Carcassonne: Taverns

[JPutt927]

Hello all!
It's time again for another expansion of mine. So without further ado...



Here's a link to the rules and tiles: http://www.mediafire.com/?6lfddqdigcdb4

As always, keep your thoughts coming!

[henrysunset]

I very much enjoy the theme, along with the intent to intoxicate followers.

I do worry that the Ale tokens and the skipped turn mechanic is both too fidgety and too damaging.  The most limited resource in the game is turns, so a mechanic which can cause another player to skip that many turns feels too powerful.

I don't think you explain what happens if you place a meeple on a 4 point mini city, does the meeple get drunk when immediately returned to hand?

I would prefer if you pick one of the two mechanics, either intoxicating the meeples on the board, or giving a token to each player with a follower in the vicinity of the tavern.

Tom's alternate mechanic:
When you place a tavern, each player receives an ale token for each meeple surrounding the tavern, including the player who plays the tavern.  On a players turn, they must return one ale token to the general pool and skip their turn to recover from the hangover.

(why I think even the player who plays the tavern should get affected?  Because the card needs to be roughly equally balanced to any other carcassonne tile.  If the player who plays the tile were exempt, it would be on average better than other cards since it has both the normal effect for you, plus a harsh negative effect on others.)

[The Juts]

Nice.

[Carcking]

I like the general mechanic of it, but I would worry also about the loss of turns. That is a harsh one.
I like Tom's idea about sobering up by paying tokens back though.

Maybe there is a negative affect of the tokens at game end for the player with the most. And the players can relinquish their majority ownership by skipping certain turns to pay back tokens. Then it becomes an option that the player can weigh out.

[JPutt927]

It's possible that my style of play is different, or that I may partake in generally larger games overall, but I actually didn't find the loss of a turn to be all that devastating. With that said, it's a mechanic that could be easily tweaked. For example, instead of losing turns for every 2 tokens, it could be changed to every three. Or, instead of losing an extra turn every two tokens, a player would lose a steady 1 turn every two tokens. Or, I go in a different route and do something along the lines of what carcking suggests.

Maybe there is a negative affect of the tokens at game end for the player with the most. And the players can relinquish their majority ownership by skipping certain turns to pay back tokens. Then it becomes an option that the player can weigh out.

This idea actually was tossed around when I was creating the expansion. I like this idea. What led me in the other direction however, was that it seemed players never actually ended up getting THAT many ale tokens in a game. Therefore, they weren't really losing all that many turns in the first place. I'd like to hear some more thoughts before anything gets changed.

[loganmann1]

Nice work JPutt.  I think the theme is a great fit for Carcassonne. 

I really like the affect of the tavern as is.  I like the half strength affect.

I also don't mind the chance to miss a turn but as has been mentioned above I think it might be a little much to lose increasingly more turns without anything you can do about it.  I would lean toward either a) providing an additional opportunity/mechanic to get rid of ale tokens or b) doing something like has been suggested above by just losing 1 turn every 2 tokens. 

Part of my thought on that is purely not liking the thought of losing a bunch of turns in a row but also the possibly confusion in remembering who all is missing turns and how many i've missed so far (though that could be taken care of by simply flipping tokens I suppose).   Also as the rule is I could see someone getting frustrated as they are losing two turns and while missing them pick up two more tokens and then have to lose an additional 3 turns.  Not a frequent chance I'm sure but boy would that stink.

In your rules sheet:
In the first example the yellow player is playing a tile that is connecting 2 disconnected play areas, I don't care, its an example, but technically it visually doesn't make sense.

Do builders get an ale token as well or just lose their extra turn bonus?  Above it says followers get an ale token which wouldn't include builders, but I wanted to clarify since it says builders are "vulnerable" the same way it describes mayors and wagnos which are followers and I'd assume would get ale tokens.

[JPutt927]

Alright, so I had a good chance to playtest this one last night while analyzing it quite a bit. As it stands right now, I firmly don't believe the loss of a turn is all that devastating. However, I will be changing the "loss of an increasing number of turns" rule. Instead, for every second ale token a player receives, that player will lose 1, and only 1 turn. I'll try to get that updated in the rules as soon as possible!  

Here's the updated rules reflecting a few changes...  http://www.mediafire.com/?dnat0guf1j4ef7v

[Talisinbear]

I'd simplify this one

Make it that meeples in the eight are drunk 1/2 points -- Done

That rids the set of tokens which don't fit the others in the game, and cleans up the tiles which look cluttered with Tavern and token art added.

Just My 2 Cents