[Faithful Reader]

This is the designer Q & A Thread for Qpid. Ask you questions about the set and they'll make every effort to answer them. Keep things on topic or risk being sent to the corner.

You design team:

Sean "Jono" O'Reilly
Charlie "Midnightlich" Plaine
Mike "The Prefect" Shea

[Danny]

One of the ways that 2E differs from 1E is that it doesn’t reference gender or “romantic partners” (so, I guess that’s two of the ways) - did this make things tricky when designing cards that probably would’ve benefited from those features? Did the 1E players/designers amongst you find it more challenging because of that?

[Jono]

One of the ways that 2E differs from 1E is that it doesn’t reference gender or “romantic partners” (so, I guess that’s two of the ways) - did this make things tricky when designing cards that probably would’ve benefited from those features? Did the 1E players/designers amongst you find it more challenging because of that?

With gender irrelevant in 2E we had to think of different ways to show romance or love. Take today’s card, A Bad Case of par’Mach. We couldn’t have it affect one male and one female (like might occur in 1E). That is why any two personnel can be affected by it.

We were able to make it more “flavorful” in the style of 1E’s storylines by using species (Klingon) and specific personnel (Jadzia Dax and Quark) instead of gender.

There is a benefit of no gender in 2E: you don’t have to worry a card won’t affect affiliations differently unless you let it.

I play both games and doing so might affect how I develop card ideas. There are two approaches: find a story and make cards from it or think of cards and find a story to match. Obviously, A Bad Case of par’Mach comes from the latter as do a few other cards in the set.

[Jono]

No other questions???

[Danny]

Why doesn’t JLP have Thief.? There are lines in the article that lend itself to the idea he should be one:

Jean-Luc’s ability plays off Robin Hood’s idea of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

and

He may break the law, but he only does it to secure the freedom against a tyrannical king.

[Mogh]

It's great to see more Q personnel. As a longtime fan of the game franchises, I recall dreaming up some goofy Q mechanics involving the Robin Hood fantasy way back during the Q Continuum days. Are there any long-term goals for Q personnel, or is the keyword just a design insurance policy right now?

[Jono]

Why doesn’t JLP have Thief.? There are lines in the article that lend itself to the idea he should be one:

Jean-Luc’s ability plays off Robin Hood’s idea of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

and

He may break the law, but he only does it to secure the freedom against a tyrannical king.

You bring up a good question. During design there was consideration whether Picard should get Thief. The quotes from my article are more about the Robin Hood persona and not directly Picard’s actions. Robin Hood (at least in the classic Hollywood version) is known to steal from the rich and to give to the poor. We represented this in the point gain ability. However, on screen Picard is virtuous (as evident) by his INTEGRITY of 8. Plus, he really doesn’t “steal” anything like Robin Hood did. That’s the main reason he doesn’t get the keyword.

I did look at the personnel who have the Thief keyword. There’s only a couple who have INTEGRITY greater than 5. Two in particular stand off, Miles O’Brien (Connelly) and James T. Kirk (Organizing Crime). Both did criminal activities on screen — for a good cause.

JLP really only wanted to rescue Vash. Also, we had to also weight JLP’s cost. Every time you add skills or keywords you have to decide if a personnel’s cost needs to go up. This is some Charlie mentioned to us multiple times during design of Qpid.

I hope I answered your question.

[Jono]

It's great to see more Q personnel. As a longtime fan of the game franchises, I recall dreaming up some goofy Q mechanics involving the Robin Hood fantasy way back during the Q Continuum days. Are there any long-term goals for Q personnel, or is the keyword just a design insurance policy right now?

As far as I know, there’s no “long-term” plan for more Q personnel, but I personally would love to see more. I think that is one untapped gameplay mechanic that definitely could be explored more.

When we designed Vash and JLP and added the keyword it felt appropriate from a gameplay standpoint. We realized during design at the very least you can download one of the personnel when attempting Collapse Anti-Time Anomaly.

Who know what other possibilities lie in the future, but as you point out, by putting the keyword on Vash and JLP allows a future designer a sandbox to play in.

[WeyounsLastClone]

What's your favorite card in the set?

Can you share what card(s) (or concept) almost made the set, but didn't?

[Jono]

Sorry, I didn't get to this sooner, but I was busy this weekend.

What's your favorite card in the set?

I have two. Since this is the first set released I worked on, I am particular to cards that I designed that made the final nine.

A Bad Case of par'Mach. From the initial design to what you see in Qpid, the only major change was really the card's cost. The original name for it during testing was actually "par'Mach." I like that the player facing the dilemma can choose to stop a Klingon, Jadzia Dax or Quark and get a card draw bonus.

I also like Nothing to Lose. The name during testing was "Nightmarish Creation" with the thought it would show the Quark Kira hologram but a card's story selection is up to creative not design. There were some mechanics that got put in and then discarded in between, but two of the requirements stayed the same (we dropped one and it is probably for the better).

Can you share what card(s) (or concept) almost made the set, but didn't?

One concept included a new keyword for dilemmas. I can't say more because it could come back in the future. Some testers complained there is an abundance of underutilized keywords already and felt we didn't need another one until that was addressed.

Michael, Charlie and I began work on Donar in August. It's actually two boutique products for holidays. We started work on the Christmas set first but work on it wasn't coming along fast enough for December 2018. Why I mention this, is there's one card designed for Qpid that everyone approved of, but ending up getting bumped at the last minute. You should set the card at the end of 2019. Because of that, I won't say any more about it.

Other cards cuts (that could make a return one day) include a Holoprogram, an Artifact and a personnel with an ability mirroring its 1E counterpart. Can't say more that that.