Saturday, June 12, 2021

Proposal: Of Antioch

Timed out and enacted, 6-1. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 13:03:23 UTC

Repeal the rule Equipment, and remove the text “and set his Equipment to a secretly-randomly chosen item that is different from the one that he equipped at the start of his last Enter the Crypt action” and “equipment chosen or other” from the atomic action in the rule Richardo’s Journey.

In the rule Richardo’s Journey, change the bullet point which starts “Reduce his Energy by 1” to read as follows:

Reduce his Energy by 1. Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to his current room and move into it, then apply the effect of any items that he is holding (if appropriate based on its description), then apply any effects of the features of that room in the order that they are listed to Richardo. Repeat this step until his Energy is 0 or lower; then finish this step and move on to the next step of this action

Add the following to the list of features in the rule Features:

* Richardo approaches an average treasure chest (-2)
* Richardo approaches a fine treasure chest (-5)

Add the following as a sub-rule to the rule Richard’s Journey, called Treasure:

If Richardo approaches a treasure chest, and if he is holding two or fewer items, he will secretly randomly elect to whether or not to open it; if he does then he expends 1 Energy to do so and starts holding the contents of that chest. When Richardo uses an item he ceases to be holding it.

An average treasure chest will contain one item from average treasures list. A fine treasure chest will contain one item from the fine treasures list and one item from the average treasures list. The contents of a chest are secretly randomly determined when that chest is opened. As a Power Action with a cost of 1, a Vampire Lord may set the contents of a single treasure chest to any valid value by appending the names of the items to be contained in that chest to its entry in the relevant room description, in brackets; when Richardo von Nestor opens such a chest then the contents are not randomly determined but instead are the values set in the room description.

The list of available Treasures are as follows:

Average treasures
* Holy Tincture: Richardo immediately uses this item to gain two Energy
* Secret Passage Map: Richardo immediately uses this item and must randomly select from any explored room to be his next destination
* Bandages: The first time during a journey when Richardo is Grievously Injured, he uses this item and is only Lightly Wounded instead
* Rusty crossbow: The first time Richardo encounters a Denizen, he uses this item and it is immediately slain
* Depleted Ring of Warding: The first time Richardo enters a room that contains active Sigils, he uses this item and one of those Sigils (selected secretly at random) is destroyed

Fine treasures:
* Rod of Smoothing: The first time Richardo enters a room while holding this item, he uses it and one feature (chosen secretly at random) is removed from that room, before any effects are enacted
* Elaborate crossbow: Richardo destroys any Denizen he encounters. This item is not used when this affect is applied.
* Empowered Ring of Warding: The first time Richardo enters a room that contains active Sigils, he uses this item and any Sigils in that room are destroyed
* Holy Distillate: Richardo immediately uses this item to gain 5 Energy
* Silver-Tipped Stake: If Richardo enters a room that is a Sepulchre, he uses this item and the Vampire Lord whose Sepulchre it is becomes Dust.

Add an average treasure chest to the room called Crypt Entrance.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

12-06-2021 10:18:57 UTC

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.

lemon: she/her

12-06-2021 10:27:51 UTC

“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?

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 10:33:28 UTC

Thanks both - have made the requisite changes.

Kevan: he/him

12-06-2021 10:48:23 UTC

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?

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 11:00:13 UTC

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.

Kevan: he/him

12-06-2021 11:09:57 UTC

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.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 11:28:28 UTC

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

ais523:

12-06-2021 11:50:35 UTC

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.

ais523:

12-06-2021 11:56:26 UTC

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.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 12:00:46 UTC

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.

Kevan: he/him

12-06-2021 12:04:09 UTC

for

lemon: she/her

12-06-2021 12:40:30 UTC

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

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 12:43:17 UTC

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

Phil:

12-06-2021 12:56:51 UTC

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.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 13:05:44 UTC

@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

Kevan: he/him

12-06-2021 13:14:03 UTC

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

Clucky: he/him

12-06-2021 17:05:01 UTC

against

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

Josh: Observer he/they

12-06-2021 17:49:07 UTC

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.

ais523:

12-06-2021 18:25:44 UTC

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.

for

Janet: she/her

12-06-2021 23:25:40 UTC

for

Lulu: she/her

13-06-2021 10:35:58 UTC

  imperial