 2 power card.

Plus 1 hand size could be a bonus for

More cards need to have higher popper requirements. Right now getting something to level 2 is almost as good as having it at level 3 or 4, since so few cards.

Idea for power: you may play a Power 1 card of matching Discipline for free each turn.

Idea for power: you may play two Power 1 cards as a single action.

Idea for power: draw a Dark Deed at the start of your turn, if you don’t already have 3.

Idea: give the Dark Deeds a Discipline icon. Then other cards can reference that. Your leveled up Disciplines could be pointer multiplier/adder for Dark Deeds that match Discipline.

I’ve tried adding more popper effects to the basic Advance cards. I’m trying poppers that are worth points at the end of the game. Something like: “Demonology 2+: Set this card aside. It is worth +1 VP at the end of the game.” The wording will need to be updated.

Live Notes

The Dark Deeds are now in an open area for you to draw from. This works well for the free Scheme you get at the start of your turn, if you don’t have the max amount of Dark Deeds. This means that the Scheme action that you take on your turn needs to be updated. It should be stronger. Like you may replace all the shown Dark Deeds

When Kuri played his first “Advance a Dark Deed” card, he placed that card onto the Dark Deed. This is wrong, but is definitely intuitive, so I’ll need to watch out for that.

The popper that let me keep a card for 1VP felt fun to play.

Verse Pacing

The pacing of revealing the second verse feels much slower here. With the current system, if the players play slower and don’t complete Dark Deeds right away, it will take ages for other verses to show up. Since these other verses also speed up the game, a slow game becomes even slower. Maybe a better system for advancing the verses could be found.

Shuffle verse cards into the deck? We tried this and it seems like a good idea, but the setup might be tedious. We also ended up revealing both the 2nd and 3rd verses at the same time, which I didn’t like the pacing of. Maybe it isn’t shuffled like Pandemic, but just explicitly put into the deck. EG: “Place the a random Middle Verse in the 12 position. Then place a random End Verse 12 below that.”

I feel like there should be more poppers at level 1. Spending two turns leveling up a discipline to get the lowest bonus feels like too much investment for some pretty minor effects.

More Notes

It feels like the cool cards are too rare. I think right now they are about 1/3 of the deck.

The “newest Dark Deed” popper bonus is annoying to keep track of.

The timing of the When Complete of Dark Deeds should happen before the stored cards are discarded. Otherwise the “take the top card of the discard pile” reward is too random.

The Dark Deed that lets you search for a card to add to your hand is too weak at needing 5 cards and only giving 3 points.

Post Game Notes

The terminology for store/advanced was confusing. Cards being exhausted didn’t come up often enough to need to differentiate between storing (which can be on non-exhausted) and advancing (which cannot).

Because you fill up with Dark Deeds pretty quickly, it didn’t feel good to go through the phase list and go “welp, not doing that” to the first item every turn.

The “Scheme” action felt like it wasn’t worth doing because you’d be too far behind.

Not a lot of player interaction.

One of the poppers would have slowed me down, and he didn’t feel that was worth it when weighed against moving him forward.

General To Do

Reduce the number of “basic” cards.

Write a new Scheme action that is more fun and powerful.

Write rules for how to put the prophecy verses into the main deck.

Remove the “newest Dark Deed” targetter.

For this playtest I’ve updated the design of the cards:

Any card that has the ability to “advance” a Dark Deed now has an icon for that. This icon means “Take the top card of the deck and store it on a Dark Deed, if the Dark Deed isn’t exhausted. The text next to it will tell you which Dark Deeds are potential targets.

The section at the bottom is for the popper benefits. The number on the left next to the Discipline icon tells you the minimum level that Discipline needs to be for you to get the benefit.

I’ve rewritten the Blood Magic Discipline powers. They are now:

Level 2: *Action:* Exhaust two of your Dark Deeds {$p.Arrow} store a card from hand on a Dark Deed.
Level 3: *Action:* Exhaust one of your Dark Deeds {$p.Arrow} store a card from hand on a Dark Deed.
Level 4: *Free Action:* Exhaust one of your Dark Deeds {$p.Arrow} advance a different Dark Deed. Limit twice per turn.

