Mutiny Design Diary

I haven’t posted about my game designs lately. Today, I’m going to write about a micro game called Mutiny that I designed recently. Some friends and I are starting a game publishing company called Moon Yeti, and we wanted something we could take to Gen Con this year. Here’s a diary of how the design developed.

The Plan

Mutiny started with a discussion at a Moon Yeti meeting that went something like this:

“Hey, we should get business cards.”

“We’re a game company, we should use playing cards for business cards.”

“Yeah. Maybe we should make a game on the back side of them.”

“Good idea. How about Win, Lose, Banana, Boatswain?”

“Eh...Needs some work.”

From the start, Mutiny was designed as a game that would go on the back side of the Moon Yeti business cards. This presented a few challenges:

1) There are 4 partners in Moon Yeti, so the game must be playable with exactly 4 cards and no additional components.

2) When you hold a card in your hand, other players will be able to see which card you’re holding, since they can see the name on the business card side.

3) Our business cards represent us as a company. Therefore, the game on the business cards needs to be a great game.

The Concept

The idea I had was that we would put players on a ship. Each player would have a role on the ship, but one of the players would be a traitor, planning a mutiny on the ship. Each role would give a player some kind of special ability in the game. Players would ultimately vote one player guilty at the end. If the mutineer survives that vote, he wins, otherwise, everybody else wins.

There are plenty of hidden traitor games already, so I wanted this to be a different in some way. One thing I really wanted was to have a player’s role on the ship be completely unrelated to whether they are the mutineer. Everybody already knows which role you are (because of challenge 2 above), so “mutineer” can’t be one of the roles. 

Each role has actions that they can use during the game to provide more information or exert control over the votes. The actions needed to be designed such that they would help a player whether or not they were the mutineer. For example, if a player can find out if another player is guilty, it could provide some information for the innocent players or provide cover for the mutineer.

So the new challenge was to provide a hidden identity even though everybody knows your role. The solution I came up with was to use the current time to determine who would be the mutineer. Players would have unique numbers printed on their card. At the start of the game, someone looks at the time, announces the minutes portion, and the player with that number on his card is the mutineer.

I outlined an initial set of roles and actions:

Helmsman: Vote counts as 2 votes

Boatswain: Can look at another player's card to determine if he is the mutineer

Navigator: After votes are cast, Navigator can choose to join the mutiny. His fate is shared with the Mutineer.

Engineer: After seeing all votes, and Navigator's decision, Engineer can change his vote.

I made a quick hand-written prototype and brought it to game night with my friends. We played a game and it was… mediocre. It had some good points, but needed some work.

Iteration and Testing

I went back to the design board (AKA spreadsheet and random emails to friends) and tried to figure out how to take it from OK to great. The first thing I needed to do was to get some more information into the game. Players had no idea who to vote for, since the only person who got any actual information was the Boatswain. I also decided that there needed to be a little bit more structure to the game. The best way to do this was to split the game into two rounds with 2 distinct sets of actions.

Round 1 of the game would help provide information to players. At the end of round 1, players would vote one person innocent. That player would be immune from the vote in round 2. If the Mutineer is voted innocent, he immediately wins. This allowed me to add new actions to bring more information into the open. The vote itself provided some information, and narrowed the field for the second round. 

Round 2 would give everybody another action that would affect the vote. The second round would end with a vote for the guilty player.

I changed the roles as well. I ditched the engineer, because it didn’t fit on a sailing ship. I gave the Engineer’s action to the Navigator, and In the place of the engineer, I added the chaplain, which, incidentally, is my favorite role.

So after the changes, the roles and actions looked like this:

Helmsman:

-Round 1- Cast 2 votes

-Round 2- Cast 2 votes

Boatswain:

-Round 1- Look at another player’s card

-Round 2- Wait until all other votes are cast before casting your own.

Navigator:

-Round 1- Change a vote (cannot change it to himself)

-Round 2- Change a vote (cannot change a vote cast against himself)

Chaplain:

-Round 1- Receive a confession (all players close their eyes and the mutineer opens his eyes) But now, the Chaplain only wins if the Mutineer survives

-Round 2- Forgive 1 vote by taking it away from someone and onto yourself.

