I like this better, mainly because it’s random Cells, not all of them. This addresses my concern of making a “fish all the Cells near the Shore” too enticing.

Hmm, just noticed that I forgot to specify “When a Fishing Contestant performs the Collect Catches action *on a Fishing Hole*...”

Does that break the proposal? If Buildup is specifically defined for Fishing Holes, does a reference to Buildup for non-Fishing-Hole Cells default to zero, or is it an Orphan Variable or what?

I don’t think it completely breaks it. I would interpret “a number of catches equal to that Cell’s Buildup” as 0 if the Cell has no Buildup. Per the Appendix:

If a game variable has a default value but no defined starting value, then its default value should also be considered a starting value. If a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value, then both may be considered to be the nearest legal value to zero that it may take (for numerical variables, defaulting to positive if tied)

I could definitely see it going either way in whether that fault affects anything. Some might argue you can’t perform the step, others would argue that the buildup would be implicitly 0. I’d lean towards the latter, personally.

My argument is based on the fact that Buildup is a tracked game variable, but I can see why others might consider it “missing information” instead.