I think I might have missed the proper intention when writing the rules. Due to short time in the jam, it didn't go through blind playtesting, only with me explaining, alas, some things should certainly be more stressed.
Anyway, during a shanty phase, there is only one card possible on a middle stack from any single player. When the round gets back to the shantyperson the cards should be relocated (to decks or, preferably, to bounties) -- they leave the middle of the table, and there should be less doubling (or also I might have misunderstood about what happened in your case).
But it is also true that the game isn't spoil-proofed well, and if there will be a lot of doubles put, maybe intentionally, to the table, the process will indeed end quite slowly.
Your lyrical suggestion probably strongly depends on the group playing. It seemed to me that in practice, a lot of players already have some troubles with coordination of rhythm-text-cards, and more text could be more pressure on that front. But you may have a talented group! :)
I talked to the shop I mentioned in an earlier message, and I think there's a high chance you'll be able to get rid of some of the physical copies with the way they operate among our local fandom.
They tried to contact you through Scherzando e-mail, and you may find them under the history search "przyczolek".
I would be interested in "DMing out" although not sure how it is possible here.
Before, I encouraged one friendly local shop to import a few Scherzando!s, but they didn't get a response from y'all (although I don't know the details about where exactly they wrote).
Maybe you can recommend the best, current, official e-mail for this kind of matters?
OK, glad to have read this! Although, it's not clear for me if players are expected to actually sing their songs, should it be imagined, or is it just optional. :)
