Thanks so much for your insights!
Will we get the list of spell cards and potion cards? I'd like to play, but unfortunately no time any time soon.
The potion deck is on the last page of the master spreadsheet. The available spells are on the player boards, which are also on the spreadsheet. Currently, there are 9 spells and they are static in each game. Probably I'd like to make it modular so that the spells are in three decks of cards (red, yellow, and green, based on their strength) and you would get a random set of spells available to you each game. Or possibly each player would get the same random set. Not sure yet, but for the moment everyone gets the same 9.
About the witching room: what does "swap 2 buildings" mean? And "move any of your fame cubes" means any number of them, or only one of them?
This is an economy of space thing. To be perfectly clear I would say "Swap the location of 2 building tiles" and "Move any number of your fame cubes from 1 building to another" (which is what it says in my physical copy). This wording is so that it would fit onto six lines on the spreadsheet. I was hoping it would get the idea across but I could do a smaller font for that if it's not clear enough.
The "X -> Y -> Z" notation is a bit confusing. I understand that you can only do "Y -> Z" once, correct?
Ah, I see how this notation could be confusing, and I don't really explain it in the rules. In this case X and Y are the costs in Rapport and coins, respectively. Z, the rightmost text on each building, is the effect of the action of that building. X, the leftmost number, is the number of fame cubes currently on the building. That number represents how many Rapport you must spend to use that building and indicates what the effect (Z) of the building will be. Y is in there sometimes to indicate an additional cost.
One last thing that is probably irrelevant: buildings in the corners are naturally harder to access, have you taken that into consideration when designing their power level? I also see that eyes and leaves are next to each other and close to the wandshop, but newts are not, so I would guess (not knowing the potions or spells) that stuff involving newts will be stronger than stuff that doesn't?
Scott_Pilgrim was right, buildings are randomized. This definitely changes the way you play the game each time, but the witching room is always there to move things around. Each of the different resources is equally represented in the potion deck and in the costs for learning spells.
I think you don't mention in the rules whether two players can occupy the same building, I assume they can?
That's an oversight if I didn't mention it. I thought I mentioned that movement had to be onto an unoccupied building? Anyway, 2 players cannot occupy the same building unless the second player to enter the building has learned Invisibility, which allows them to move onto occupied buildings.
The rules don't say anything about how you learn spells, but I guess that happens at the Library.
Correct. Since they're a big part of each player's player board, probably they should get special mention in the rules. But yes, they are affiliated with the Library as well as a certain potion.
Witching Room seems like it will create AP and my intuition says it's really weak (but since maybe you'll want to go there on the way to something else, you'll be forced to make the decision of how to use it, which I think will be a lot of thinking for a not very important decision), but I don't know, I could be way off on that.
Witching Room I'm not totally sure on. As far as swapping buildings, I feel like that could be a really powerful ability in the hands of a skilled player, but I'm simply not good enough at my own game yet for it to be amazing. However, I have definitely put it to good use. In my experience, moving fame cubes is very nice. There are several potions that it helps and it has some other utility that will likely come out during the game as well.
However, I'm not sure about the overall power level of that building yet, it's definitely one of the trickier ones to balance. And you may be right about AP. The players I've tested it with aren't very prone to AP (I'm probably the worst of them) so I'd like to see how other people react to those decisions.
Thanks again! And Scott, are you wanting to play? If so, I could move mail-mi over to a second game since he can't start for a week anyway.