PAX Unplugged 2024

Yesterday was my annual tradition of attending PAXU to do some playtesting with Unpub and try to get any attention at all from publishers, so today is the annual tradition of breaking down how it went.  The game I brought was Werewolves of London, and it was a great success - the people who played Under a Violet Moon last year mostly liked it, but the people who played Werewolves this year really liked it.  Overall I came out feeling like this is much closer to done compared with how Violet Moon felt after a busy Unpub morning (still a few bits to polish, but no major changes).  Here were some specific things that stood out from playtesting:

• Now that I've finally gotten to see the game all the way from start to finish, I can say with confidence that the duration is about an hour.  Slightly longer than I was aiming for, but it felt right during play - long enough to have some interesting back-and-forth, not so long it overstays its welcome.
• Everyone who played felt like once they were a couple turns in and got the basics down, everything felt very intuitive.  I even had some unintended semi-unguided testing, as I got wrapped up in a side conversation at one point and the players went through about one-and-a-half rounds without me hovering there, with no difficulty.
• The theme clicked right away, and people wanted to be vicious toward each other
  
• It always felt like there were multiple viable strategies to succeed, and players found it really interesting to think about whether they should focus on spreading out vs focusing on a few territories, and how to work endgame bonuses into their plans (whether for their own benefit, or just to prevent opponents from getting bonuses).
• This was the first time that I got to see the new combat mechanic in action, and it worked exactly as intended and felt fair to players - someone who was willing to risk more had a better chance of winning, but was never guaranteed
• Players in the first group suggested an improvement to the rule for sabotaging opponents' investments, and it worked out great when I implemented it later on
  

No luck with publishers unfortunately - only got one meeting, and they quickly concluded that the production was heavier than they were interested in (and probably the gameplay too, but it was a short meeting and we didn't get into that as much).  So I might want to veer toward publishers who do heavier games, even if the gameplay itself is solidly midweight.  But in any case I'm not doing any more pitching until Ion Awards are done, and probably also Cardboard Edison (and I've worked in whatever feedback they give me as well).

And in the meantime I will once again have the time and brainpower to get back to serious work on Dolomball...