anyway.

Well, thanks :)

I do think this is very cool. I'll use it with the kids to teach them some useful math. So overall, it's an example of something that you just can't do with dice—unless you make an odds/evens distinction, but that skews whether it's more likely to succeed or not.

It seems to me that the pool needs to be somewhat small, or the resolution could drag out for a long time. For example, if we both have six quarters, chances that all of them turn up tails for one of us (and therefore fail to See the quarter of the other) are only 1/64. Contrary to Dogs, coins are only used up when you Take The Blow, so even with three quarters, I statistically only lose a coin every 4 exchanges (it takes an average of 8 tosses to come up with three tails, and since we both toss and compare, we should get there every 4 tosses).

So it seems to me that balancing the different amount of coins will be the biggest challenge.

UNLESS you ignore those coins that are tied for highest coin, in which case it would all work out much differently, and suddenly the smaller coins become much more important.

Would you give people the option of activating traits for extra coins during the resolution?

Overall, thanks for another example of creative mechanics. You probably have already thought this all through, anyway :)

- Christian

Yes, you ignore tied high coins.

The initial pools will range from say $0.35 to $0.70. In this range, you don't have enough quarters for them to really dominate anyway - they come up tails too often. A quarter-heavy pool will hit strong when it hits, but miss a lot; a dime-heavy pool will be more reliably good.

(This is cool for this particular game for game-specific reasons. Don't ask! I'll tell when I'm ready.)

I haven't decided about adding coins to your pool mid-conflict. It depends how the coin economy works out overall; I have a few ideas to try out before I decide.

Oh, you *so* do not get to be designing two cool games at once.

Talk about raising the bar.

yrs—
—Ben

So here's a weird thing. This game comes on me, and I'm like - dude, this doesn't feel like a practice game. But the timing is all wrong, on account of Red Sky AM. What gives?

And then I'm like - Ohhhh... I get it. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And now I'm like - dude, two games? Crap.

Well, cool. I had been thinking about how to make a not-so-linear version of the Dogs system, and of course, your version is great. I think re-rolling (or tossing) during the conflict gives people more of a sense of suspense, because you don't see right from the start that, with a low roll all over, you've basically already lost (unless you have escalation in place to help with that, which is why Dogs works so well).

With coins being involved from the start, this almost feels like it's asking for a "bidding" or "investment" kind of approach, where people determine at the conflict outset how much they care and want to invest, and then lose the discarded coins.

Anyway, much rambling, little point. Thanks for sharing :)

- Christian

And now I'm like - dude, two games?

Vincent, remind me to kick you in the shins next time I see you.  Maybe that will help make me feel better about not being as awesome a designer.

yrs—
—Ben

Maybe you ought to hold off on kicking me in the shins until my two games are more than talk and bull.

My shins would thank you!

aww MAN, the Spare Change system is slickity-slick, Vincent!  Now, this would marry so INCREDIBLY well with a street-level magic game...something like "Knights of the Road, Knights of the Rail" meets Downtown New York City with a fist full of "Fisher King".

OH, also PS, here's the perfect cup for 'casting':
http://www.nycup.com/item3.html

(slogan on the side is SOO apropos for a group of homeless heroes thanklessly protecting the unknowing public...)

Further playtesting reveals exactly what to do with those tied high heads: turn them face-down.