Further Feedback and Changes for Belle of the Ball

Wow, I'm so pleased to see the feedback for Belle of the Ball so far. I've got feedback from Fred Hicks and Jason Innes (designer of Empyrean, Inc.) Here are some findings:

• It's Fun: Response has been really good from a mixture of gamers. The mechanics fit the theme and it's lots of fun to build clever combos of guests, then see how they stack up later in the game. There are some edits that could be made to make it a little more accessible, case in point...
• Edit for Clarity: There is some wording that could be a little bit more clear, such as "a single guest's powers may not be activated, it must be in a group." Whenever I run into those issues in a rules document, my impulse is to just remove that rule rather than re-write it for clarity. This will be the case in the next draft, so "You can activate the powers of any guest in one group, in any order." I'm also going to restrict the "Mingle" power to a your own clique.
• Adjust Power Distribution: When you're lucky enough to draw guests with high popularity, it's overkill if that guest also has a useful power. So, I'm redistributing the powers so that they mostly go with guests who have low or negative popularity.
• Broaden the Friend Bonus: The Friend bonus counts for each other guest in the group. So, yes, it does stack. 
• Remove the First Player Token: This is a tentative change. I introduced the First Player token in an earlier prototype when the threat of dueling made any singleton very vulnerable. Thus, turn order was very important. Now, the token may not be as necessary, especially in a two-player game.
• Increase Power Density: A lot of the game's fun comes from building clever synergistic combos, so I'm adding some more powers and making them much more common in the deck. These include:
• Reject: Discard your whole hand.
• Shove: Move one guest from your clique to your opponent's clique.
• Breakup: Remove one or more of your guests from one of your groups.
• Befriend: Combine two or more of your guests to form a group.
• Peek: Draw the top three cards from the draw deck, re-arrange them as you wish and return them to the top of the deck.
• More extra invites.

And that's about it! If you want to test out the game and offer your feedback, please check out the links here. Soon, I will export a new set of cards and get them printed out along with a new rules doc.