#589871
I'm going to take you behind the scenes today to help us figure out what to do about dual-personnel cards. This is a long, rulesy 1E Friday Question, so buckle up.
THE (FIRST) PROBLEM: DUAL-PERSONNEL CONFUSION
Dual-personnel cards confuse people. Complaints about them abound... especially when players get them involved in random selections, romantic pairings, downloads (with or without criteria), and anything else where the distinction between a "personnel" and a "personnel card" suddenly becomes relevant.
You don't need to search the Rules Questions board or the Facebook group for long to find complaints and questions about this behavior... and it goes back many years. Just this morning, I received a question about whether Royale Casino: Elevator reads the combined attributes of Data and Geordi or just one set of attributes. (The answer is just one, the one you targeted for the reporting action.) The Glossary has some fairly esoteric rulings about this, too:
if you hit Chula: Trickery with a dual-personnel card, do you read all the attributes as-printed, or pick one of the personnel on the card and just read one set? (The answer is you read them as printed-- "3 plus 3" and so forth -- which is almost the opposite of the Elevator answer, but that's because the Elevator was your choice and Trickery is random selection.)
Can Jake and Nog use Visit Cochrane Memorial? No.
But can they build a Ferengi Trading Post? Yes.
If Distraction's random selection is a dual-personnel card, do you select one or two additional personnel (and of which genders) (and what if only one of the secondary targets has Honor)? (Answer too complicated; check DRG.)
The rules for random selections involving dual-personnel cards have been through three revisions (in 1997, 2001, and 2002), and the rules for downloading them have been written twice (in 2011 and 2013). Each revision seems to leave the community more confused than before.
Then there was that clever trick with Sons of Mogh and a Medical Kit that gave Worf MEDICAL that forced us to rewrite the dual-personnel rule to be mushier and more confusing. Whoever came up with that stupid post in the first place, you're a dick.
Like I said: dual-personnel cards are confusing.
So people often ask Rules to "do something" about dual-personnel cards. It's a Top 5 Request for the Rules Committee. We've been thinking about it for years, but, this year, Design asked us to Do Something about all this. So we finally buckled down and wrote a proposal for a new rule.
THE PROPOSAL:
Decipher taught us to "treat dual-personnel cards as if they were two separate personnel on one card." This is what causes all the problems: you can't actually have two personnel on one personnel card, and the rules get all crinkly when they pretend you can.
Our proposal is simple: treat dual-personnel cards as if they were a single personnel for all purposes.
THE DETAILS:
These are the actual textual rule changes in our proposal. Look how many rules and clarifications we would be deleting! As the guy who has to maintain those rules and clarifications (and explain them, over and over again, to the confused), I have to admit, the prospect makes me smile.
THE IMPLICATIONS:
In random selections, a dual-personnel card is selected and dies like any other personnel card -- no need to do complicated adding or card limits or re-selections.
Sons of Mogh used to be two 3-skill personnel. Under this proposal, the card becomes a single 6-skill personnel. Hello, Hero Worship!
Similarly, Sergey and Helena used to treat Sergey and Helena as separate personnel, and thus you could download Sergey with Assign Support Personnel (and Helena would tag along). Under this proposal, Sergey and Helena are a single three-skill personnel with a special download, not a support personnel.
All downloads with dual-personnel cards just work normally under this proposal. No need for special rules or other handling anymore. They work like you expect. Go ahead and download Jake and Nog to Ferengi Conference, but that counts as 6 (it also counts as 6 today, but some players mistakenly believe it's 3 , and there is a limited exception under today's rules).
Attribute scores are always combined. "CUNNING 4+9" is a flavorful way of writing "CUNNING 13". Beverly and Will (INTEGRITY 14) can contribute their INTEGRITY to passing "God" (but you'll still need another personnel with INTEGRITY > 8!). If present with Kukalaka, their INTEGRITY becomes 16 (not 18).
Dual-personnel cards have two classifications. It's what the template does. It's unusual, but we don't see a problem with it.
A dual personnel may have multiple species. Just as Alexander Rozhenko is both Klingon species and Human species, so also Worf and Jadzia is a single personnel who is both Klingon species and Trill species.
Similarly (but it feels weirder), a dual personnel may have multiple genders. Worf and Jadzia is a single personnel who is both male and female. This card can pass Primal Urges by itself. Worf and Jadzia can be targeted by cards that target males and cards that target females (or twice, by a card that targets both males and females!) and that's just fine. (The gender rules already allow a single personnel to have multiple genders, but it's never been done before.)
