Not sure whether “Contains an average (-2) or fine (-5) treasure chest.” needs to be broken up to make it clear that it’s two different features with “their Darkness scores given afterwards in brackets” - that we cannot literally add this Feature to a room as written - or if I’m just being pedantic.

“then apply the effect of an item that he is holding” is a lil ambiguous– if he’s got multiple applicable items, does he only use one, or does he use all of them? if just one, is that of his choosing?

Thanks both - have made the requisite changes.

We should stop drifting into “when Richardo enters a room” effects when Features have been designed from the start to model stuff that happens when Richardo enters a room.

If he enters a room with two chests to open (and which could also be a Sepulchre which collapses when he enters it, under the pre-existing rule), in what order do those three “when he enters a room” things happen?

Mm.

So this change does take a stab at prioritisation (insofar as it establishes that items are used before room effects take place) but I feel like tackling prioritisation more broadly is a bit beyond the scope of what is already a long-ish proposal. IMO it should be enters > items used > effects take place in order listed in room legend > sepulchres collapsed, but there’s two ancillary tasks there: I think it would be useful to keyword all of those stages (entrance > items > environment > reactions?), and there’s also some subsidiary prioritisation that’ll need shaking out (what order should items be used in? Can Vampire Lords organise room effects as they please?).

Yeah, I think that just needs to be a whole other proposal.

I think it’s enough to change the Features to “Richardo approaches an [adjective] treasure chest.” and the first sentence of Treasure to “When Richardo approaches a treasure chest”, isn’t it?

The ruleset did say at some point to “[apply effects] in the order they are listed”, meaning that Vampire Lords could choose the sequence when building the room, but that seems to have fallen back out along the way. It could be dropped back in here since you’re editing it.

Done. Still think a broader rework might be in order but less urgent for now perhaps.

Too late to edit, I think?

My main concern with this is that -5 is way too much. That makes constructing rooms incredibly cheap, as long as they’re sufficiently beneficial to Richardo, and there’s no particular reason to avoid benefiting Richardo, so we can expect to see Fine Treasure Chests pretty much everywhere if this proposal passes. This in turn means that all the mechanics that can be invalidated by Fine Treasure Chests will become unusable in practice.

As such, I will oppose any version of this that doesn’t give Fine Treasure Chests a positive additional cost to build.

Or to put it another way: the mechanics we have at the moment favour trying to accomplish things (e.g. influence gaining via Sepulchres), and trying to stop other people accomplishing those things (e.g. diverting Richardo into the Sepulchres), and we need a balance in order for the gameplay to work. To do the former, you want to hurt Richardo; to do the latter, you want to benefit him. It’s probably OK that benefiting Richardo is slightly cheaper than hurting him; but it isn’t OK if benefiting Richardo is so much cheaper that the balance is thrown off and nobody is ever able to do anything.

Fair point on the balance. I don’t have a gut instinct as to where the tension point lies; I’d certainly be up for revisiting these numbers. I also think that, in general, Sigils are fine but the main way for Vampire Lords to gain Puissance should be through hurting RIchardo, so there’s at least one major mechanical plank still missing from the equation.

But yes, too late to edit this. I’d urge passing and continuing to tweak, though.

but yeah, the cost-reducing mechanics definitely ought to be limited a bit more than they are

I originally had it as -1/-3, would that be better or should it even be something like 0/-2?

Why is the action that Richardo performs in a loop a single statement, wouldn’t it be easier to unpack it along the lines of “Repeats the following list of actions until his energy is <= to 0 at the end of the list”? That would make modifications not need to involve the entire block every time.

@Phil To avoid having stages of the action having to refer to other stages of the action, which has already caused the action to completely break once in this three-day-old dynasty

In any case, a fix to that might be worth considering but again, that would be a separate issue to the purpose of this already-quite-long proposal

0/-2 or 0/-1 sound about right to me.

too risky to have a window where this is up and Level Knevel isn’t. A couple of players could fill the entire crypt with fine treasure chests

Eh, I’m not too worried about it. When was the last time someone actually exploited the gap between a proposal and its fix passing? Seems like the steering convention is to respect patches that are in train; if that convention were to be flouted I’d uncomplicatedly vote for the CfJ putting it all back to rights.

There isn’t a victory condition right now so it should be safe.

I’m the sort of person who’d totally try to exploit a gap like that, but only if I thought it’d let me win on the spot.