Talk:Rumble Print and Play

Style Guide

Not sure about where the focus should be placed I took a stab at it but there's something missing, besides examples. Card (talk) 19:34, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

The powers could also use a pass to unify their phrasing ("turns" versus "rounds"), and make a call on the legibility of things like "Add 10 to" versus "+10 to". Or even "Add +10 to", which crops up in the archive sometimes and although weirdly redundant does feel like a useful bit of emphasis - I don't know if that's echoing another card game.

I think we should be pushing to make each card text as short and snappy as possible, also, even if that means changing it away from its original power effect. --Kevan (talk) 10:36, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

General feedback

Some feedback based on powers included here:-

• We should look at each power and consider natural questions that would arise from novice players, and reword the power to head them off. eg:
  • Air Strike's "Spend X: Deal X damage to each player." suggests two obvious questions - "is that damage blockable?" and "why wouldn't you use this all the time instead of attacking normally?"
  • Charged Lazer: "Do I get double attacks in Round 1?"
  • Technical Training: "The cost I pay for winning the power?"
  • Pseudonite: "Including itself? That's weird."
• We should maybe decide what a regular attack is, thematically, in the game, and apply that consistently. (Not explaining that in the rules, but using it as a style guide for the example powers.) "Charged Lazer" feels a little bit off to me, for modifying regular attacks, yet being a projectile: on some level I think of a regular attack as being a straightforward punch - and I think other powers back that up: it makes sense for Flight, Reflex Training and Plastic Ooze to affect someone trying to punch me, but should they affect someone firing a Lazer at me?
• Should maybe avoid randomness, to emphasise that Rumble is primarily a game of pure decision and bluffing. (It only comes up as a tiebreaker in Lightning Strike, but could be avoided there.)
• Maybe drop Flaws? There's only one here, and they need a lot of explanation. (I suppose two if you count Blood Rage, which is also confusing for presenting two different ways to make a negative power.)
• Similarly, Sidekick only comes up once, and needs a lot of supporting explanation.
• Would also be fine for Cloned Sidekick to just be a vanilla 50-Energy Sidekick, though, if we want one in there.
• Power Strength could be MtG-style reminder text that wouldn't even need to be mentioned in the rules: "Any attack against you that is less than Ninja Training's power strength is negated. (A Power's Power Strength is the amount its owner paid for it.)"
• Should avoid or simplify complex powers, particularly those that have an aspect whose purpose isn't immediately obvious. (eg. Combat Roll's "discard if")
• Elastic Limbs needs to say when you do the reassigning.
• Should avoid having cards which talk about keywords which may not be in any given game (eg. Hyper Immune System, which could be worded to avoid having to namecheck Burn).
• Plague is slightly unsuited to tabletop play since you'd have to track a "copy" existing.
• Should avoid wording the same thing twice in different ways, implying there's a difference when there isn't (eg. Orange Brick Skin and Reflex Training).
• Should maybe avoid pairs of powers where one is just a better version of the other (Orange Brick Skin vs Ice Shield), as that looks like sloppy game design. Although I guess the whole point of Rumble is that that's fine when it happens.
• Specific superhero references ("Orange Brick Skin") might be better if made more generic ("Tough Skin"), so that players can make different pre-existing superheroes out of them. Part of the fun of Rumble is deciding who you are based on what you won (or what funny combos you spot on the table during bidding, even if they never happen), and very specific power names reduce those options.

And a question:

• Is "Aspect" something you'd put on the card, or just for our design reference? It does make the game sound a lot more complicated and keyworded than it actually is. --Kevan (talk) 12:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback and the tables! As for now those suggestions look great and here are some responses:

• I think the issue with plague could be solved by having some poker chips or something small represent the clones. Maybe anything that makes copies should be moved to intermediate?
• True about Charged Lazer, I think a better name would be something like Power Nap.
• I don't want to drop flaws it sidekicks if we can avoid it. What about having, like you suggest, cloned sidekick have zero powers and then the explanation just printed on the card? As for flaws, maybe have one called flaw with the bidding changes on the card and a negative effect in the basic tier and other flaws higher up.
• I don't think there are very many cases in Rumble for "strictly better" powers that do almost the same thing. In this case Ice Shield is worse mechanically so if it were in the same bidding pool as orange bricked skin, one might be able to get it at cheaper price than if OBS was not in the same pool.
• The aspect is purely for categorization and won't appear on the final version. It's to aid in seeing how much of what kind of powers exist already without having to read entirely through each one.

