Derailing a Classic appreciation thread into Reloaded:
Why don’t people like deed destruction? Since it’s a self-acing job, you won’t suffer to much from it in a single game, it’ll just slow things down and make games longer, but a lot of Reloaded games (those not involving Landslide, obv) are too short anyway so they’d anly benefit from a small delay. Granted, a deed destuction card should always be a job and self-acing. but given that I don’t see the harm in printing one such card. Economy denail is still not a thing in Reloaded.
Also, the “gain 1 victory point” part could be easily translated to “Your outfit gains +1 control point” - same thing here, if it requires effort and is self-acing and there are not many effects like this, it could be interesting.
I agree that a few cards are not choke yet but that does not change the fact that players tend to not like even a little denial of resources like cards and income. Also, Doomtown already has the built-in system of occupying deeds and keeping the other player from getting income. That added to cards like above can easily lead to a very negative playing experience.
This IMO would be a bad direction for DTR in general. As much as I love my classic Dawgs, VPs are not a great mechanic. Putting “banked” and untouchable VP/CP into the game makes it less interactive. I’d much prefer something like Ol’ Fashioned Hangin’ where the leader of the job gets a CP added to them permanently. Then your opponent can try to fight back against the CP gained at least.
I mentioned this in another thread as well, but I do agree that an Arson-like or Burnt Offering card would be great (as much as I hate Burnt Offering) if it was done well. The fact that DTR is much more in-town than Classic was makes the Burnt Offering more attractive, as it will often be easier to defend your in-town deeds than Classic’s out-of-town strikes.
How is it off-topic? This is about appreciating Burnt Offering. We’re talking about how we’d appreciate an effect like Burnt Offering in DTR. That seems to be appreciation of the card itself, to me.
My main issue with deed destruction is that it turns back the game clock by removing CPs from the board. A card like burnt offering, which preserved CPs as VPs, bothered me far less than Arson, which only served to turn back the game clock, as above.
A version of arson where the job’s leader gets the control point would bother me much less. Alternately, a version that leaves the deed on the board, but drops its production to 0 would be fine. As long as the game clock keeps running.
On deed destruction what I remember was I played a black jack deck that had exp 2 black jack I played all negative jobs arson, claim jumper , massacre at high noon ( the job that annilated turtle decks) , and events that speed production. From my experience back then it sucked for anyone playing with or against the deck the game was over super fast or took for ever and it wasn’t interactive play something kill or discard it next turn. If they did denial hard in this game put it in two values that don’t play well together so a choke deck would take time to evolve before it was released on the meta. Side note amazing article brought back good memories great read thanks mr. Orange.
Except this also occurs with every mechanic that puts CPs on a Dude, potentially, of which there are many.
My other counterpoint to this particular line of thinking is that an inexorable march towards an end goal can be a good thing so that games don’t drag on and on, but it can also be counter-productive. Even with deed destruction in Classic it was often not particularly interactive until the very end moments of the game. Matches often felts like two turtles slowly crossing the finish line with the less-slow turtle being the winner.
Mechanics that spur destruction (deeds, dudes, or otherwise) which can be protected against encourage interaction and conflict, which is the heart of the game. Why do you defend kidnapped dudes? Because their influence and abilities are useful to you in achieving your goals or simply not losing the game. Deeds similarly offer useful abilities that you want to keep in play and which help you win the game, so you’d want to defend them.
I think I agree with your general trepidation that deed destruction needs to be done carefully lest it be a negative effect on the game. However, I would very much like to see it present in the game. Not only just to give an optional moment of conflict than what we currently have, but also because it frees up design space for Deeds. Deeds can be even more powerful and not necessarily have to be controller-based (though I think that’s generally good for them from a design perspective) if there is a threat that they can be destroyed.
It’s not quite the same thing. The average dude has influence (meaning that the mean influence of all dudes is above 0; without checking, I suspect the same is true of the median; the mode might be 0, but is porbably 1 or 2), which means that taking out your dude with CPs isn’t strictly a retreat of the game state, but also advances my victory condition by (usually) reducing your influence. And even when the dude doesn’t have a CP, I’m removing your board presence, so I can move more freely and take away your other CPs.
It should also be noted that turning back the game clock in the sense I mean it doesn’t refer solely to victory conditions. Doomtown’s early, mid, and late game are distinguished in part by the increasing complexity of the decision matrix for each noon play, particularly for movement, which is fueled in part by the increasing number of deeds.
There are plenty of ways to spur conflict that don’t involve destroying deeds. In Reloaded particularly, the deeds themselves are more often a locus of conflict than in classic, due to a much higher percentage of deeds having control, and the many deeds with controller actions, both some of the smarter decisions in reloaded. To say nothing of the general game structure making income denial via deed occupation more important. If design’s aim is to provoke conflict, leaving CPs and valuable abilities on the board, is more effective than providing ways to remove them.
