Hello, please test these multiplayer rules

I used to play a lot of multiplayer with a victory points system like the one @kempy describes above. The threshold for winning the game was equal to the number of players -1.

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I like the idea, but I wonder if it could be simplified. Instead of Victory Points, you could do the following: “After checking for Total Control victory, your Home gains one permanent Control Point for each other player that has less Influence than you have Control Points. (Your Home is always under your control).

If there is still concern over “eliminated” players being irrelevant, you could add “If your Home did not gain any Control Points this turn, but another player gained a permanent Control Point on their home because they had more Control Points than you had Influence, your Home loses one permanent Control Point.”

“Number of Other Players Engaged” (aka Doomdog’s “x-1” aka “NOPE”) Victory Point system has a simple elegance to it.

It means that on any given turn, if you beat every other player (“Deadwood” style), you win the game, which, is how it should be.

That and it encourages teamwork. Say a bad beat leaves one player in the lead and one player distantly behind. The lead player now has a VP, and will likely obtain another one (by beating the same player again) the following turn. Hence, there is an incentive to cooperate to make sure that doesn’t happen. Nope!

Doomdog, if you were to compare the time it takes to finish a game of your Victory Point metric to the other two multi-player metrics (Elimination and Total Control), would it fall between them? Somewhere else?

It’s been a while since I played a multiplayer game with those rules, but we used to get a couple of games in on an evening so at a guess I’d say the games were quicker than other variants I’ve tried.

For a completely different experience @Powder_Monkey has put together some interesting multiplayer rules that change things up quite a bit (including shared uniqueness between players and getting production from any deed you control). I’ll see if I can find a link to the document.

Howdy Cowpokes. I have tried uploading the file but as it is a word document, it won’t allow it.

I did post it on the Doomtown Facebook page once before.

Try clicking on this link. If it doesn’t work, just go to the Facebook page and search for Multiplayer.

Have fun.

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Another 3-way multiplayer test, using the Victory Point rules that most closely match @jordan_caldwell’s version.

When checking for Victory, first check if a player has more Control Points than each other player’s Influence (counted separately, not added together). If they do, then they win the game.

If nobody won by the conditions above, then if any player has more control points than any other player has influence, they permanently gain one “Victory Point” for each player where this is the case. If the player accumulates a number of Victory Points equal to the number of players minus 1, they win.

If multiple players simultaneously reach the required number of Victory Points, then use the Tournament Floor Rules for determining tiebreakers.

One player had a rough start and each other player gained a Victory Point against them. After a round of nobody getting anything, we wound up with a situation where that first player did a deedslide comeback and managed to beat both other players by having a boatload of Control Points, and had they been unable to do that, both other players would have simultaneously gotten the last Victory Point.

We were pretty happy with this outcome because the game would have ended one way or another, and the last round became pretty tense as we were checking and re-checking control points. Ultimately, it was a very satisfying game that addressed our concerns, and we would be in favor of this becoming an official variant.

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May I point out that the first clause is a corollary of the second. And where there may be cause for additional language - besides the replacement “VP” win condition set itself - it would be concerning how to adjudicate multiple players meeting this VP win condition. Which could either be along the lines of “play another turn” or “mirror the standard tie-breaker rules”.

That’s why I added this :wink:

If multiple players simultaneously reach the required number of Victory Points, then use the Tournament Floor Rules for determining tiebreakers.

Because one of our goals was to prevent games from taking too long, tie-breaker rules seemed better than more rounds.

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And, if the whole point is to have as long as game as possible, you can just simply decide ahead of time to play Deadwood style!

I am proposing the following language for a third win condition (changes in bold):

Elimination (The Quick and the Dead)
Elimination is the shortest format, although the high stakes elimination can discourage aggressive play.
In an elimination game, players are knocked out if they would lose by the usual metric (that is, if a player has more total control points than you have total influence at sundown, you are eliminated).
When only player remains, they win!
Apply the red rules text for Elimination games.

Victory Point (One-Eyed Jacks)
Victory Point is a medium-length format, a compromise between Elimination and Total Control.
In a Victory Point game, a player wins by earning a number of “victory points” equal to their number of opponents (ex. 2 victory points for a 3-player game). Earning a victory point is accomplished in the same manner as eliminating an opponent (using the Elimination rules), but instead of their opponent being eliminated, the player gains a permanent victory point instead. Victory points roll-over and accumulate as the game progresses. If two or more players meet this win condition at Sundown, before resolving tie-breakers normally, the player who has accumulated the most victory points wins.
Apply the [color] text for Victory Point games.

