Random Notes on a new revision

[Mike]

Revising.

[Mike]

I'm getting smart about this and putting it all in a single list. Some are from comments in the doc. Some are not.

1. Make sure all numbers are written as digits.

2. We need to decide on what our attack action looks like: grab, pummel, knockdown, whatever. And then we should figure out how we mark conditions on the hero board. It will save us a lot of words on cards if we can just say "hero is stunned" or "hero is knocked down" or whatever, and then everyone knows what that condition means without having to explain it on every blessing or curse that affects it. Knockdown is noted by flipping the hero token, but what about stunned or grabbed?

3. We need to clearly define "toward" and "away from". If two reference points are not in a straight line of hexes from each other, what counts as one moving "directly towards" the other? Maybe this is in the rulebook already. I haven't gotten that far.

4. I'm thinking a 2-letter code for the god's name... otherwise, it's going to start getting weird when we have more than a dozen gods (If Hestia is added before Hades, then Hades will have no letter left to pick). Then a 2-letter code for power level. PR, SE, SP, UT. That leaves us room for things like Experimental (EX) or Retired (RT), in case we want to have cards past and present all together for comparison. And then a 2-digit code for the number, because we shouldn't ever have 100 cards in a category.

5. Seed terrain. I think we need a broader range to place those. I don't want to complicate it too much, but (for example) in a 3 person game, your seed terrain is not blocking anyone's goal and is far from where you'll be doing most of your action. Seed terrain is so unhelpful there, and as Flame points out, we really need seed terrain out on the field for some cards to be useful. So I'm thinking: each player still gets two seed terrain of their choice. Then take turns placing them. Seed terrain can be placed anywhere except in the goal areas, Mt. Olympus, or the hexes adjacent to Olympus. (Or something similar).

6. I have worked out diagrams of "most direct route" for two and three hex throws. I will clean them up and add them.

7. New drop rules: Drop does not have a slot on the hero boards, however, a hero may, for 0 AP, drop the Godball into an adjacent hex. If the hex is occupied, that hero gets immediate possession of the Godball. If the hex is unoccupied, then the drop can be intercepted. A drop is different from a 1 hex throw action. As noted above, a 1 hex throw may not be intercepted.

8. Text on blessings and curses need to match or parallel the text on the hero boards. Basically, hero board gives all the rules/conditions for that move, so the bless/curse has to cover all those bases and not just note what has changed.

9. We should agree on language for earning and spending AP. Receive, spend, take, remove, etc.

10. Hero Boards: actions that have use limits should be noted on the hero boards (once per turn or whatever). So move, sprint, refresh all say, Once per round. Defend says once per turn. Etc. Need to decide if that goes inside or outside the card slot. I don't want to crowd things, but I'm thinking inside... which would mean we'd have to restate that condition on every curse or blessing that applies to it. Which is fine.

10a. I think defend should only apply to hero actions. "If terrain appears or changes in a hero's hex, that hero must pay 2AP or be knocked down, even if it is their favored terrain," should be a standard rule that has nothing to do with defend. This can just be a terrain rule, or we can include language on all applicable terrain cards that say, "If the hex is occupied, hero must pay 2AP or be knocked down." Either way, it simplifies defend so that we can just say defend is once per turn and not have to clarify "except for terrain". Defend rules can easily fit on the cards so people don't have to look stuff up.

10b. I also think defend should just be once per turn. So I can defend against Heracles once on his turn, Atalanta once on her turn, etc. But then, if any hero is willing to pay 4AP, then I've already wasted my defend, and they succeed. But also, it leaves open the possibility of some really cool reaction cards: "If a hero uses the defend action against another hero, play this card and you may use one of your attack actions (shove, force fumble, grab) against the defending hero. You must meet all usual conditions for the attack and pay the AP cost. Note that the hero has already used their defend action for this turn. The acting hero may resume their turn normally after you have resolved your action."

[Mike]

Expanding on #4, revising card codes.

It's a minor thing, but as I'm looking at expansion cards, it occurs to me that we might want to get ahead of this.

AD - Aphrodite
AP - Apollo
AM - Artemis
AR - Ares
AT - Athena
DI - Dionysus
DM - Demeter
HD - Hades
HE - Hera
HP - Hephaestus
HR - Hermes
HS - Hestia
PS - Poseidon
ZS - Zeus

AT-PR-12, PS-SP-05, etc...

But you know, we could also index it so that card numbers aren't reused when we make new revisions. Or we could put in an A/I tag that indicates active vs inactive cards. We could have different category/power level codes. I don't know. I don't want it to be too complex, but if we ever get to do expansions, I think we're going to quickly find the limits of this system.

[Mike]

My proposed solutions in order to move forward with the current edit follow. If anyone has objections or better ideas or suggestions or whatever, just pipe up. Nothing is ever carved in stone.

1. Make sure all numbers are written as digits.
Okay.

2. We need to decide on what our attack action looks like: grab, pummel, knockdown, whatever.
Dave suggested that the hero attack result in knockdown but NOT loss of the godball. I heartily agree. I'm going to call it pummel for now.

3. We need to clearly define "toward" and "away from".
I will work on this as I'm creating the diagrams for #6. I think this is going to be mostly easy and obvious, but I'll work on it. I'm open to thoughts.

4. Changing the card codes.
I think we need to do this, but it's not urgent. I'm putting it off for the moment.

5. Seed terrain.
Unless anyone objects, I'm implementing my suggested change: each player still gets two seed terrain of their choice. Then take turns placing them. Seed terrain can be placed anywhere except in the goal areas, Mt. Olympus, or the hexes adjacent to Olympus. (Or something close to this).