I don’t think this is actually true if deeds are to remain balanced. Threat of removal applies equally to all deeds, so it’s not fair to say that deed removal existing in game is a balance for powerful deeds. That’s like saying a very powerful goods card is balanced because it can be hit by Unprepared. While it’s true, it’s not more true than for less powerful goods, which are equally vulnerable.
I’ll grant that these powerful deeds will be a more frequent target for hypothetical deed destruction, but this line of argument is basically the same thing as people responding to claims that a new goods card is strong by saying, “Unprepared stops it!” While true, it’s hardly a unique circumstance – Unprepared is an answer for every goods, so it being an answer to a strong new goods card doesn’t make that new goods less strong.
In fact, this can even be a problem on the flipside, because if people begin to pack hypothetical deed destruction specifically to answer hypothetical powerful new deeds, then all deeds get pushed down by that response, making deeds in general less viable.
Eh, this is only partially true. You’d need to analyze each effect that can grant CPs on a dude first of all, perhaps most notably Allie has no Influence. Secondly you need to look at player choices. I’d argue that–where possible–players would tend to shy away from adding permanent CPs to dudes with Influence when it can be helped in favor of those without Influence. Specifically to mitigate this kind of scenario.
As to your other points, I don’t necessarily disagree. However, I find that the general premise behind your arguments remains unsupported. They all seem to rely upon the premise that “turning back the game clock”, however one defines that, is an inherently bad thing for the game. I remain unconvinced that is the case.
Some of the most exciting and memorable games are when players can be pushed to the limits of a loss and rebound into a victory. Such accordion-like games are more likely to appear when players are given tools that can prolong the game length. There are some mechanisms for this now (most notably just playing more influence) but I’m not convinced that deed destruction still wouldn’t–used sparingly and intelligently–enhance that concept.
As you quoted in my previous post, it’s still taking a dude off the board, which improves my board position to get my influence in place on your CP deeds. If you don’t see a difference between deed removal and dude removal in terms of altering the game state, I really don’t know what to tell you.
If you don’t believe good game design includes a trend toward game conclusion rather than not, I don’t know what to tell you. The degree to which we accept things that slow that down is obviously subjective, but the underlying principle is sound. There is, of course, no accounting for taste.
Generally speaking, Reloaded supports this, and several designer diaries discussed the importance of this, if obliquely (such as by putting CPs on most deeds, rather than the old style CPless production). The more cards we get like Plasma Drill (which is, granted, terrible) or Arson from classic, the more the needle drifts away from that.
There are many, many ways to make comebacks possible. I agree that’s generally a positive. Many fundamental game mechanisms actually promote it, such as the need to move one of your dudes out of position in order to squash an opponent’s ghost rock production. I don’t think outright deed removal should be one of them, unless those CPs remain available through some other means than the discarded deed.
There’s a difference between denying ghost rock and taking CPs off the board. Arson did both, granted, but denying ghost rock prevents your opponent from playing influence, so you move more quickly to victory in the CPs vs Influence comparison. Ghost Rock denial is healthy, IMO.
Taking CPs off the table is not, because it doesn’t move anyone closer to victory, under any circumstances. CPs need to be on the table for either player to win. It might move you further from defeat, but that’s not the same thing. Enough cards like that enter the environment, and you’ll start seeing decks that don’t do anything except not lose, and in tournament environments, try to win by stalling to time with 1 CP or whatever. That’s much harder to accomplish when you have to choke all the ghost rock than when you can drop a job to retroactively strip deeds off the board once they’ve been played.
You seem to be taking my comments in a way they were not intended. Towards your first paragraph, I’ve admitted all along that they deed removal and CP-on-dudes being removed are not one and the same. They aren’t wholly different either. Which was my point.
As to your second paragraph, you adopt a rather condescending tone and then admit that it’s a subjective gradient. I never claimed to support games that can stretch on ad nauseum, I don’t think it’s fair to characterize my comments as such. (And this coming from a loyal Dwarf player in Warlord, where I could stretch games into the tedium of near-infinitude.)
I’ll admit, I was enjoying our discussion. I don’t need to see eye-to-eye to accept a differing point of view and accept its merits. However this last post of yours has soured me. Perhaps it is the medium of communication but it reads with an air of smugness and superiority. If my ramblings don’t meet your highbrowed standards, feel free to ignore them.
I don’t think anyone is really advocating for stripping CPs off the board. This entire discussion came from a thread on Burnt Offering from Classic which shifted CPs from one player to another (at least partially, and CPs/VPs differences notwithstanding). I think that most people–at least as I’ve seen it expressed–that support some form of deed removal in DTR readily admit it needs to be accompanied with a CP gain for the person doing the removal along those lines.
