Deadwood

A board game by Cheapass_Games?.

In summary: some elegant and appropriate mechanics, but a little lacking in depth.

The game board is a network of movie sets; each set has a scene shooting. Each scene will have two types of roles: the stars, who get paid a big chunk of money when the scene finishes, and the background characters, who work for 'scale' and get paid a little every time somebody in the scene takes a turn. Stars tend to require higher a higher talent level (each player is 1-6); you usually only take roles at your exact talent level, although you can choose to lower your level if you really want a role.

Usually a player will take a role, and then stick with it until the the scene finishes, which is based on a die roll, often trying to get 5 or 6 on d6. While it is possible to step out of a role, it usually isn't wise, because you loose talent level. The result is that most turns have no MeaningfulChoices to make - just role the die and maybe collect a buck.

While there are some important choices to make in the game, they tend to be big strategy choices - do you want title roles, or scale? This generally leads to whether you want to big a big talent level or a little one. The smallest decision is usually whether to take a role or not, and which kind in the rare cases where you have a choice in a single scene. If the game could compressed down so that there was such a decision every turn, I think it would be quite fun, but then you lose the delicate balance between stars wanting to get moves over with, and scale wanting to milk them for all they are worth. As it stands, the time between useful turns is a lot less then the offical TimeBetweenTurns.

CategoryGame?