Friday, January 17, 2025

Proposal: Balancing Act

Add a subrule to “Teams and Targets {I}” named “Rebalancing {M}” with the following text:

Rebalance is an atomic action with the following steps:

* Choose a word at least five alphabetic letters in length that appears in three different Mutable rules as the Source Word, with the Mutable rules selected as the Source Rules.
* Choose a word at least five alphabetic letters in length that is not the same as the Source Word selected from the previous step and that appears in three different Mutable rules, where none of those rules are the same as the Source Rules selected in the previous step, as the Target Word and those rules selected as the Target Rules.
* In each Target Rule, swap one instance of the Target Word with one instance of the Source Word from any one of the Source Rules selected in this instance of this action.
* Swap the Targets of two non-Mastermind Participants if those Participants have non-empty Targets.

A Mastermind may, as a Heist Action, perform a Rebalance, indicating the Participants selected in that Rebalance in the comments of the Dice Roller for that Heist Action.

Throwing a little shenanigans into the mix. No honor among thieves.

Comments

ais523: Mastermind

17-01-2025 17:02:15 UTC

I don’t really like this much – working with randomly chosen teams is more interesting than picking the perfect team every time.

I can see something like this existing, but I think it has to be more expensive than just a simple Heist Action. (Perhaps you could use a similar approach to the one used for Watchmaker – make it cost a word from the ruleset in addition to the action.)

JonathanDark: he/him

17-01-2025 18:21:48 UTC

I’ve added a “cost” to the action where words need to be selected and swapped in order to perform it. Let me know if the cost is reasonable.

ais523: Mastermind

17-01-2025 18:51:38 UTC

Better, and interesting in that the cost is reversible (i.e. in the state immediately after paying the cost, it is probably still payable again), which in particular lets the other Mastermind just swap the players back if they want to.

It does make my head hurt a bit, though – there are now a lot of words in the rule, and I’m not sure it’s worth the complexity.

JonathanDark: he/him

17-01-2025 19:07:46 UTC

Yeah, I’m guilty of overwrought wording quite often. Simplification suggestions are welcome, and honestly if this never gets used, I might just propose to remove the rule later.

SingularByte: he/him

17-01-2025 21:47:38 UTC

In a way, this seems even more powerful than just swapping two players around since now the mastermind gets a new player and puts the team in a position where they can abuse the newly broken rule.

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