Following last Wednesday’s playtest of Scoop! (ruleset, video), we recieved the following email from Michelle Pratley -

I thought Scoop! on Wednesday night was brilliant.  Way, way better than one of the earlier incarnations of the game that I played at the ICA.  I have a couple of small suggestions to help make it even better …

* The written instructions could be simplified and more catchily and cleverly presented.
* The teams could be given longer to prepare – ten minutes flew by.
* A stop watch would be incredibly helpful to make sure we reached 20 seconds (this was a problem in our team).
* Some people are too shy to present (one of our team members did so but looked fairly unhappy doing it).
* A helper could give a quick tutorial or written instructions to at least one member of each team on operating the camera (to help avoid problems with the camera).
* The playback session is a bit long and unwieldy.  To avoid this the teams could possibly just film their individual reports, rather than the whole twenty minutes.

My main comment concerns the scoring system and the need to prevent ruthlessly efficient target driven teams (for which I accept all blame) triumphing over amazingly creative magum opus teams.  The aim should be to have fun rather than simply file as many reports as possible. but the current scoring system doesn’t work that way.  Giving people more time to think about the reports might help with this.  Spontaneity could also be induced by requiring all reports to involve a passer-by in some capacity.  I’ll have a think about how the scoring system might be improved and let you know if I think of anything clever.  I also wondered if it might be getting perilously close to copying aspects of the Go game, which is obviously also to be avoided.

These are just my humble thoughts, so feel free to incorporate or ignore as you see fit.

See you next time,

Michelle

Did you get a chance to play on the Southbank last Wednesday? What do you think of Michelle’s comments? Is she right? Send us an email!