[edgeofhearing]

Welcome to Will of the Collective VII: Bottom's Up! This time around we're designing a non-unique character from the bottom up, starting with faction and ending with the story.

In this round, we'll pick a total cost for our personnel, including the ability we chose. We have three options, and each will give us different choices in the next round.

For reference, the ability we selected last round was: "(Cost +1) When you play this personnel, the next or personnel you play this turn is cost -2."

2 Cost: With the ability we've chosen, a 2 cost personnel would have the skills and attributes of a 1-cost personnel. If we pick this option, in the next round we'll be able to pick between choices like "three skills, average attributes", "two skills, high attributes", and "four skills, poor attributes".

3 Cost: This option will give our personnel the skills and attributes of a 2 cost personnel, opening up these choices: "five skills, average attributes", "four skills, high attributes", and "six skills, poor attributes".

4 Cost: The final choice is pricey, but comes with the most skills and attributes: "seven skills, average attributes", "six skills, high attributes", and "eight skills, poor attributes".

This poll will be open for three days; that's probably more time than we need, but I will be at Continentals this weekend, and I'm uncertain when I'll have a chance to put the next poll up. The option with the plurality of votes will be the winner - I will cast my vote in case of a tie.

[GooeyChewie]

Cost 4, so they can help trigger the text on AU-TNG personnel.

[jadziadax8]

I was thinking that would be a good, thematic choice, but I also think that means that we will have to look farther afield than Yesterday’s Enterprise for a suitable non-unique.


Sent through Subspace from the Starship Enterprise

[monty42]

YES. Let's make a non-unique Worf!!!

cuz you know, you can never have enough Worfs

[GooeyChewie]

I was thinking that would be a good, thematic choice, but I also think that means that we will have to look farther afield than Yesterday’s Enterprise for a suitable non-unique.

I'm not sure I understand your meaning. I could see a background character from Yesterday's Enterprise having anywhere from 2 to 8 skills, as needed to match the cost/attributes chosen.

YES. Let's make a non-unique Worf!!!

Only if we can name him something other than "Worf." Maybe "Parallel Worf"? Uniqueness rules get really wonky when you have unique and non-unique cards with the same name.

[jadziadax8]

I was thinking that would be a good, thematic choice, but I also think that means that we will have to look farther afield than Yesterday’s Enterprise for a suitable non-unique.

I'm not sure I understand your meaning. I could see a background character from Yesterday's Enterprise having anywhere from 2 to 8 skills, as needed to match the cost/attributes chosen.

Sorry, I was specifically referring to making this personnel cost 4. I was wondering how we would find someone who would be suitable to be non-unique who could have anywhere between six and eight skills. I was wondering about the precedent for such a personnel, so I went to look at which personnel cost 4 and are non-unique.

It turns out that there are currently five such personnel. Four of the five of those are Khan's folks, so get a discount when he's around. They each have 3 skills and high attributes, so seem to be typical 2-cost personnel with a Keyword. I assume that they were designed with a cost 4 for reasons of cultural enforcement, as they rarely show up outside of a deck with Khan in it. The last one is Punull, who has 4 skills and average attributes, but a big download. So, a 4-cost non-unique with 6-8 skills is unprecedented.

Then I went to see about 3-cost non-uniques. You get a similar set of personnel to the previous search - lots of people with a handful of skills and always some sort of ability.

So, my concern is finding a non-unique background character from Yesterday's Enterprise who could realistically have that many skills. I don't want another Boq'ta (a great, necessary personnel for , but I feel the character assigned doesn't match the gameplay).

I'm just looking ahead, is all.

[monty42]

It's not too late to shift our attention to this guy

and give him really wonky skills...

[Ashbey]

Is it legal to make a nonunique version of unique person?

[The Prefect]

...
and give him really wonky skills...

Barbering Cantankerousness Music Youth

[GooeyChewie]

Then I went to see about 3-cost non-uniques. You get a similar set of personnel to the previous search - lots of people with a handful of skills and always some sort of ability.

So, my concern is finding a non-unique background character from Yesterday's Enterprise who could realistically have that many skills. I don't want another Boq'ta (a great, necessary personnel for , but I feel the character assigned doesn't match the gameplay).

I'm thinking he'll be more like Thompson than Boq'ta. Part of what makes Boq'ta weird is that he actually had a fairly large role in that episode, and his skills don't really gel with what we know about him. For this personnel, we'll likely end up with somebody who has no lines, whose most distinguishing feature will be that they are wearing the right color uniform for the majority of whatever skills they have.

Is it legal to make a nonunique version of unique person?

Short answer, no. It'd create some rules nightmares.

[Naetor]

Is the winning ability -2 cost? If so, at 4-cost the personnel should mirror a high-quality 2-cost non-unique, like:

Delvok
Haadok
Nevala or all those affiliation-specific holograms after their boost

Giving some background scrub 7 skills is stupid.

[jadziadax8]

Idea: Selar

She got paged in the episode, after all.


Sent through Subspace from the Starship Enterprise

[Naetor]

4 cost will win. But I like the idea of having a vanilla 2-cost personnel with like 3 skills and 6-6-5 to be "free" if you can capitalize on the icons. That way the card is still playable even if it isn't free.

[Latok]

These are creative concerns, we're not making Hawk we're making a personnel for , what do they need? I don't know. What works for them? 4-cost personnel right? Why does it matter if some random has a bunch of skills, that's some 1E bullshit any way, we have Ptol, Thompson, it's a card game not a roleplaying game.

[WeyounsLastClone]

Maybe you can add the winning ability to the first post?

I would have hoped there would be an option listed for a cheap 1 cost, with maybe 1 or 2 skills, and 6-5-4, or 4-4-6 or whatever. You would be able to play 1-2-4 in a turn.