Talk:Rumble Print and Play

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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)