This playtest I mostly changed some specific cards. The biggest change was taking all the “Basic” cards that were “Advance a Dark Deed” and adding a bit of variation. For example “Advance your left-most Dark Deed” or “Advance your Dark Deed with the fewest stored cards”.

Notes

I like the Dark Deeds that let you level up a Discipline.

The basic advance cards that specify a Dark Deed were a good addition. “Advance your left-most Dark Deed” forces you to puzzle the proper play out a bit more.

The Blood Magic powers at level 2 and 3 seem pretty bad. Most of the time you don’t want to get rid of Power 2 or 3 cards. Maybe there should be another benefit.

The Prophecy pieces could maybe have targeted advancing.

I’m not sure there are enough poppers on cards. The “Basic” cards might need to have some level 1+ basic poppers. Right now I have a hand of 5 and 4 of the cards don’t care that I’ve leveled up certain Disciplines, which doesn’t feel good. Some basic poppers for Power 1 and basic cards could be:

• Target player discards a card from hand
• Target player exhausts one/some/target Dark Deed
• You may discard a card from hand
• You may move a stored card from one of your Dark Deeds to another
• Peek at the top card of the Discard pile. You may discard it. This might be too complex and slow for a Power 1 basic card.

The End prophecy piece that requires the top card to be a Power 3 is kind of disappointing for that late in the game. Power 3 is the rarest. Maybe it can let you Advance TWO Dark Deeds? It should probably just be removed.

Cursed Staff should say “Advance” to be consistent.

The Sanguine Bond boon could be cool, but I’ve never remembered to use it.

I still forget to Scheme.

I am doing a playtest with two friends, one of whom will be doing some design work for me.

Live Notes

Some abilities to look at the upcoming prophecy cards could be cool. A way of manipulating what prophecy pieces will be coming up.

There was confusion with a “Advance a Dark Deed” basic card, where the player stored the played card instead of the top one of the deck.

Witch’s Focus should maybe be an action instead of Start of Turn. It’s probably too strong.

Revealing an extra prophecy piece mid-game seems cool.

The starting prophecy piece that requires you to have 2+ stored cards should be an end prophecy piece.

Lost Soul and Extracted Heart boons are basically the same boon, but they’re different power levels and one is just better.

There was confusion about arrow cards being optional.

I should add a rule where you can’t finish a Dark Deed if it’s exhausted. But when would it trigger?

Having the very simple “Advance a Dark Deed” cards is definitely good.

It might be worthwhile to bring back cards that care about placement. “Advance your leftmost Dark Deed.” and “Level up your center Discipline”.

Some cards that ready your Dark Deeds would be cool.

Changes I’m testing:

• The new basic cards
• Updated Discipline abilities
• You can only discard 1 card at a time to advance a Discipline

Live Notes

Cards are still too complicated. Anything that says “Choose one” should be Power 3 and rarer.

Not a lot of boons in play. Boons should be simpler and more abundant.

The Dark Deeds need higher card requirements.

The Necromancy ability of “Free Action: Add top discarded card to your hand. Limit once per turn.” is too strong. It lets you just play the same strong card every turn. Maybe change to a Start of Turn effect, or make it an action, or give it a Power level discard cost.

It might be smart to have the Prophecies come out slower, to limit what frontloaded overload.

Only being able to discard 1 card to advance a discipline was kind of limiting. Need to find a way to reintroduce that without the cost being totally nullified by the hand-size based drawing.

Flesh Golem needs a different reward, since drawing cards isn’t as powerful.

Simple boon idea: End of Turn: Peek at the top card of the discard pile. You may discard it.

New Idea: Change Boons to something that you “attach” to a Discipline to upgrade that discipline somehow.

Idea from Joel: You have different decks of different power level cards. You can only draw from more powerful decks when your Disciplines get to a high enough level.

Things To Try Next

Add more Boons and make them simpler.

Make the Power level 1 and 2 cards simpler.

