Some part of the community said it was too early for two new factions ( including me), we were called negative back then, but reallity was we were playing on OCTGN on practically daily basis and we knew how many players had problems with the rules and scale of the game already.
I admit that the online community was never big in numbers, but the amount of people who played online for at least brief period of time was rather high ( I am sure I played aginst 50+ people on OCTGN ) and for the people like me, who played regularly it was very clear that too much is added to the game at once.
I think Kung Fu needed a bit more time in the oven. Adding EW and Shaman as it’s own box would have been fantastic. We’d just gotten blessed, they could’ve used more support at the time (and even currently.) 108 WD hit literally the first saddlebag after the IOUF box and shattered the meta.
I would have been more selective about who is on the rules team. As mentioned, there should be a mandatory discussion between Design and Rules before any rulings are handed down so that bad rulings don’t go out and so one rules team member is not in control of all rulings. Rules team members should have strong reading comprehension and should be empathetic and this was not always the case with the current rules team.
I would not have encouraged the strict Rule As Written policy. I think it ended up hurting the game more than helping - rulings should always favor fun and theme before rules consistency. People don’t go to their game stores every Friday to play this game because the rules are extraordinarily tight and consistent (they can play Magic if they want that). They play it because it is a fun, thematic game where crazy things can happen. Besides, the team has shown that they are not shy about completely rewriting entire sections of the rulebook.
This, however, is all much more easily said than done, particularly for someone like me who has never designed a card game, but I supposed these were the things that irritated me the most as a player/fan.
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Yep, RAW rulings were bad for the game IMO, as in most cases everybody intuitivelly could guess what the design intent was and cards like TYWM couldn’t be slighty adjusted with ruling ( the card would be fine if the bullets at the time of discarding/acing counted).
I agree. It is unclear to me what benefit the mods think they are providing to this community by silencing discussion they don’t personally favor.
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Things I love about doomtown:
*The fact that there are so many various venues by which to win the game. Yes, many of them revolve around shootouts, but within shootouts alone there are so many different ways to “win”. I love that. Even if it’s just “I get into shootouts, boot dudes or send dudes home booted, then dump just enough CP to win the game” type ideas… I love it. (We haven’t seen that specific example, but it’s just one example of what could be possible that doesn’t involve killing dudes to win the game).
*Deck building, in general: weighing the cost/benefit of certain cards and certain values with different draw structures makes for a ton of creative potential.
*The sheer complexity and nuance of the shootout/movement/win conditions in the game takes a long time to fully see and understand. It might be a barrier for some folks, but for folks like me it’s what keeps me interested long term. If we can do better (videos, tutorials, whatever) to bridge that gap for newer folks, we might hook more people.
*Unlike others, it seems, I actually liked the idea of kung fu (with one caveat, which is below). ALL of the skills - mad science, hucksters, blessed, and shamans - require X or higher. Having a whole quasi-skill that requires X or lower makes for a great additional creative build space. Granted, I never made any kung fu decks I liked, but I like the idea of that additional build space/restriction.
Along those lines, you could build a third quasi-skill base that requires a pull WITHIN X of the spell/card rating. Dude has New Skill Fu, let’s call the example: Sharpshooter Rating 2. Skill card has Sharpshooting/Targeting difficulty 9, so the pull must be within 2 ranks of 9 to succeed, so pulling anywhere from a 7 to a J will succeed. I’m not saying the idea is fleshed out or would work - just saying I like the idea of additional creative build spaces just beyond the normal boring “get X or higher”. It gives more value (ha!) to various ranges of values. Where A-3 was mostly a Legendary Holster space (plus whatever random non-skilled decks), now it is extra important to all of Kung Fu. That adds an extra level of possibilities to the whole design space. Things like that, I love.
Things I disliked and would want changed/removed entirely:
*Agreed on the discard pile issues, especially with Kung Fu. When I play cards like Kung Fu or Hired Guns, it’s WAY easier and faster to sort those potential target cards to the top of the discard pile. I do not like the fact that you can’t screw with the order of the discard. It slows things down in so many ways.
Another way, for example, is if I have zero cards in my deck, and I KNOW I will be needing to draw cards soon… I would love to be able to start shuffling that pile right away while I wait for my opponent to make their play. But I can’t, and gameplay is therefore slowed down since I can’t have that done in advance.
Get rid of or heavily edit any card that relies on the “top card of your discard” or similar card, then remove the ‘you can’t mess with the discard’ rule, and problems are solved.
*Non-interactive win cards!!! This one I dislike the most. Cards like Nicodemus Whately or Showboating just beg to have non-interactive decks made around them that stay at home (or a single deed) and do their best to avoid any contact with the opponent. I don’t mind that slide decks exist and are viable, as at least there are ways to interact somewhat. Spirit Fortress and (certain types of) Showboating decks are the worst offenders in this category, and they are never fun to play with or against.
Either get rid of cards like Nicodemus and Showboating, or edit them to make hard caps, like “no more than 3 control” per card/dude/location/etc.
*Broken record here, but Blessed, in general. I would love to see better blessed cards and even a dedicated Blessed faction/home.
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You see, buffalo rifle lets you join a job at an adjacent location without booting or moving, and then you boot to move to the marks location. And, paying ghost rock isn’t always paying ghost rock, unless the card costs ghost rock.