A specific allowance in this proposals permits dual-personnel cards to contribute both their staffing icons to ship staffing. This is the only special rule remaining for dual-personnel cards in our proposal.
The persona rule still applies, so this proposal won't change the fact that you can't have The Trois in play at the same time as Deanna Troi or anything of that sort. Also, persona swapping for dual-personnel cards still works the same way.
Our proposal rewrites the romantic partners rule to allow a card to be its own romantic partner if indicated by lore. That means dual-personnel cards like Mr. and Mrs. Troi that were specifically designed to be romantic partners (and intuitively seem like they are) will still function correctly. This isn't necessarily just for dual personnel, either: if the CC ever makes a card out of Gross Rom from "Bar Association", that version of Rom could be his own romantic partner.
Our proposal would make The Beating Heart work less gorram weird with dual-personnel cards.
Our proposal would make dual-personnel cards each count as a single personnel, which means Sisters of Duras would be only one personnel, which means you could not use Sisters of Duras to get double matching-commander benefits on Cha'Joh (you would need separate cards for Lursa and B'Etor to get those benefits). Sisters of Duras could contribute both staffing icons, but would not both be matching commandrixes.
We shipped this proposal over to playtesting in May.
THE (SECOND) PROBLEM: MIXED FEEDBACK
Playtester feedback on our proposal over the past half-year has been mixed.
About half of testers think this proposal is a fantastic idea that greatly simplifies dual-personnel cards. They love it.
That half of testing sometimes asks me when this proposal is finally coming out.
On the other hand, about half of testers think that this proposal is either:
more confusing than current rules OR
the same amount of confusing, but effectively more confusing because everyone has to relearn the rules (again) OR
slightly less confusing but not enough to justify a big change OR
less confusing but dumbs down the game - "1E is more than draw-three-play-three-fly-to-missions-solve and pretty please stop trying to make it that way" OR
unbalancing: because their attributes are combined in the proposal, dual personnel smash dilemmas like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Spatial Rift, and are almost always highest CUNNING/INTEGRITY/STRENGTH for cards like Hippocratic Oath and Misinterpreted History (this can be good or bad, depending on the dilemma and the team) OR
too nice to blue: in the current game, there are 7 dual-personnel cards, so everyone has access to the mechanic... but some affiliations have more access than others:
, , , , and all have zero dual-personnel cards; , , and each have 1 dual-personnel card; and each have 2; have 3; and have 9.
True, the cards are duplicative: you can't have Jean-Luc and Beverly, Beverly and Will, Mr. and Mrs. Troi, Data and Picard, and The Trois in play at the same time, because of persona conflicts. I think you can get, at most, any two of those. And they are spread out across a several subfactions, so it's probably not practical to get even most of them together in the same deck. But still has more options than any other affiliation, and people are understandably reluctant to give anything more.
Naturally, a big thanks to Playtesting for trying this out and sharing their honest feedback. All of it (on all sides) makes sense!
THE QUESTION(S) (finally!)
Unlike most situations where Playtesters try something out for us, the dual-personnel rules are something that ordinary players can think through and have an opinion on. We will always take Playtesting feedback more seriously, because it's backed by game data, not just forum theorycrafting, but this specific rules question is broad enough that we can take this particular issue out from "behind the curtain" and invite broader feedback. (Although, hey, if you go play a test game with the new proposed rule and come back with game data like the testers, that would be even better!)
We in Rules just aren't sure quite what to do about this whole thing right now. There doesn't seem to be a good way of addressing the concerns that the more negative reports revealed, at least not without spoiling the simplicity that the more enthusiastic testers responded to with such gusto. Everything we can think of to make this proposal better would also make this proposal worse. So it's starting to feel more like a binary choice: do we go ahead with this proposal despite the concerns and revise dual-personnel rules for hopefully the last time? Or so we stick with the current dual-personnel rules... most likely forever, given how long it took us to get to this point for this proposal?
Or is there some other path? Is there some way of addressing the concerns?
Does this proposed approach to dual-personnel cards seem promising enough to pursue further? Or was the whole thing a mistake? Is it actually less confusing, or is it more confusing? Is it worth it just for how many rules it allows us to delete?
Is there a way we can make everyone happy? (that would be ideal)
What should the Rules Committee do?
I can't promise we'll take any advice offered here, but Rules has been pretty stumped about the path forward for the past couple of months, so I figured it really couldn't hurt to start a 1EFQ discussion about it.
I look forward to reading your thoughts!
P.S. If anything in this post didn't make sense, ask! That in itself is useful feedback, both about current rules and the proposal.