Total Control (Deadwood)
While Total Control is the longest format, everybody will be in the game until the end.
In a total control game, a player wins by beating all other players by the usual metric (that is, if a player has more total control points than each other individual player has total influence at sundown, they win).
Apply the blue rules text for Total Control games.

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Pasting some feedback across from Discord user SirMan given forum registration issues he is having. :slight_smile:

Been looking at the multiplayer rules in the thread Hello, please test these multiplayer rules - #37 by jordan_caldwell
Victory Points (VPs) are interesting, but instead of making them permanent, how about staying with the “spirit” of the general rules, and make them like Control Points (CPs)?
Something like adding VPs to cards that already have a CP, and maybe distributing them so that no Card can have more than 1 VP than another card with a VP.
On Cards, VPs would count only if you both own and control the Card.
Something to keep players on their toes :wink:

I was thinking about VPs for multiplayer due to a recent 6 player game that took way too long to end.
First “draft”, before looking in the forum, was making VPs count exactly like extra CPs, and get them during sundown phase with a simple formula :
CPh = CPs of player with highest CP
INFl = Influence of opposing player with lowest influence
VP = CPh - INFl
And then distribute them evenly amongst cards you own that already have CPs
…But that might encourage turtling (discourage shootouts), and the ideas in the forum looked more balanced (in the sense that they seem to not favor a particular playstyle)

I am not sure I understand SirMan’s proposal. But anything that invites Influence to count as Control Points changes the fundamental nature of the game from interactive to passive. It’s like playing a totally different game with the same cards.

The Victory Point concept discussed here can perhaps be thought of as, at the risk of being crass, “accumulating kills”. Essentially, once your number of kills equals your number of opponents, you win.

The reason I like it is because it essentially follows the same rules as Total Control, without resorting to eliminating (a potential NPE), by letting you progress towards the normal win condition incrementally, while also giving your opponents the opportunity interrupt / do so as well.

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I love all the discussion on this. For those attending Origins and GenCon, the focus this year (besides the main event) is multi-player and greenhorn so this is great :slight_smile:

As for Denver, Austin, and Tombstone, I’m sure we’ll be engaging in some multi-player as well! (confirmed one planned activity for Tombstone)

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More cross commentary from Discord, and thanks to @jordan_caldwell for the reply. :slight_smile:

SirMan:

To clarify, the second part was just discussing the train of thoughts, and I saw that it encourages passive gameplay (turtling, which is bad :stuck_out_tongue: ). That’s why I think the ideas in the forum were more balanced.
My main point is I still think that abstract/permanent VPs are a bit off with the Reloaded spirit (back in the original Doomtown TCG, there were many ways to gain permanent VPs - e.g. Collegium with acing opposing dudes with gadgets; reducing fear level, etc. but permanent bonuses were abandoned in Reloaded, IIRC to always give players a chance at comebacks).
My point was that Having VPs on cards would create a bit more challenge/comeback opportunities, reduce variance (not screwing players over for a run of bad luck) and give more incentive to put dudes out there. It would be somewhere between “One-Eyed Jacks” and “Deadwood” in terms of game-length, but closer to “One-Eyed Jacks”, IMO.
I’ll test some of this in the next weeks, and provide further feedback :smiley:

Further clarification: The VPs gained would have been proportional to the difference of CP and opposing influence, so the more you “dominated” a losing player in terms of CP, the more VPs you would have gotten. The bad thing about it was discouraging shootouts, as losing a lot of influence could, in the worst case, double the CPs of the leading player, giving more incentive to play passively. OTOH, it could encourage cooperation or backroom deals between players… and encourage aggressive play from the player with the leading CPs. All in all, I agree with @jordan caldwell that it changes the nature of the game (making it more board-y?)

TL;DR:
proposal = VPs are “permanent” but put on cards instead of abstract tokens
VPs count only for owner & controller of card
(VPs are redistributed amongst cards in play if card leaves play)
(How VPs are generated is not the point of this proposal - it requires much more testing)
edit: VPs go on cards that can normally hold CPs (i.e. they can be ‘contested’)
edit2: this doesn’t aim to replace the “One-Eyed Jacks” rules, but offer an additional step. I can see the merit of abstract (hard) VPs, as it’s truer to the win mechanics. The ‘soft’ VPs seem closer to the spirit, IMO.
off to test ^^

A bit of new feedback for multiplayer:

###Victory Points: Working Great!

