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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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#557747
So I read the Magic 4th Edition rulebook last night for research. AMA about "batches."*

*Please do not do this.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#557748
Sorry for double post, but I had a serious thought right after posting my last.

It is clear that large-scale changes to the 1E timing rules could entail large-scale power-level changes.

(Examples: Have you ever wanted to force an opponent's mission attempt at a 40-pointer to end right before he clears the last dilemma? A Magic-style stack would allow you to play Incoming Message from hand to forcibly terminate opponent's attempt after he reveals the final dilemma! Did someone just get stopped mid-attempt? Remember that time we errata'd Loss of Orbital Stability to make it not a valid response? Well guess what happens in a world with no valid responses where all Interrupts are effectively suspends-play? That's not even the most concerning stuff we've come up with, although it's up there.)

So a follow-up question: to what extent would the community be tolerant of large-scale power-level changes and/or large-scale errata, if the payoff was "actions are simple now"? How many errata does it take, players, before it becomes wrong? Eighteen? Fifty-four? A thousand? How many errata does it take, Admiral?!

The working assumption within the 1E Department is always that the community will be furious about any changes that impact more than a handful of cards, and that your fury would be justified. So, in my initial brief to Rules, I said we should presume we can't possibly get away with more than 18 errata (two pages), plus corner-case-only power-level changes, if we are going to pull this whole action-rewrite thing off.

But it seems there is a strong appetite for rebalanced action rules -- stronger than I anticipated -- and some of you are talking about changes that would clearly require errata or substantially change the power level of several hundred cards. So it seems like a good idea to double-check my assumptions.

(To be clear, this is just me asking on behalf of Rules. Any major rebalancing would necessarily include Balance, Design, and Art, all of them have resource constraints of their own, and none of them are currently involved in this Rules project.)
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#557768
AllenGould wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:33 pm Bear in mind that while that sounds nice and simple, Magic spends *thirty pages* writing out exactly how those three steps work in practice. And that's literally just "spells, abilities, and effects". Turn order is another 13 pages.
I think a big difference is that Magic divides it rules into the rules and then more comprehensive explanations of the rules.

I've successfully taught both my kids to play magic when they were 5, and as they grow the game gets deeper and more understanding happens. Most players have never needed to read the MTG Comprehensive Rules (CR), only judges, really need to.

MTG, the base rules are like a website forum. I post, you respond, I can respond to that post. The CR is the code underpinning the buttons the users click on.


STCCG could be simplified, and still be less creaky then it is now. The problem is now that all the buttons are lit, even when they don't work because you cannot actually respond now, and a lot of players are unsure as to why.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#557770
BCSWowbagger wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:07 am Sorry for double post, but I had a serious thought right after posting my last.

(Examples: Have you ever wanted to force an opponent's mission attempt at a 40-pointer to end right before he clears the last dilemma? A Magic-style stack would allow you to play Incoming Message from hand to forcibly terminate opponent's attempt after he reveals the final dilemma! Did someone just get stopped mid-attempt? Remember that time we errata'd Loss of Orbital Stability to make it not a valid response? Well guess what happens in a world with no valid responses where all Interrupts are effectively suspends-play? That's not even the most concerning stuff we've come up with, although it's up there.)
My first thought when you said that, is it seems awesome and would achieve the desire of slowing the game back down and severely hampening speed solvers. ;)

It also adds to the Trek Sense of the game, as we've literally seen mission attempts derailed by incoming messages from Starfleet rerouting the Enterprise, or calling them away from their tasks.

If one of the big criticisms of STCCG over the years has been the feeling of two player solitaire at times, the idea that I can meaningfully interact with my opponent at all phases of the game, including during mission attempts sounds appealing.

________________________________

But realistically ,it does sound far bigger then it looks at first. And that might be coming too close to the RBM spam of the old days.


My first instinct would be "the stack applies outside of Mission attempts", ut then we're only clearing up the timing for a small part, and introducing a complication of a difference.
 
By phaserihardlyknowher (Ben Daeuber)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#557793
Armus wrote:I stopped playing Magic in 1997, about the same time that I *started* playing competitive Trek.

IOW: "Just make it like Magic" isn't a strong selling point for me.
Magic is and continues to be popular for a reason, so it's not the worst place to start looking for a model. But Magic aggressively enforces balance through rotation and banned/restricted lists so it's not really the closest comparison, either. It's a bit apples to oranges without a similar balance model.
boromirofborg wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 11:03 am My first thought when you said that, is it seems awesome and would achieve the desire of slowing the game back down and severely hampening speed solvers. ;)

It also adds to the Trek Sense of the game, as we've literally seen mission attempts derailed by incoming messages from Starfleet rerouting the Enterprise, or calling them away from their tasks.