These are things I’ve had to tell new players.
*edit: was informed I was wrong about the buffalo riffle, and jobs. The dude can join without booting, but they must move to the location of the mark, and they return home booted at the end of the job no matter what.
Actually you do not boot to move to job’s location, joining the posse boots ( but not in this example because of BR), not the movement. Only when shootout is finished the dude with BR would boot to move home.
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I dunno. Like others have said, I see many parallels between DT:R and other AEG games. Namely L5R. In both cases, there was serious friction between intense fan support and competitive environments. Maybe a blending of fan-base and design/playtest contributed to said friction, but I suspect it had more to do with (the inevitably toxic combination of) high expectations and limited resources. If push came to shove (and you were in charge), which would you have compromised? Flavor or Mechanics?
Personally, I am a sucker for flavor and nostalgia. But I’m not sure if my preference is best for the longevity of any game. Tight mechanics lend themselves to competitive environments that are relatively predictable (thus economic). Flavor and nostalgia are all mushy, emotive, and hard to anticipate.
Were the mechanics really balancing against flavor, though?
I think there was a lot of mechanical clunkiness that wasn’t flavorful, that was just because there wasn’t enough time or resources to playtest alternatives. I think the rules of the game were too similar to the old one, because they knew the old way worked at least decently and trying something new would be risky, and they wouldn’t be able to give new rules a full shakedown to see if there was a horrible flaw in them impossible to fix. That was why victory was the same all-or-nothing check, why Gadgets still worked by booting the Scientist and pulling, why only Dudes had factions and out-of-faction costing worked the way it did. Because they knew it worked okay to do those things, and if they tried something new, they didn’t have the resources to shake it down and truly see if it would break everything before releasing it.
Introduction of new mechanics was extremely unfocused, with expansions just being a few cards here, a few cards there, instead of “THIS expansion block focuses on THIS mechanic for THIS faction.”
It was too easy to get into a state where you felt like there was nothing you could do. It felt really, really bad to try to play a GR-producing deed first turn, so you can have some money to play your cards, and have your opponent occupy it. Now you are out money, maybe gave them control points, get no more income, and feel powerless. I honestly think that homes should have produced more – like 5 or 6 GR – so that your ability to play cards was not so dependent on deeds your opponent can just walk into and take because you didn’t have any guys to oppose because you didn’t have any GR.
People didn’t seem all that engaged with the story, and I suspect part of it was due to the fact there was so long between full-size story releases. I wish we could have done more, but it’s not like I was super reliable even with the output we had. More and better story would have been possible only with a larger, paid story team.
That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it? Everyone did the best they could, but the best they could was hampered by the fact that they were mostly unpaid volunteers, with all the baggage that brings. If they had money to pay testers, they could have tried out alternatives to cumbersome or problematic rules in the timeframe they had. They could have had a bigger, more focused design team, able to produce more potential cards so they can pick-and-choose what fits their goals. They could have had more story content at a pace that got people talking about it and speculating about what would happen next, and then that engagement and enthusiasm could serve as secondary marketing. They could have had actual marketing. But without the money, none of it was happening.
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Yes, I think mechanics were balancing against flavor - for all the reasons you stated. Which is to say, that given limited resources, the architects of the game had to decide what to prioritize.
Considering how fun and flavorful the game is/was - I naturally assume that more energy was put into that aspect of the game than nitty gritty rules, bulletproof grammar, sustained marketing, etc.
Bottom line, for me, is that I have no substantial complaints. Sure, I had periodic frustrations - deckbuilding woes, obvious imbalance issues, “why’s your shiny toy better than my shiny toy” thoughts, and of course “oh no, my new favorite game is now canceled just like my last favorite game. Damn you AEG!!!”
But by and large, this is a game that gifted me with countless hours of sincere fun, outright silliness, and intellectual challenge. In all seriousness, it is one of the best all-around gaming experiences I’ve had to date. So thank you, to AEG and everyone involved.
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This is third time I am posting in ths thread, but this time I am answaring the question " What rules would you errata in DTR?", so this is my list:
All of the TAO techniques go to the seperate discard pile face up, and should be sorted by value in there so both players can easily see what is available from discard for player using techniques.
Kung Fu keyword should only add a value to the dude during pull for a technique, currently pretty much all of Kung Fu dudes are immune to Shotguns, Soul Basts for no good reason.
I understand this one is a change from classic. So when one of the posses is empty during shootout abilites or resolutions phases, the shootout immediatelly ends, but it doesn’t end when one of the players completely wipes out the other players posse. THis is especially important when you contest other player deed, as you might win a shootout,leave one draw with influence at shootout location and move all other dudes home, so you can snowball advantage very quickly, it also encourages early all-in shootouts as there is no drawback of fully commiting to the shootout.
I would like it to be changed to how it did work in a classic, if other player’s posse is empty, you cannot opt to run away home. You have to stay at current location.
Lastly, I would like to have mulligan in a game ( timing wise you could mulligan before using grifters). Since I really like thematic solutions , my mulligan would like like this: at the beggining of the game draw additional cards equal to number of studs in your starting posse, then you can discard and redraw number of cards equal to draws in your starting posse, if necessary discard cards from your hand until your hand size is 5.
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