Answers Posted: Final AMA with Richard and Ken!
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 09:07:32 PM
Thanks everyone for submitting your questions for the final AMA with Richard and Ken! They've tried to answer as many questions as possible about different topics. With just a day to go for the campaign to conclude, the entire team behind the Kickstarter is very thankful for the support you have extended to Half Truth.
Below are the answers to the AMA questions. Happy reading!
Richard Garfield
Mr Garfield, do you recommend doubling up or going all in if you are a first-time player?In general, I advise going for only one answer and not feeling obligated to go for more. The reward system gives the biggest payoff relative to the risk, so it is generally good advice. It is also sometimes not how people would 'naturally' play because they consider it 3 questions rather than 1 and want to get them all right.
There will be a reasonable number of times where a player knows multiple answers and then they should answer them all in that case. There will also be times where they know one and suspect a second and there, if they are far behind, they might want to push their luck and go for 2. Also, the 1+ die result might push you toward guessing multiples - the double bonus is pretty meaningful.
Is it advisable to play safe bets in the first round and then go riskier in the later rounds?Yes, the later rounds have more reward, so falling behind early is not that big a deal - so playing conservatively is probably good so one doesn't compound how far behind they are. Later, going riskier is more advisable if a player is behind.
How much time should people take to guess the answers?
That will vary from group to group. We considered adding a timer, but many players don't like the time pressure that gives, even if generous - though certainly a group might want to add one for themselves. Usually taking a long time isn't an issue - there is not really a lot of calculation. Players need to take time to read and understand the question, consider each answer, and make a decision - for my groups this whole process is rarely more than a couple minutes.
Are the letters needed on the betting tokens since you are anyway placing them in the slots for A-F?
They are needed because if people placed them on their intended bets others could follow them. With letters on the tokens players hide their guesses until they are revealed at the same time.
Will you ever create a smaller party version for the game?
Probably not - because I consider the game perfectly fun at 2 players. In general, more players will be more fun however and not slow the game down a lot - because it is simultaneous play. The reason it is more fun is because with more people you have the more weird niches of knowledge and deduction to enjoy.
How long did you playtest the game for?
The answer 10+ years is misleading, although certainly true. In that time there were many dozens of games played and further many people 'played' these cards and more outside the context of a game.
Did anyone other than Ken and yourself work on the cards?
Yes - mostly me and Ken, but a good number of cards were made by Koni Garfield, my wife, and Skaff Elias, my partner at Three Donkeys. Beyond that there were questions made by Bruno Faidutti and Pierre Rosenthal during a period where we were trying to get a French version done - though that didn't get made (yet!), many of their questions were good for a non-French version. There were probably some other contributors that aren't coming to mind.
What’s the first step in creating a game like Half Truth? Is it the name of the game or the components, etc?
The only thing that came after the name was some of the components. This is the only game I have ever worked on where I feel like the final name is better than my name (quite often, my games retain my name). My name for this game was Inconceivable - and I really liked that name; but Half Truth is so perfect it is hard to believe the game wasn't built around the name.
The first thing was coming up with the basic structure of the questions. I knew I wanted them to be multiple choice with simultaneous answers, but it took a while to come up with the idea that every question had 3 correct and 3 incorrect. After that making a risk reward structure that made the first rounds relevant but allow for catching up, and a reward structure that gave you a large amount if you played conservative on the questions you were really guessing on - so the less trivia-oriented players could really be competitive. All those things were done over 10 years ago. Since then it has been writing and refining questions - and very recently finalizing components and the name of the game.
How American are the half truths? Would a Brit child and grandparent be able to play the game?
There is a bias toward US culture - it is what I know; though Ken and I have pretty broad interests. I don't think it is too bad though; I would guess that very game (about 20 questions) there will be 1 or 2 that will fall flat. As I have mentioned in other places, some of the questions will look US-centric but aren't, at least in the sense that no one I know knows the answers. My go to example of that is "Which are Discontinued Cereals: Dwarfies, Agatha Crispies, Crazy Cow, Flakey Critters, Coco Chums, and Croonchy Stars”. It would be easy to read that and feel like you were at a huge disadvantage but really this is a guess for essentially everyone, though players can get intuitions or construct stories about how a particular name would come to be. Which US state has no national parks is probably closer to a bad question; because, while the US audience will often not know the answer they can more often eliminate some of the contestants.
I am more worried about very young players; there are definitely questions for all ages, but the grandparents have been around a long time and will have often have more to work with. Over the last 10 years of question design, I was often surprised at what my (then) teenage kids didn't know. But when they stuck with it (which they had to - they were captive audience playtesters), there were many questions they felt good about.
In the future I hope for more localized versions.
Ken Jennings
How did you select the trivia topics for the cards? Were these random facts you liked or based on pop culture?
We actually made a distribution, like a professor planning an exam or a syllabus. We were going for total democracy: this many television questions, this many geography questions, this many science questions, this many sports questions. A little of everything. But within those topics, sure, it was everybody's favorite weird facts or half-remembered lists, whether that was chemical elements named after cities or discontinued flavors of Jell-O.
In 1984, I lost a game of Trivial Pursuit on this answer, from the History Category... I think the question is either worded poorly or the answer is just flat out wrong:
"Who has been the youngest US President?"
My answer: Theodore Roosevelt, upon becoming president after McKinley was shot. The card answer: JFK
My argument is that JFK is the youngest ELECTED US President. Roosevelt beats him by a few months though, although he was not elected president at the time.
My other question for submission: Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?
The answer: President and Mrs. Grant
In my opinion, you are correct! It's a common misconception that Kennedy was the youngest. Is it too late to go back in time to 1984 and call for an instant replay challenge?
How about Sports & Olympic Events for an expansion?
That's a perfect idea for an expansion deck. I've often observed that trivia teams have to have a sports specialist, because the best trivia players often know nothing about sports, and the best sports brains know so much sports that they're not often experts in anything else. Finally, let's have some cards for the jocks and weekend warriors. In today's nerd-centric world, they deserve a chance to shine.
Do you know the answers to all the questions in the Half Truth game?
Last year when I was editing the cards, I probably did! But I'm in my mid-forties now, my memory is not exactly in Jeopardy! fighting shape anymore. When Richard and I were shooting a little promotional video about Half Truth, we had some sample cards and neither of us were sure of the answers, even though it was a card he wrote and I edited!
Will you be working on any more games in the future?
Board games? I am out of ideas for board games, but I do write a trivia game called "Kennections" for Mental Floss. You can play it online twice a week, and I think you might see it as an app or even on TV sometime soon.
Thanks for including Brainiac as an offering to the game! How did it feel when Richard Garfield mentioned that the book inspired him?
It was such a highlight for me, because I was so star-struck by Richard and his amazing brain for games. The only reason I write a book is because I'm obsessively enthusiastic about something, and having that enthusiasm be contagious is the highest compliment. And it turned into a great game idea.
Are you a Brainiac or someone who makes good educated guesses?
It's always better to know a thing than not to know it, but honestly, I think the "guessing" element of trivia is underrated. Jeopardy! clues aren't generated by a supercomputer in a cave somewhere. A bunch of people have to write them. So when you play Jeopardy!, you're not just matching wits with two other contestants. You're trying to analyze and outwit the people who wrote the questions! (Er, answers.) Each clue is like a little riddle to solve, by putting yourself into the head of the invisible person who wrote it. I'm Mindhunter, basically. But for game shows. So that's a very fun part of Half Truth for me, that it rewards clever thinking and "best guesses"--whether you know the answer for sure or not.