6. I have worked out diagrams of "most direct route" for two and three hex throws.
I will clean them up and add them. But this is at the bottom of my list.

7. New drop rules
I've already added this to the rules: Drop does not have a slot on the hero boards, however, a hero may, for 0 AP, drop the Godball into an adjacent hex. If the hex is occupied, that hero gets immediate possession of the Godball. If the hex is unoccupied, then the drop can be intercepted. A drop is different from a 1 hex throw action. As noted above, a 1 hex throw may not be intercepted.

8. Text on blessings and curses need to match or parallel the text on the hero boards.
Uh... getting there?

9. We should agree on language for earning and spending AP. Receive, spend, take, remove, etc.
I'm going with "spend" and "receive" for now since that is the move common language. Alternately, "lose" is for when a god power takes away your AP and you get nothing for it.

10. Hero Boards: actions that have use limits should be noted on the hero boards (once per turn or whatever).
I'm NOT working on this one right away.

10a&b. Modify and explain defend (see above).
I plan to put defend into the rules as I suggested in the post above.

#2 and #10 will require fixing a lot of cards. I will work on it.

[Eliahad]

[Mike]

[FlameBlade]

Force fumble, ball stumbles to next three heroes (who didn't drop the ball)

Who gets the ball?

[Mike]

[Mike]

Adding this to the list:

Text on blessings and curses need to match or parallel the text on the hero boards. Basically, hero board gives all the rules/conditions for that move, so the bless/curse has to cover all those bases and not just note what has changed.

[Eliahad]

[Mike]

Okay, I reviewed the language for AP transfer... take, receive, remove, spend, etc. I don't think we need to do anything with it. So far, everything I've reviewed makes sense as written, and Flame's right, there's several places where trying to promote "consistent language" would actually make it more confusing due to context. I'm crossing this one off.

Also, I was thinking we need to change the term "hex cost" but on reviewing it, I actually think leaving hex cost instead of changing it to "terrain cost" or some such makes more sense. I'm taking this off my list, too.

[Mike]

What a productive day. Here's what's left of our todo list:

1. Define "toward" and "away from" and "most direct route"
2. Make sure text on blessings and curses matches hero board text
3. Find new hero artwork. Add where needed
4. Design reference card for back page of rulebook
5. Come up with three new "bonus heroes" to be added to the core game.**


**Should be one for each terrain type. Each god will still have "their" hero, but we'll offer these bonus heroes for people who want to mix it up and try a different favored terrain or whatever. This will be the gentle intro to what's to come in the hero expansion, AND it deals with some gender issues. If there are players who prefer to play only a single gender, then they'll have the option to swap someone in that they are more comfortable with, since 2/3 of the god/hero combos are mixed gender.

[Eliahad]

Brainstorm: Rules that are important to have a reference card for:

Terrain creation
Terrain movement
Knockdown
Fumble (Instigation)
Fumble (Recovery)

[Mike]

Yes. Anything that doesn't fit easily on a card and might be tricky to remember.

[Mike]

At this point, with the current goal locations, is there a reason we have to determine who was last in control of the ball in order to decide if you score or not? We had set that up when we thought that competing factions might use the same goal areas, but we don't have that anymore. Is there a good reason why I shouldn't score if I can shove you into my goal while you are holding the ball?

I ask, because removing that would cut a significant amount of text from our rules. The new rule would be: "If the Godball enters your goal area, you score 1 point. If you enter your own goal area while in control of the Godball, you score 2 points." And then we could cut out virtually everything else we've written about scoring.

[Eliahad]

I'm trying to think if there are any times where the distinction was important. Like in the last game where you did the end run around the pillar of heaven and I had to get in the goal area to make it harder for you to score. If the rule hadn't been there, the better strategy would have been to just let you score... But then I leave you open to just winding down the clock.

I'm not entirely sold on this yet, but I think I could be convinced.

[Mike]

I get that. If you want to preserve the goaltending option, we can include a rule for that, like...

Intercept-Drop--if a hero intercepts a ball and then immediately drops it, then the hero has batted the ball away and it is considered to have NOT entered that hero's hex.

[Eliahad]

I like that. That seems like an elegant solution. Thank you!

[Mike]

1. Define "toward" and "away from" and "most direct route"
We've solved this. Now I need to clean up the diagrams and add it all to the rules.

2. Make sure text on blessings and curses matches hero board text
This is my next task!

3. Find new hero artwork. Add where needed
Later!

4. Design reference card for back page of rulebook
Dave's already taking notes on this.

5. Come up with three new "bonus heroes" to be added to the core game.**
I put this in the hero thread. I'm thinking Hippolyta, Orion, Odysseus. If we go forward with it, we need to add them to the rules, get more art, make hero boards, etc.

6. Intercept-Drop
Added to the rules.

7. Change all reference of "end phase" to "clean up phase".
Done.

8. Move Knockdown, Terrain, Pillars of Heaven and some other stuff to a separate page.
We need a page of game elements/game terms or something like that. The three items I listed above are examples of stuff that is all described in the God Power section, but all three exist outside of god powers as well. This could be the same area where we describe "toward", "away", "goal area", etc.

[Mike]

9. I'm going to add in a rule that when you have a Blessing for an action that is usable only once per round, it's still only once per round even if you remove it or exchange it for a different blessing.

"No no, that was my 2 AP sprint. It was only usable once per round, but then I played my 1 AP sprint which is technically a different action and ALSO usable once per round." Bullshit.