Monster Kart Mayhem Alpha 5 Released

By: Jacob Wood, December 28, 2013 News

It has been a while since I’ve updated you on Monster Kart Mayhem.

Work on the book continues, and we even have a demo version of the new logo available. It’s still in development, but you can get a good idea of where it’s headed.

On the game itself, this revision isn’t as big as some of the others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing–it means we’re honing in on a winning formula. Right now, I’m playtesting ideas which remove the alternating starting player mechanic and the inability to choose which racer to affect when you use the Cause a Complication action.

When playing with younger gamers during Virtuacon, I picked up on some frustration regarding these mechanics. One boy mentioned that he felt like it was “never my turn” because of the way the alternating starting player mechanic caused turns to “skip” from time to time (even though players would later get two turns practically back-to-back).

I also noticed that it was difficult to affect some players because they took a commanding lead, then nobody could Hurt them and only one person per turn could even hope to Complicate them.

Finally, there were occasions where one player would be cloaked by invisibility, so nobody could Hurt them or Complicate them, and that caused other players to have no option other than to Grab a Power-Up.

By removing rules for alternating starting players and causing complications, I hope to address these issues. If there’s no valid target to Hurt or Complicate under the old rules, now a player will have the option of complicating someone else.

Download the latest Alpha version and let me know what you think in the comments.

Last, but certainly not least, check out this Session Report written by one of our playtesters over at RPGGeek. Alex gives a fun and detailed look at a recent session of Monster Kart Mayhem. Thanks for the report, Alex!

P.S. I almost forgot to mention the website’s new look! It’s still somewhat in development, but we’ve upgraded to a more modern template that uses HTML5 and CSS3 for layout, which should mean faster load times and better accessibility.