Hello, please test these multiplayer rules

[Harlath]

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

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 ). 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

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 ^^

[Thunderforge]

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.

[Doomdog]

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.

[Thunderforge]

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.

[Doomdog]

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.

[Thunderforge]

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.
2. 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.

[Thunderforge]

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.