Sirella de Vil

by Lucas Thompson, Designer

23rd May 2019

Sirella, as one of the finalists in last year's Will of the Collective event, was a shoe-in for this project. (Sadly, Dr. Selar was close enough theme-wise to Shattered Mirror's Julian Bashir, Visiting Colleague that she didn't make the set.) Nathan and I settled on a theme for her pretty early on: she'd get a boost when others around her show weakness or inferiority. In game, this became an attribute bump whenever an Honor Klingon present would get stopped - an old Klingon subtheme from the Energize days.

Interestingly, choosing the way to word that simple ability became quite difficult. Our initial wording was quite close to what we have today: "When your Host or Honor Klingon present is stopped by a dilemma, you may make this personnel attributes +1 (limit +3) until the end of this turn." Ben Hosp rightly brought to our attention that, pretty often that's exactly the sort of thing we as players forget to announce, and asked that we look for a way to make the gain automatic.

Unfortunately, that proved a difficult task. His suggestion was to simply make her +1 for each stopped Host or Honor Klingon present - but that way, she'd usually start boosted if she were in the second crew attempting a mission a second time that turn. I suggested that we could possibly make her more passively worded, similar to Parem. The problem is, that's about all that that wording would be similar to. As players, the cards ask us to remember what skills have been gained and so forth, but that's all announced stuff. A passive ability on Sirella would ask us to go back and figure out which personnel were stopped when she was present, and we figured that was a step too far.

So, long story still long, we ended up keeping the original text. It wouldn't be an automatic boost if she's in a second crew, it wouldn't make you go back and recreate the rest of the mission attempt, you've just got to actively have her gain the attributes when someone gets stopped.

Unless you're playing against me, then you're fine, she might as well be passive.

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