We’ve been using the Victory Point rules previously described in which total control always trumps getting the required number of victory points (so if you need 3 VPs and one player goes from 0 to having more Control than Influence against every other player, they beat the player that had 2 VPs and gained 1 this round). So we don’t have a “second place” player winning the whole game. We’ve been really happy with that, although we’ve noted that there is often a possibility for one player to play kingmaker. We’ll try the version with just victory points and no “total control” rule to see if that reduces the role of kingmaker.

###Lowball: Getting ante equal to the number of players encourages Deedslide decks

In our four player games, one player wins 4 Ghost Rock from winning Lowball, which is having a huge impact on the game by giving them far more money to work with. In our experience, deedslide decks are doing best in multiplayer because they avoid shootouts, consistently win lowball, and get the money needed to fund the deeds. So we’d like to see a change in order to prevent that much swinginess.

One idea would be to allow multiple players to receive money from the ante.

  1. The player with the lowest hand is considered the Winner.
  2. Starting with the Winner, the player with the lowest lowball hand who has not already claimed ante takes 2 Ghost Rock from the ante, or 1 Ghost Rock if that’s all that is left.
  3. Repeat the previous step until the ante is empty.

Example:

  • 3 Player Game: Winner takes 2 GR, next lowest gets 1 GR, remaining player gets nothing.
  • 4 Player Game: Winner takes 2 GR, next lowest gets 2 GR, remaining two players get nothing.
  • 5 Player Game: Winner takes 2 GR, next lowest gets 2 GR, next lowest gets 1 GR, remaining two players get nothing
  • 6 Player Game: Winner takes 2 GR, next lowest gets 2 GR, next lowest gets 2 GR, remaining three players get nothing

This proposed rule change would still allow Fool’s Gold to work as-written without any changes.

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I’ve played multiplayer lowball as winner gains 2, next lowest hand gains 1, the remainder of the pot returns to the bank. My group felt that worked well.

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How high does that work for? My concern is that if you had a 6 player game, most players would wind up never getting any ante. My hope was to have a solution that scales better.

I don’t think we ever had more than 4. I can see the concern with larger numbers and something that scales up like your suggestion is a good idea.

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One other rule we didn’t like in multiplayer: when two or more non-owners have dudes with equal influence at a deed, control of the deed goes to the owner, even if the owner is not part of the tie.

Consider this situation:

  1. Deed X is owned by player A and has no dudes at it.
  2. Player B sends over a dude with 1 Influence. Player B now controls it.
  3. Player C sends over a dude with 1 Influence. Both Players B and C have equal Influence, and control goes to Player A, despite them having no dudes there.

That is very counter-intuitive. Thematically, it seems that if one set of opposing dudes takes over a mine, then the owner gets no production because the miners are held at gunpoint. But if two sets of opposing dudes take over the mine, then the miners happily work while the two groups are staring each other down. That just seems wrong.

Our suggested fix is as follows:

  1. If the owner is part of a tie in Influence, then the owner control the deed
  • This would include a situation where the owner has no dudes and two opposing players have dudes that total 0 Influence, since all three players have 0 Influence at that deed.
  1. If the owner is not part of a tie in Influence, then nobody controls the deed.

Thematically, this makes more sense. If there are a bunch of hostile dudes at the mine, then no work gets done unless there are equal amounts of friendly dudes there to hold things off.

I’m not aware of any issues that would result from deeds not having a controller, but that would be something to watch out for.

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We tested a 4-way multiplayer game using the following new rules:

Lowball

The player who has the lowest hand is the Winner and takes two ghost rock from the ante. The next lowest hand then takes two ghost rock from the ante, or whatever is left. Repeat until the ante is empty.

This seemed much more balanced than having a single player gain 4 ghost rock while the three other players got none, and it will scale for any number of players. We think we will keep playing this.

Control of Deeds

If there is a tie for influence (including 0 influence), the Owner gains control of the deed if they are part of the tie. If the Owner is not part of the tie, nobody controls the deed.

We found this to be much more intuitive than the Owner somehow getting control of the deed if they were not part of the tie. This resulted in a 1 Control Point deed winding up going to nobody, which seemed fitting for the amount of dudes that were there. Overall, we were happy with this change.