Ed Marriott did some graphics work at this point and we made a proper prototype with some art. We playtested this version a bunch of times, and the consensus was that the game had gotten a lot better. It was actually really fun. Players were laughing, having a fun time accusing each other. There were some really great moments and well-played strategies. Nobody trusted anybody, so you were constantly trying to decide who was lying and who was telling the truth.  At one point, we played it three times in a row and still had a blast each time. The game finally had the feel I was hoping for.

Balance

After playing through a number of times, there were a few areas of imbalance that became evident. The Chaplain typically chose to do the confession, so they were almost always on the side of the mutineer. If the Helmsman or the Navigator was the mutineer, they were able to effectively cast 2 votes against the chaplain. The chaplain could then take a third vote onto himself, which was enough for the chaplain to be guilty, and the mutineer could essentially guarantee a win.

So I had to take away some of the power away from the actions. More specifically, I had to force players to trust each other by giving up control of their powerful actions. The new (and final) actions look like this:

Helmsman:

-Round 1: Cast 2 votes

-Round 2: Before voting, choose one other player who gets to cast 2 votes

Since the Helmsman can’t have the control in the second round, he needs to decide who he trusts with a second vote. He can’t be sure that his chosen player will vote with him, so he can’t have complete control. Also, if he’s on the side of the Chaplain, the chaplain can’t vote for himself, so that combo is eliminated.

Boatswain:

-Round 1: Look at another player’s card

-Round 2: Cast vote(s) after other votes are revealed.

The boatswain’s first round action is pretty powerful, but the second round action is not as powerful. The boatswain’s strength is in being the only player able to accuse with some degree of authority, and often sets the direction of the discussion. His second round action is less powerful as a result, while still providing some advantage in seeing how others vote before casting his own vote.

Navigator:

-Round 1: Change one vote (Can’t change to himself)

-Round 2: Choose another player (who didn’t vote for the Navigator) that player must change his vote.

The Navigator has some power in the first round, but he can’t use it to make himself innocent. In the second round, the Navigator still affects the vote, but he can’t determine where the vote gets moved. He still can’t use the action to reduce his own vote count, but he can help an ally or hope to split up some votes. However, he might end up receiving the vote when he forces someone to change their vote.

Chaplain:

-Round 1: All players close eyes, Chaplain chooses a player. That player silently indicates whether they are the mutineer. If they ARE the mutineer, the Chaplain shares their fate.

-Round 2: Forgive one vote by taking it upon yourself.

The Chaplain’s first round action changes so that he’s not always on the side of the mutineer. If he does choose the mutineer to give a confession, the Chaplain will still be on that player’s side. However, the other players don’t know whether he chose the mutineer. The chaplain will always want claim he chose an innocent person, so it can be a challenge to convince the other players that you're not lying.

After testing this version a bunch of times, we decided it was great. The actions were still fun, but much better balanced. We finalized the art and sent it off for printing.

Variants, Good and Bad

The final thing I really wanted from the game was a way to make the game playable with a number that isn’t exactly 4.

For 3 players, the variant was to just remove the chaplain from the game and play as usual, but without an innocence vote. We tested this once, and quickly realized that it really didn’t work all that well. The balance that we had in the 4 player game didn’t seem to be there, and it just wasn’t much fun. We scrapped this variant.

The 5 or 6 player variant is very simple. You just add more players to the game, but they don’t have roles. They are a jury of sorts. They can still participate in the discussion, but they don’t have any actions, and can’t be the mutineer. They still vote in both votes. The balance of the game does change a little bit in this version, since there are more votes being cast. It makes it even more important for the mutineer to fool the other players, since the abilities that change votes are less powerful.

The final product

So that’s how Mutiny came to be. I got help from a bunch of people in design and playtesting. My Moon Yeti partners, Ed, Ben, and Jeremy were all really helpful with my endless stream of emailed thoughts and frequent playtests. Matt Loomis provided some early critical feedback that helped make the game much better. All my playtesters are awesome, especially Mark, Mike, David, and Jon. And of course, Ed did a bang up job on the graphic design, making the game look absolutely awesome.

We’re really happy with how the game plays and we are excited to share it with the world at Gen Con. If you’ll be at Gen Con, find us for a free copy. Follow @MoonYeti on twitter; we’ll periodically tweet our location in the convention center so you can get a copy, or tweet at us if you want to know how to find us. You can also head over to Board Game Geek and download a 1-page print ‘n play file if you won’t be at Gen Con or don’t want to wait.