With the old version of the game, I was worrying too much about the hypothetical audience, so I toned things way down. But that just made it bland, and this needs to be a silly game full of moments where the table cracks up at someone's (mis)fortune or clever/lucky play.

I love BGG as a resource, but sometimes the groupthink there is poisonous for a game designer. You start worrying about all the little arbitrary truisms that this game element or that game element are never good inclusions, and that's just not true. If you follow all the rules, you make soggy bread.