Talk:Plutonian Poker

Rearranging Pyramids

In this first draft of the rules, I'm not so sure about the idea of your stacks being static. Since as written a player could keep all their pieces single and then adjust them later. Would the game work better if you could rearrange your pieces freely? In 5 card draw you don't have any room to try for a different hand once you've made enough plays, but the ability to shift them around could encourage going for higher-value pieces.

Obviously there are other rules adjustments that need to be made, but this seems to be the one that adjusts the flow of the game the most. Cleverpun 11:06, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any provisions in the rules allowing for pieces to be rearranged after the game ends. The only time you can stack them is during the game, and once you've stacked something, you're committed to it. If it weren't for this rule, this game would be mediocre, but with this rule the game shines. I liked the static stacks. It gave me some very interesting decisions to think about during the game, and made me think about risk versus reward (just like Earthling Poker). - Cerulean 12:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, having to commit where you put each piece is good and important. Goulo 11:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Glad I didn't second-guess myself then Cleverpun 07:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Scoring Values

My group had a good time with Plutonian poker for five players. Well done. However, we had a good discussion afterwards about the relative difficulty of the scoring combinations and their values. I felt that a full house is only one more pyramid than two pair, while going for a straight kills any other scoring opportunity for that stack if the straight is left incomplete. In other words, being one pyramid short of a straight leaves you with a worthless stack of four, while being one pyramid short of a full house still leaves you with two pair. I suggest reducing the tree and nest scores to 20 each, then in order of difficulty, the others should be 5 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straight, full house, 3 of a kind, 2 pair, 2 of a kind. Of course, the difficulty depends on the number of players, but that just changes the overall magnitude of scores at endgame. - Cerulean 12:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Applied your suggested ordering, hopefully I'll get an opportunity to playtest the changes in the near future. Thanks very much for the suggestion! Cleverpun 07:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Stack order being significant slightly conflicts with "poker" theme.

It aesthetically bugged us that the order is significant in the stacks, even though we understood that this was important for the game to work (e.g. for the distinction between a nest and a tree). I think that's because the "poker theme" creates an expectation that the order of your "hand" doesn't matter. I.e. in poker if I have 3344 that's 2 pairs the same as 3434 or 2442 is 2 pairs. But OK, Plutonians and pyramids make poker work differently. :)

Regardless, we had good fun with it, playing several 2-player games. It has an addictive "just one more" quality since it's pretty fast to set up, and has enjoyable long term strategy as well as short term tactics. We liked it, and I expect to play it more. A good clever game!

Goulo 11:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that in the design stage- I had hoped the "backstory" covered that up, but glad you enjoyed it regardless! Cleverpun 07:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

ICE Awards Feedback

These are comments I made at the "Icehouse Community Excellence Awards" thread at the Fan Club site:

Plutonian Poker

PROS: A nice multi-player perfect information game. The constraints work well -- you can only take a piece on top of its stack, and only put on top of one of your stacks -- not too broad or too tight. Good tension between going for your points vs. depriving your opponent of his points.

CONS: The points for the different hand values may need to be tweaked to reflect their difficulty better. I agree with Ryan about the Straight lacking any partial goals (like Two Pair does for Full House). Perhaps we could borrow an idea from Yahtzee and add a Small Straight with 4 different colors.

Bryan 10 June 2011

Applied Cerulean's point restructuring and added a "mini-straight" below the straight (the point differential between the two is the same as between a 5 of a kind and a 4 of a kind), hopefully this makes the game run smoother Cleverpun 07:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)