Card (talk) 16:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Card copies just seem like they highlight a problem with the print-and-play, that we haven't given you the stuff you need to play. There's a road to go down here where the print-and-play also includes a few cut-out status markers (with the implication that you can also use poker chips), and Plague is explicitly reworded to "Whenever you damage another Hero, give them a skull token.", but I don't know how good an idea that is.

I feel like there's a snappy name for Charged Lazer that implies taking a long run-up, or swinging into a punch, but can't quite think of it. There's maybe "Haymaker", but it's not very superhero.

Flaws are tricky for introducing a complex new mechanic (players still often bid zero - by mistake? - on Slack), and for requiring duplicate cards, if they use the "every lowest bidder gets a copy" method. Maybe a single flaw at the advanced tier would be okay, but I think it's too much for basic tier.

Similar powers are interesting in practice (you can also try to win both!), I just think it might risk player confusion when they see two identical powers, one with a situational restriction, one not - the natural question would be whether there was a game where Ice Shield was somehow better than Orange Brick Skin, and they shouldn't have to waste time working out that the answer is "probably not, no". I think we should either go all out and have a couple of simple powers where one is very clearly better than the other ("Tough Skin: +20 Defence each round." "Metal Mask: +10 Defence each round."), or avoid repeating ourselves. --Kevan (talk) 17:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Other mechanics

Wondering about types of mechanics we're missing here, interesting ones that I can think of off the top of my head are (and any example quotes are from powers I've written in the archives, so feel free to adapt):

• Something that happens once at the start of the game (stealing a power, destroying a power, gaining an amount of Energy based on something).
• Alternate win conditions. ("Spend 50: If you survive until the end of the round, you win the game.", "If you've not been eliminated by the end of the tenth round, you win the game.", "If you are the only Adventurer with any Objects, you win.", "Spend 10 to knock a building down: If you knock 20 buildings down, your work here is done; you win the game.")
• Insta-kill powers. ("Spend 20 and choose a Racer who has no Gadgets: Set that Racer's Speed to zero.", "If you make an Attack that reduces an Adventurer to 20 HP or below, it deals an extra 20 damage.")
• Returning from the dead.
• A power which has both an upside and a downside. (Would still need to be short and simple.)
• Something which changes a fundamental rule of the game. ("Whenever you take damage (including Burn), add it to your Energy instead. If you exceed 100 Energy, you explode.", "You may never sustain damage except through Burning, but you lose 5 Energy at the end of every round.")
• A retroactive effect. ("At the end of any round, you may jettison a System to prevent all damage that was dealt to your Ship during that round.")
• "Spend X and choose a Hero:" effects. Not a big deal, but worth demonstrating that if you're writing a "Spend X: Do Y to a Hero" power you should be probably choosing its target as part of the action declaration, rather than during resolution.

I'm not sure which ones of those are important, but "alternate win condition" and "return from dead" might be good for showing off the kind of weirdness that Rumble can do. What else might be worth including? --Kevan (talk) 18:41, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Let's see I can think of:

• Minigames ("Chicken. Spend X, any player may activate this power once per round: the player who spent the least on this power this round takes 10 damage.")
• Global types. while Nev The Deranged is the only person to submit them to the archive, having a sort of location type card that isn't bid on can be neat.
• Variations on spend.
• a "can't lose except" as a weaker version of an alternate win condition
• A "you lose on turn X"
• A "player loses if you predicted their move"

That's all I can think of for now. Card (talk) 09:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

"Can't lose except" is a good one.

I'm not a big fan of the global effects: it feels wrong for a player to be able to change the game rules by proclamation like that, when the main thing of Rumble is that created powers are bid upon and you might not get what you want. I think they're okay if they're announced and agreed by the group before the game starts, but a player being able to throw "I personally don't like it when people gang up on me, so: global effect, ganged up attacks always fail!" into the ring feels unreasonable. --Kevan (talk) 12:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Strong combos

We should check for the biggest combos here, and make sure that we're happy with them existing if they came up in a group's first game. Wild combos are probably fine for demonstrating the spirit, but we should avoid anything that could break out into a "that's stupid, I didn't think that would work like that, and that's why I didn't bid for the power!" argument.

