Now that I've finished shipping out 1400 copies of Marrying Mr. Darcy, I'm starting to think about the Emma stretch goal. During my Kickstarter campaign, I set a "stretch goal" that at $40,000 I would release a beta test Emma version of Marrying Mr. Darcy. I've been thinking about what form this might take. My best guess is it will be a substantial expansion pack, maybe around 75 cards- all new Event deck, and all new playable characters and suitors.
I've been thinking about who my playable characters should be. There are a smaller number of single women in Emma looking for husbands, so to make the game playable by 6 players I might need to get creative. Here are my current ideas. Emma Woodhouse: Emma might be the only Austen heroine in all the novels who really doesn't need to marry. She is completely financially set and has no need to marry what so ever. I was thinking of making Mr. Knightly the only suitor she could marry, but for high points. I think he'd also have to be quite difficult for her to get, having to earn many character points. (The story is about her growth after all...) Additionally, I feel like Emma should be able to interfere with other players somehow, maybe by being able to swap their character points around if she sacrifices a card from her hand? Harriet Smith: Poor Harriet. She falls in love with everyone and ends up with a broken heart more often than not. I feel like she should get decent marriage points for everyone (like Charlotte) and maybe have a +2 Friendliness bonus at the start of the game. Top suitor is Robert Martin. Jane Fairfax: The accomplished Jane can marry anyone, though her top points are for Frank Churchill. If she doesn't marry, she automatically becomes a Governess at the end of the game for 8 points. (Or something, I haven't done any math yet.) If this happens, perhaps her reputation points count double at the end of the game. Augusta Hawkins/Elton: This gets a bit tricky. We don't meet Augusta until she arrives midway through the book married to Mr. Elton, who should start the game as one of the suitors. Perhaps an Event card in the deck could determine whether this marriage takes place before the proposal stage? Perhaps if they marry mid-game, their strategy changes to ensuring Jane becomes a governess or meddling in other's affairs... Miss Bates: Austen uses Miss Bates as a warning about becoming an Old Maid. I feel like Miss Bates will automatically become an Old Maid at the end of the game, but gets +5 to her old maid roll. Since she can focus on acquiring whatever character points she wants, she should be on a pretty even playing field with the other players. Additionally, since she is financially poor, the other players will have to give her charity in the form of Character cards at certain points in the game. Mr. Woodhouse: Emma's father does not want Emma to ever marry and leave him by himself. This is his greatest fear. He also tells Emma that she must stop matchmaking as it is very disruptive to his company. I think Mr. Woodhouse gets 5 points for every other player that is NOT married at the end of the game. So perhaps when he is instructed to draw and play a character card he instead removes one from one of the other players. Mr. Woodhouse would probably only be used for 5-6 player games. Other possible playable characters include Anne Taylor though the book basically begins with her marriage to Mr. Weston and she has never struck me as all the interesting. Suitors would include Robert Martin, Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightly. (And possibly Mr. Weston) There is also Emma's sister Isabella and Knightly's brother John, though they are married well before the book begins and makes things confusing with more than one Knightly available. Do you have other ideas? Please comment below! Feedback and ideas are appreciated.
9 Comments
4/21/2014 03:14:37 am
These seem like great ideas (though I disagree about Mrs. Weston being uninteresting :)
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Erika
4/21/2014 04:45:31 am
Hey Ian, that is really helpful feedback. A good point about Miss Bates. If she can't marry, she has no need to collect cunning cards. Perhaps on her turn, for every 3 points of Cunning she discards she can guilt all other players into charity and collect cards from everyone. (Or something.)
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Dick Butler
4/21/2014 05:56:13 am
I don't know how to say this exactly, since I don't know what your thoughts were in conceiving an Emma expansion to your game, but I would offer this: (1) adding characters from Emma to the marriage theme of the original would be interesting, if players didn't mind mixing the characters from the two books. I think it would add to the replay value of the game and would be loads of fun, even hilarious. (2) however, since the theme of Emma has more to do with Emma's well-intentioned meddling (and what she learns from it), I wonder whether a different kind of game-play might make your expansion fresher and more appealing. I mean having the goal of the players be undoing the ill-advised match-making attempts of Emma. Maybe at the start of the game, each player has been matched with an awful choice of partner, and the winner is the one who successfully gets matched with a more suitable partner. I'm not sure how this could be done, but I think it would be a better and more thematically appropriate expansion. Does this make any sense?
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4/21/2014 06:20:34 am
That sounds really fascinating. As an inveterate AU fanfiction reader, I would love to have the ability to combine expansions between books (and for suitor-specific cards, I would imagine you could get around that fairly easily in the same way they are dealt with for something like Georgiana getting the Darcy proposes card - just discard and draw an new Event - I don't recall too many of those. And maybe the "Bingley goes to London" could be adapted to "Frank goes to London to get his hair cut" or something similar?)
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Erika
4/21/2014 06:32:51 am
Hi Dick, thanks so much for the note. I've had lots of interest in having Emma/P&P mashups ever since I announced that stretch goal, so I have a feeling I'm going to have to figure out a way to make that work, probably as a variant set of rules at the very least. (Also, Literary Hunks and Heroines expansion could be awesome too.) Meddling is definitely something I want to incorporate, but haven't quite figured out the right mechanics that work with the established mechanics of MMD game. I think it makes financial sense to release Emma as a hefty expansion (100 cards double tuck box?) as opposed to an entirely new game both for print costs and the fact that my audience is probably going to overlap almost entirely with MMD. But the option to just make a whole new game is there as well. I think the right balance of new mechanics for keeping it fresh as well as making it financially viable are key.
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Kit
5/8/2014 08:23:08 pm
I LOVE this. I've just spent all evening playing several very enjoyable rounds of "Marrying Mr. Darcy" and I just wanted to find out if there were expansions. . . so I'm very excited to hear you're thinking about Emma! It sounds like there are already many wonderful ideas here so far, and I don't really have any suggestions other than I would eventually love to be able to play a great mash-up game.
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Erika
5/9/2014 02:01:57 am
Hi Kit, thanks for the note! Glad you are excited about the Emma expansion. I started putting all my card ideas into an excel spreadsheet last week. I think Northanger Abbey would be really fun and it would be easy to do a Haunted expansion for that one and make the whole thing really Gothic feeling. Sign up for the contact list if you want to be informed about expansions etc...
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Kristel
7/8/2014 05:34:01 pm
I love love love love LOVE Marrying Mr. Darcy! My roommate and I bought the movie Austenland and watched it while playing Marrying Mr. Darcy, it was so much fun. We also talked about expansions and how great it would be to combine the different characters from Jane Austen's books just like a lot of people have already suggested! There are so many choices of characters and a lot of potential expansions. Sense and Sensibility would have some fun characters to add.
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Erika
7/9/2014 12:24:50 pm
Thanks Kristel, glad you enjoyed the game. My top 2 books to tackle next are Northanger Abbey (with possible Haunted mansion options) and Sense and Sensibility. Also, would love to do a literary heros and heroines with all our favorite public domain characters. Dickens, Austen, North and South, Sherlock Holmes, etc...
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Erika SvanoeMusician, conductor and game designer. Archives
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