If one of the big criticisms of STCCG over the years has been the feeling of two player solitaire at times, the idea that I can meaningfully interact with my opponent at all phases of the game, including during mission attempts sounds appealing.

________________________________

But realistically ,it does sound far bigger then it looks at first. And that might be coming too close to the RBM spam of the old days.


My first instinct would be "the stack applies outside of Mission attempts", ut then we're only clearing up the timing for a small part, and introducing a complication of a difference.
Related to above, I think most of this would be OK if there was a bigger restricted list. Do that to me once, fair enough. As you say, it fits the Trek Sense. Same the other way with ETA or any similar deus ex that Star Trek routinely formulates. But Star Trek does not use the same contrivance episode after episode. They come up with new nonsensical babble to get them out of a jam and so should players. (Back in the 90s my group enforced by a special "we can't afford all the cards" list.) So something like "you can play this card once per game" or "you can only stock one copy in your deck", or whatever, means that people can have their interactive fun, but then it's done and the game continues. As everyone says, it's a major undertaking, but there might be a middle-of-the-road between outright errata/ban and "keep everything the same".
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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#557795
phaserihardlyknowher wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:07 pm
Armus wrote:I stopped playing Magic in 1997, about the same time that I *started* playing competitive Trek.

IOW: "Just make it like Magic" isn't a strong selling point for me.
Magic is and continues to be popular for a reason, so it's not the worst place to start looking for a model. But Magic aggressively enforces balance through rotation and banned/restricted lists so it's not really the closest comparison, either. It's a bit apples to oranges without a similar balance model.
That's kind of my point: Star Trek isn't Magic, so when I hear "let's just do Magic" I really hear "let's completely re-engineer the game"

When you use an orange model on an apple, it shouldn't be surprising that those of us who like Apples may not be too excited about it. :?
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#557807
Armus wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:10 pm
phaserihardlyknowher wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:07 pm
Armus wrote:I stopped playing Magic in 1997, about the same time that I *started* playing competitive Trek.

IOW: "Just make it like Magic" isn't a strong selling point for me.
Magic is and continues to be popular for a reason, so it's not the worst place to start looking for a model. But Magic aggressively enforces balance through rotation and banned/restricted lists so it's not really the closest comparison, either. It's a bit apples to oranges without a similar balance model.
That's kind of my point: Star Trek isn't Magic, so when I hear "let's just do Magic" I really hear "let's completely re-engineer the game"

When you use an orange model on an apple, it shouldn't be surprising that those of us who like Apples may not be too excited about it. :?
Magic doesn't have a copyright on simplicity nor ease of understanding. I trust in the rule committee figuring out a way to port what we need, what would work and then figure out a way to overlay a system. Then fine tune with errata to the difficults and stubborns.
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First Edition Rules Master
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#557818
And it's worth noting that Magic isn't the only way to do it. Some CCGs don't even *have* responses. B5CCG has an equivalent of [HA] but pretty much no play from hand responses. I don't think Pokemon has any responses at all. Doomtown is fairly close to 1E, except they spell the exact timing out on every card - a luxury afforded to games with 8+ lines of game text!

There's no right way to do it.
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By winterflames (Derek Marlar)
 - Delta Quadrant
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#557820
Why can't you add a designator to the actions to indicate when they can happen? Lotus Era L5R did this really well, I thought.

Something like: Battle actions can take place during battle. Mission actions can take place during missions. Orders can only happen during your order phase and cannot happen unless the stack is clear. Open actions can happen during any phase of any turn and in response to another action, but cannot modify Battles and Missions.

If you define what kind of action it is, it lays out when it can happen. Hey, you can even keep Suspends play actions as the split second, "things can't happen during" type thing.

It doesn't have to be How Magic Does It to be better than what we have now.
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By eberlems
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2E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E  National Second Runner-Up 2023
#557840
winterflames wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 11:39 pm Why can't you add a designator to the actions to indicate when they can happen? Lotus Era L5R did this really well, I thought.

Something like: Battle actions can take place during battle. Mission actions can take place during missions. Orders can only happen during your order phase and cannot happen unless the stack is clear. Open actions can happen during any phase of any turn and in response to another action, but cannot modify Battles and Missions.

If you define what kind of action it is, it lays out when it can happen. Hey, you can even keep Suspends play actions as the split second, "things can't happen during" type thing.

It doesn't have to be How Magic Does It to be better than what we have now.
Warhammer 40k CCG had a system of Recation, Modification, BattleAction and Tab on their cards. One BA or T at a time, then any R alternating by player, then any T alternating by player.
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