Ones that glare out immediately are Technical Training ("Costs of Burn or Spend of powers you have are reduced by 5.") with Lightning Strike or Meditation, both of which cost 5 to use and become free: Lightning Strike will allow infinite damage, Meditation infinite energy. I'd maybe tweak both costs up to 10 to avoid it. --Kevan (talk) 10:41, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Fixed that and make the effects a bit stronger due to the increase. I think a new power of mine made another combo line though: "Friends With Death" plus "Flight" is probably too unfair, gives the possibility of a turn 1 win if the hero gets both. Flight protects an otherwise fragile win condition (it only works at the end of a round) by stopping all attack damage. While powers that deal direct damage stop the combo, it's not always a guarantee to have those out. I was fine to have Flight + Expert Training since Flight stops one's own attacks, this one seems a bit too good to leave in the final version. Card (talk) 03:40, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

It might be a useful lesson to players to put a big, signposted combo in the starting set, to show that it can happen and is fine: "Titanium Armour" and "Titanium Helmet", or something, where they're both interesting powers in their own right, but if they appear in the same game and someone wins both, they win immediately or are invulnerable. --Kevan (talk) 11:29, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Check In

Wanted to check in after returning since being gone for a while. Does this set seem good so far? Is there anything besides say needing a larger number of them and some cleaning up of the rules that should be addressed? Card (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

A big question is whether we do need a larger number of them, or whether we should be cutting this down to a smaller pool. I was assuming the use-case for print-and-play was that a group would play one or (at most) two games with these cards to get a feel for the game, then switch to making their own. For a game that comfortably takes five players, that would only need 20 cards or so - keeping it lean would make it more printable and portable, and ensure that players always got a reliably straightforward introductory game. --Kevan (talk) 09:56, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I suppose you're right. I have just enjoyed making some new powers that the list grew without me considering that. I think then we should focus on getting a breath of mechanics and leave the people who would use this to fill in the blanks. Card (talk) 00:42, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

New Types

So far we have the "no type/normal" as the most prevalent. How do players feel about a large portion of them becoming an "Equipment" or "Tool" type? Powers such as "Air Strike" or "Green Gas Bombs" seem like candidates for that right away. Just something to either build on later or have the P&P users build on.
I know that we didn't like the idea of a sidekick that keeps you alive, but what about just a creature, similar to how Magic or various other board games have? Those seem intuitive enough in that they shouldn't keep you alive. Card (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Adding a Power subtype raises unnecessary questions of whether they still count as Powers, I think. If someone makes a psychic power-stealing power, that opens up at best a boring conversation and at worst a mid-game disagreement over whether it works on Equipment.

Not sure what you mean about sidekicks keeping the player alive. The thing of an eliminated player staying in and playing as their powerless sidekick is endorsed by the core Rumble rules, and is how we play it on Slack. --Kevan (talk) 09:56, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I suppose with the framing that these are superheroes with powers, it does not lend itself that well to using subtypes that don't seem to be of the supertype.

I was merely making the suggestion that perhaps a different type of card, as opposed to a sidekick maybe we it would be named something like minion or creature, and it would not keep the player alive thus reducing the need to have a big block of text which was why sidekicks were not included and thrown out earlier. Just to show that direction of possibility for potential new powers. Card (talk) 00:50, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

We should go with the simplest possible implementation, ideally such that it would fit onto a single card and wouldn't need to be mentioned in the ruletext at all - it could be written as MtG-style reminder text ("Assistant: Assistant is a Sidekick with 30 Energy. (A Sidekick counts as an additional player, controlled by its owner, who makes all choices for it. When a Sidekick's owner dies, [whatever wording].)"), inspiring people to write more if they wanted to, or ignore it if they didn't. It's going to need a fairly big block of text either way, though, isn't it? We have to say how they work and either say that they stick around when the owner dies, or that they don't. --Kevan (talk) 11:09, 14 February 2021 (UTC)