THE (FIRST) PROBLEM: DUAL-PERSONNEL CONFUSION
Dual-personnel cards confuse people. Complaints about them abound... especially when players get them involved in random selections, romantic pairings, downloads (with or without criteria), and anything else where the distinction between a "personnel" and a "personnel card" suddenly becomes relevant.
You don't need to search the Rules Questions board or the Facebook group for long to find complaints and questions about this behavior... and it goes back many years. Just this morning, I received a question about whether Royale Casino: Elevator reads the combined attributes of Data and Geordi or just one set of attributes. (The answer is just one, the one you targeted for the reporting action.) The Glossary has some fairly esoteric rulings about this, too:
if you hit Chula: Trickery with a dual-personnel card, do you read all the attributes as-printed, or pick one of the personnel on the card and just read one set? (The answer is you read them as printed-- "3 plus 3" and so forth -- which is almost the opposite of the Elevator answer, but that's because the Elevator was your choice and Trickery is random selection.)
Can Jake and Nog use Visit Cochrane Memorial? No.
But can they build a Ferengi Trading Post? Yes.
If Distraction's random selection is a dual-personnel card, do you select one or two additional personnel (and of which genders) (and what if only one of the secondary targets has Honor)? (Answer too complicated; check DRG.)
The rules for random selections involving dual-personnel cards have been through three revisions (in 1997, 2001, and 2002), and the rules for downloading them have been written twice (in 2011 and 2013). Each revision seems to leave the community more confused than before.
Then there was that clever trick with Sons of Mogh and a Medical Kit that gave Worf MEDICAL that forced us to rewrite the dual-personnel rule to be mushier and more confusing. Whoever came up with that stupid post in the first place, you're a dick.
Like I said: dual-personnel cards are confusing.
So people often ask Rules to "do something" about dual-personnel cards. It's a Top 5 Request for the Rules Committee. We've been thinking about it for years, but, this year, Design asked us to Do Something about all this. So we finally buckled down and wrote a proposal for a new rule.
THE PROPOSAL:
Decipher taught us to "treat dual-personnel cards as if they were two separate personnel on one card." This is what causes all the problems: you can't actually have two personnel on one personnel card, and the rules get all crinkly when they pretend you can.
Our proposal is simple: treat dual-personnel cards as if they were a single personnel for all purposes.
THE DETAILS:
These are the actual textual rule changes in our proposal. Look how many rules and clarifications we would be deleting! As the guy who has to maintain those rules and clarifications (and explain them, over and over again, to the confused), I have to admit, the prospect makes me smile.
THE IMPLICATIONS:
In random selections, a dual-personnel card is selected and dies like any other personnel card -- no need to do complicated adding or card limits or re-selections.
Sons of Mogh used to be two 3-skill personnel. Under this proposal, the card becomes a single 6-skill personnel. Hello, Hero Worship!
Similarly, Sergey and Helena used to treat Sergey and Helena as separate personnel, and thus you could download Sergey with Assign Support Personnel (and Helena would tag along). Under this proposal, Sergey and Helena are a single three-skill personnel with a special download, not a support personnel.
All downloads with dual-personnel cards just work normally under this proposal. No need for special rules or other handling anymore. They work like you expect. Go ahead and download Jake and Nog to Ferengi Conference, but that counts as 6 (it also counts as 6 today, but some players mistakenly believe it's 3 , and there is a limited exception under today's rules).
Attribute scores are always combined. "CUNNING 4+9" is a flavorful way of writing "CUNNING 13". Beverly and Will (INTEGRITY 14) can contribute their INTEGRITY to passing "God" (but you'll still need another personnel with INTEGRITY > 8!). If present with Kukalaka, their INTEGRITY becomes 16 (not 18).
Dual-personnel cards have two classifications. It's what the template does. It's unusual, but we don't see a problem with it.
A dual personnel may have multiple species. Just as Alexander Rozhenko is both Klingon species and Human species, so also Worf and Jadzia is a single personnel who is both Klingon species and Trill species.
Similarly (but it feels weirder), a dual personnel may have multiple genders. Worf and Jadzia is a single personnel who is both male and female. This card can pass Primal Urges by itself. Worf and Jadzia can be targeted by cards that target males and cards that target females (or twice, by a card that targets both males and females!) and that's just fine. (The gender rules already allow a single personnel to have multiple genders, but it's never been done before.)
A specific allowance in this proposals permits dual-personnel cards to contribute both their staffing icons to ship staffing. This is the only special rule remaining for dual-personnel cards in our proposal.
The persona rule still applies, so this proposal won't change the fact that you can't have The Trois in play at the same time as Deanna Troi or anything of that sort. Also, persona swapping for dual-personnel cards still works the same way.
