One of the big issues I noted from my playtest was creative fatigue. It showed up in several places:
- Creating books in the setup phase
- As the GM, coming up with the forms of the Ravagers
- As the GM, coming up with Dangers for the Librarians to face
- As a Librarian, figuring out how you use a book to face a Danger
I think problems 2, 4, and sometimes 3 are caused by the books not providing enough creative prompts. Currently books have three properties: Title, Theme (one of 8 choices), and Type (one of 8 choices). While some titles are evocative, others are harder to work with. Adding more details about the books would make them easier to use.
However, that runs back into problem 1. In the setup phase, people roll for Theme and Type, then come up with a title. The first few book titles were easy to come up with, but people really started reaching as they got to their fifth or sixth book. If people need to invent even more details for each book, it will lengthen the setup phase, and people will get to the main game already tired.
As a last-minute addition, I added an optional variant where you pick real books, then assign them Theme and Type. This would address the issues of having to invent a lot of books, and those invented books lacking detail. I was hesitant to make it part of the main rules because I worried that I already required too many additional materials, and the variant would mean you need 6 books per person to play. I’m also not sure about the logistics of dealing with that many books at the table, although you could manipulate stacks of book cards instead.
On the other hand, Midnight at the Library of Worlds is very much a game celebrating books. It makes sense to let players show their affection for the books they love by including them in the game.
One solution for logistics is to have players fill in titles and authors of real books, but not need those books at the table. You lose the ability to open the book to a random page for inspiration, but if everyone is familiar with the books, there’s a wealth of context available.
That brings to mind another possibility, which is for me to provide a pre-generated list of books with Theme and Type, maybe even multiple lists with different focuses. I didn’t have time during the contest period to do this, but it would let players get started much faster.