Friday, November 29, 2024

Proposal: It’s In The Cards

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 01 Dec 2024 19:00:44 UTC

If Race 1 is Ongoing, the rest of this Proposal has no effect.

Add a new rule named “Cards” with the following text:

Each Snail has a publicly-tracked Cards, which is a list of names of Moves that may be empty, is empty by default, and has a maximum of 3 names of Moves. A Slug’s Cards are always empty.

Draw is an atomic action where the Snail who performs it randomly selects the name of a Move from the list of valid Moves and adds that name to their Cards.

A non-Slug Snail may Draw only when there is an Ongoing Race and at least one of the following is true:
* That Snail has not yet made any Moves in the Onging Race.
* All Snails whose positions are not greater than the Finish Line have made at least 1 Move in this Ongoing Race since the last time they performed a Draw.

In the rule “Moving”, replace the text “unambigously specifying one of the actions listed below” with the following

unambigously specifying one of the Moves listed in their Cards, removing the name of that Move from their Cards, then performing the action associated with that Move.

and in the same rule, replace the bulleted list with the following:

* Crawl: Increase your Position by DICE10.
* Walk: Increase your Position by 6.
* Toss: If you have at least 2 Moves in your Cards, randomly select among the non-Slug Snails, other than yourself, whose Positions are within 5cm of your Position and are not greater than the Finish Line. The selected Snail loses 5 Position. Then, set your Cards to an empty list.
* Run: If you have at least 2 Moves in your Cards, increase your Position by 10, then set your Cards to an empty list.
* Rest: Set your Cards to an empty list.

Kevan had a good point about this being a swingy game. Right now, it’s mostly luck and very little strategy. What if we pushed things more towards the strategy side, with just a little card-drawing luck?

The Moves that have a larger increase or cause a penalty also force you to discard at least 1 other Move, so they cost you a little bit to use.

Comments

JonathanDark: he/him

29-11-2024 22:59:51 UTC

I added text to make sure that we’re not switching Move mechanics in the middle of the current Ongoing Race. I’m hopeful that Race 1 will be over before this enacts, but if not, I can re-propose. I just wanted to see what everyone else thought about this idea.

Habanero:

30-11-2024 04:37:05 UTC

The “All Snails whose positions are not greater than the Finish Line have made at least 1 Move in this Ongoing Race since the last time they performed a Draw” is broken:
- Non-Slug Snails count towards this, so no one will be able to Draw after their first Move because of Slingshot Sam
- Similarly, dead Snails also count, meaning once someone dies the condition is never met
- The “they” is ambiguous: does it refer to the Snail doing the Drawing, or the Snails who are before the finish line? I assume it’s the first, but it probably needs clarification or I could argue that I can just keep drawing and moving forever if everyone else has Moved since they last Drew
- Even if all this is fixed, we’ll be waiting quite a while for the last Snail to Move before we can Draw again, so I’d personally change it to one or two Snails instead of every Snail
Regardless I like the cards idea and we can just pass-and-fix, so for

lendunistus: he/him

30-11-2024 12:11:37 UTC

mild against, I don’t like employing RNG to decide your moveset here

could definitely be tweaked to alleviate that concern somewhat but I think a universal moveset would just be neater

Desertfrog: Jury

30-11-2024 14:27:34 UTC

I’m a bit worried about this part:
“A non-Slug Snail may Draw only when there is an Ongoing Race and at least one of the following is true:
* That Snail has not yet made any Moves in the Onging Race.”

It sounds like people would stay on the Starting Line even longer, waiting to see what moves others will draw

JonathanDark: he/him

30-11-2024 16:01:02 UTC

I mean we still have Slug of Death so eventually people will make a move.

Raven1207: he/they

30-11-2024 17:20:35 UTC

against

JonathanDark: he/him

30-11-2024 17:58:34 UTC

Alright, I’m going to against withdraw this because it seems to be a little unpopular plus the flaws already pointed out.

I’ll go back to the drawing board and try to think of something else.