After the last playtest I’m trying out the following things:

• Removing Curses entirely from the game
• Updating the global prophecies so that they don’t force you into specific Disciplines
• Changing the end of turn “draw a card” to “draw up to your hand size”. Going to try hand size of 5.

Live Playtest Notes

It might be cleaner for Dark Deeds to only have one threshold. We can award 1 point per stored card on uncomplete Dark Deeds at the end of the game.

I feel like I’m getting a bit of AP with the hand I currently have. With the Global Prophecies currently awarding one stored card for Necromancy, and another for a Power 2 card, I’m really incentivized to play a Necromancy Power 2 card last. This might be a fun choice, but it could also make people freeze because they’re trying to play the “perfect” hand too much.

I forgot to Scheme again. Dan had an idea to have a round tracker, and make deed drawing part of that. Have everybody do it at once woudld make it easier to remember I think.

Blood Magic’s Start of Turn effect at level 2 is currently: Discard a card => draw a card. This might be better placed after the drawing up to hand phase.

The card Constricted Heart lets you force a player to discard a card. With the hand size drawing, this doesn’t feel as powerful. It should be a random card, or two cards.

I really like the hand size drawing. It might become a problem with advancing high level Disciplines, because you can discard three 1 Power cards and it’s not really a bad thing. I could perhaps limit how many cards you can discard to advance a Discipline.

Cruel Focus should just say “Initiate 2 Dark Deeds”.

Possessed Focus has mismatched Disciplines.

I think Black Devil should be cut. As a Free Action it’s too limiting to other players.

I still feel like the game needs more simple cards. “Initiate a Dark Deed. *Blood Magic 2+*: Store this card on the same Prophecy.” I might make one for each of the Disciplines and do like 5 copies of each.

Insidious Charm is cool but is too strong. Maybe it should be a random card.

Dan’s Feedback

He likes the Global Prophecies in the middle. Adds replayability. Icons would be good to help legibility.

If all Prophecies are End of Turn effects, just add a new Prophecy Phase where you do the Prophecy steps.

There was confusion about the Dark Deeds having both a low and a high breakpoint on the Dark Deeds.

He’d like more chain reactions.

Disciplines might take too long to come online.

He didn’t notice or “miss” the removal of Curses. Neither did I, so I think they’re gone.

Disciplines could be more rewarding when you advance them.

I’m trying out a new idea. Instead of each player having up to 3 Prophecies each, the game itself will have 3 Prophecy cards. They will remain in play during the entire game.

Players will now store cards on Dark Deeds, which will be worth points at the end of the game.

The global Prophecy will list ways that players can store cards on Dark Deeds.

The goal is to streamline the Start/End of Turn effects you have to remember because they’re static throughout the game. This will also, hopefully, increase replayability.

For the Dark Deeds I’m going to add “When Complete” bonuses to them, which I think will be fun.

Live Playtest Notes

It might be easier for all Prophecy effects to be End of Turn effects. It could be its own phase gameplay.

Global Prophecies that reward specific Disciplines for being higher might not be the best. It really forces you into one Discipline, which might be counter to what you want to do.

Prophecies with conflicting requirements aren’t fun. In this playtest one is saying “If your Blood Magic is highest” and the other says “If your right discipline is your highest”.

Some Free Action prophecies might be fun. They would need to have some kind of cost.

Top card of the deck is 2 or greater could be a fun one.

There might need to only be two prophecies. Checking three things every turn might be too much. The problem is that adding a third Prophecy increases the number of permutations by so much. Maybe a third Prophecy could be a non-turn effect. Like a scoring mechanic, or once-per-game action all players can take, or a global goal similar to Longest Road.

Blake’s Feedback

Once you’re out of cards, it is very hard to get more cards. Maybe I should add more of the “Draw a card” poppers.

Blake didn’t place as many cards, just based on our starting hands. He drew all curses.

Are Curses worth it?

Card Goals

One of the things I’ve done to help guide myself is set some targets for the game, in terms of what kinds of cards will be in the final deck. I have set some card goals, which I’ll list below. This will likely change through playtest, but they are good guiding star for which cards I should write.