Our proposal rewrites the romantic partners rule to allow a card to be its own romantic partner if indicated by lore. That means dual-personnel cards like Mr. and Mrs. Troi that were specifically designed to be romantic partners (and intuitively seem like they are) will still function correctly. This isn't necessarily just for dual personnel, either: if the CC ever makes a card out of Gross Rom from "Bar Association", that version of Rom could be his own romantic partner.
Our proposal would make The Beating Heart work less gorram weird with dual-personnel cards.
Our proposal would make dual-personnel cards each count as a single personnel, which means Sisters of Duras would be only one personnel, which means you could not use Sisters of Duras to get double matching-commander benefits on Cha'Joh (you would need separate cards for Lursa and B'Etor to get those benefits). Sisters of Duras could contribute both staffing icons, but would not both be matching commandrixes.
We shipped this proposal over to playtesting in May.
THE (SECOND) PROBLEM: MIXED FEEDBACK
Playtester feedback on our proposal over the past half-year has been mixed.
About half of testers think this proposal is a fantastic idea that greatly simplifies dual-personnel cards. They love it.
That half of testing sometimes asks me when this proposal is finally coming out.
On the other hand, about half of testers think that this proposal is either:
more confusing than current rules OR
the same amount of confusing, but effectively more confusing because everyone has to relearn the rules (again) OR
slightly less confusing but not enough to justify a big change OR
less confusing but dumbs down the game - "1E is more than draw-three-play-three-fly-to-missions-solve and pretty please stop trying to make it that way" OR
unbalancing: because their attributes are combined in the proposal, dual personnel smash dilemmas like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Spatial Rift, and are almost always highest CUNNING/INTEGRITY/STRENGTH for cards like Hippocratic Oath and Misinterpreted History (this can be good or bad, depending on the dilemma and the team) OR
too nice to blue: in the current game, there are 7 dual-personnel cards, so everyone has access to the mechanic... but some affiliations have more access than others:
, , , , and all have zero dual-personnel cards; , , and each have 1 dual-personnel card; and each have 2; have 3; and have 9.
True, the cards are duplicative: you can't have Jean-Luc and Beverly, Beverly and Will, Mr. and Mrs. Troi, Data and Picard, and The Trois in play at the same time, because of persona conflicts. I think you can get, at most, any two of those. And they are spread out across a several subfactions, so it's probably not practical to get even most of them together in the same deck. But still has more options than any other affiliation, and people are understandably reluctant to give anything more.
Naturally, a big thanks to Playtesting for trying this out and sharing their honest feedback. All of it (on all sides) makes sense!
THE QUESTION(S) (finally!)
Unlike most situations where Playtesters try something out for us, the dual-personnel rules are something that ordinary players can think through and have an opinion on. We will always take Playtesting feedback more seriously, because it's backed by game data, not just forum theorycrafting, but this specific rules question is broad enough that we can take this particular issue out from "behind the curtain" and invite broader feedback. (Although, hey, if you go play a test game with the new proposed rule and come back with game data like the testers, that would be even better!)
We in Rules just aren't sure quite what to do about this whole thing right now. There doesn't seem to be a good way of addressing the concerns that the more negative reports revealed, at least not without spoiling the simplicity that the more enthusiastic testers responded to with such gusto. Everything we can think of to make this proposal better would also make this proposal worse. So it's starting to feel more like a binary choice: do we go ahead with this proposal despite the concerns and revise dual-personnel rules for hopefully the last time? Or so we stick with the current dual-personnel rules... most likely forever, given how long it took us to get to this point for this proposal?
Or is there some other path? Is there some way of addressing the concerns?
Does this proposed approach to dual-personnel cards seem promising enough to pursue further? Or was the whole thing a mistake? Is it actually less confusing, or is it more confusing? Is it worth it just for how many rules it allows us to delete?
Is there a way we can make everyone happy? (that would be ideal)
What should the Rules Committee do?
I can't promise we'll take any advice offered here, but Rules has been pretty stumped about the path forward for the past couple of months, so I figured it really couldn't hurt to start a 1EFQ discussion about it.
I look forward to reading your thoughts!
P.S. If anything in this post didn't make sense, ask! That in itself is useful feedback, both about current rules and the proposal.
Rules Manager | Official Rulings in blue. All else opinion. | Rules Archive
"We pledge our loyalty to the Glossary from now until death."
"Then receive this reward from the Glossary. May it keep you strong."
~Iron Prime
"We pledge our loyalty to the Glossary from now until death."
"Then receive this reward from the Glossary. May it keep you strong."
~Iron Prime