When: Saturday, Feb 8, 2003, 2pm

Who: Me

Notes:

4-sided representing number of games won is sketchy because I don't know where to put the 4-sided die when I haven't won a game yet.

Spot revision: Everyone starts with their 4-sided die on 4, then takes it down a pip each time they get eliminated from a round

This seems to create too negative of a game. The nature of the elimination means that any given player gets eliminated from the round fairly often, and making teh game total into a negative countdown means battling against a negative at the round level and the game level. They should be striving to reach a goal, not to be the least bad.

Also, the 12-sided die seems to work much better than the 20. It makes the first round more relevant.

Also-also, adding the greater goal solves the problem of too-few rounds before a player can run out of stones. When you only have enough stones to bet full-tilt for two rounds, you have to think much more carefully about calling and folding, and how a bet this round will affect your store for the next round of play.

When betting, you need to keep a careful watch on what color pebbles you have left, so you don't stick yourself with whites and force yourself to reroll when you have to call a bet and you have only whites, or let others force you to reroll by raising because you have only whites left. In this situation, any other player can take a direct hand in your roll. This is really, really cool. Except when it happens to you.

Thinking: Sitting here in front of $50 worth of dice and markers, I'm trying to solve the problem of keeping the game score (the number of rounds won by each player).

Possibilities include:

Using a 4-sided die as a score marker:

• advantages: color coordinated with 12-sided die for easy identification of stray rolls
• disadvantages: not always clearly visible, could get in the way.

Winner takes one of the white stones as a 'prize' for winning the round. When the whites are all gone, the one with the most wins.

• advantages: gameplay changes from round to round as the ratio of black/white stones changes
• disadvantages: one more pile of 'out of play' stones, huge liklihood of ties, difficulty in distributing odd number of stones at the beginning of each round. (Winner gets less? Balance factor?)

No revisions as a result of this playtest. I want to try the current rules in a three-person game before making changes.