I want the game to have 96 cards total. This fits a size of box on The Game Crafter quite well.

I want the game to be 5 player, so that’s 5 reference cards and 15 Discipline cards.

I want to have 20 Prophecies, which means the main deck of cards needs to have 56 cards.

With those 56 cards I have certain targets I want to hit, based on attributes of each card. They are

• Discipline: Blood Magic, Necromancy, or Demonology
• Power: Each card has a power number, from 1 to 3
• Complexity: How much mental load the card requires. I score them as Simple, Medium, or Complex
• Type: Cards can be either Boons (permanent buffs), Curses (temporary debuffs), or Actions (instant effects)
• Tag: Cards can have either the Item, Spell, or Creature tag

With these in mind, I give each of them a goal. For example I want 45% of the cards to be Actions, so I need to have 25 Action cards. I want 33% of the cards to be Necromancy, so that’s 18. I want 20% of the cards to be Complex, so that’s 11.

With those targets, I can look at a breakdown in my spreadsheet and know where my gaps are.

I did a playtest yesterday with a new set of cards. I haven’t met all my goals yet, but the game was still good.

Feb 10th Live Playtest Notes

“If you have 5 or more cards in hand” => Does the card that says this count?

So far I have seen a few cards that allow me to ready a card, but not enough cards that care about cards being ready for that to matter. Either the “ready a card” needs to be reduced, or the “exhaust a card” needs to be increased.

Draw a card effects for Boons that are Start of Turn slow the game down. It’s probably worth switching them back to End of Turn, even if it means that not all boons trigger in the same phase.

A symbol for Start of Turn and End of Turn would be nice. Dawn and Dusk somehow? Sun and Moon?

His Approach Will Soil the Feather and Power Will Flow In Cracks both do essentially the same thing. Cut one.

The Prophecies that require you have level 3 in a Discipline are quite daunting to get early game.

The Prophecy that lets you store a random card from hand on it is fun.

I had a Curse that is removed if the player advances their Necromancy. It was a fun decision to wait to play that card until their Necromancy was higher, so that it would be harder for them to meet that requirement.

The Prophecy that triggers when you discard a card from hand seems like it’d be hard to pull off consistently.

A card’s discipline should match its popper. Some cool cards would be neutral types that have 2 or more poppers.

Condemned Rune needs to have more power. It shouldn’t be exhaustable by another player. And maybe as a free action you can exhaust it to ready another card?

I feel the pressure of not being able to afford to advance my disciplines due to too few cards. More cards that draw cards might be good. Perhaps more as actions than as Boons.

The She Who Cries Will Sleep prophecy that gives you 1 stored card for every 2 Boons is cool. Having a breakpoint (2) is fun.

Might need to have more Prophecy cards in the game.

The Prophecy cards could be printed horizontally, with a section on one side for cards to be stored vertically and on top of the Prophecy. This would be instead of tucking them under. I think this will make adding new cards easier, and counting stored cards easier.

Blood Will Flow as Milk doesn’t need the arrow in it. “You may store a card from hand here.”

Effect idea: return stored cards from Prophecies to the Prophecy owners’ hand.

The cards with tough poppers that let you store on each of your Prophecies feel really fun to pull off. Maybe the requirement should be something more malleable, something that could change from turn to turn.

The cards need a better design. Something like the Shards of Infinity sections would probably be good.

Graves Shall Blossom might need to be fewer cards.

Post Game Feedback

Cards on completed Prophecies should be discarded.

Not a ton of cursing going on. More curse cards?

“I could curse you, but I have these actions that make me stronger.”

Demonology’s bonus could be curse focused. “You may play one Curse as free action per turn.”

Lives Notes

The Start of Turn reminder for getting a new Prophecy seems to be an improvement. The other players aren’t properly moving it around in their Prophecy area.

The cards, in general, are too wordy. There should be more simple ones. “Store a card on a prophecy. Popper: Store this card as well.”