Ninja Poetess

18 April 2019

• Reply: Decktet:: Variants:: Re: [WIP] The Tribunal

  by jwarrend

  Now that the double-deck exists I think this is well worth a run-out, with each player receiving a full Decktet (minus aces, crowns, and the extended deck cards) and playing in the usual way. I think this would lead to more manipulation of the jury, and I think it also lets games, potentially, play out very differently: do we fight aggressively over every card that's put into play, or do we take a laid-back approach since there will be time, with the surfeit of cards, to get your own cards in play later on.
  
  I've also been thinking about whether this could be a non-Decktet game, sort of like how Sorcerous Futures became Speculation. Just mapping the Decktet onto a thematically-appropriate deck seems a bit lame, but (fortuitously?) it also seems quite problematic. What are these six suits that the jury members each individually care about and that each card has two of? Since you're playing them as part of your case, I thought it would be things like "physical evidence", "eyewitness testimony", etc. But what exactly does it mean that a card is both "physical evidence" and "eyewitness testimony"? As an abstraction it's fine, but to make this a concrete thing, like "Vinnie the Stool Pigeon" or "Bullet Casings" or whatever just seems weird.
  
  But perhaps a different approach is to have the suits become two sets of three: the three principal suits, "motive, means, and opportunity", and the three supporting suits, "physical evidence, testimony, and documents" (or whatever). Thus a card is always part of two suits, but it's always one principal and one supporting suit.
  
  The deck that would result from this would be different, structurally, from the Decktet, but in principle it seems like the same game mechanics would work.
  
  In addition it could mean that there could be some sort of overall bonus if you win two-out-of-three of the principal suits, or perhaps this is the tiebreaker.
• Reply: Decktet:: Variants:: Re: [WIP] The Hourglass -- Real-time trading/deduction

  by jwarrend

  Thinking about this one again.
  
  I wonder if there's a sense in which the original was misguided in that there are really two things you're trying to do: cycle cards to get information, and then get cards that best fit the information you've gained. But in using the same set of cards for both, it makes the late game deal-making landscape a bit weird; I don't want to give away good cards in a blind deal.
  
  I wonder if the double deck provides a solution for this. One deck would be the information deck, and the other would be the scoring deck.
  
  The trouble is keeping the decks separate, and knowing which deck a proposed trade is a part of.
  
  I suspect then that scoring cards in your possession would have to live face-up on the table, and thus deals involving those cards would be made openly -- "I'll give you [this] card for [that] one".
  
  This would at least allow info-trades and scoring-trades to be separated, but on the other hand, about 3.5 minutes in everyone has a good idea of what the central card might be and trades will probably start to dry up. So maybe the game has to be short enough that no one gets perfect info.
  
  I wonder, also, whether the central event being good or bad needs to be a universal thing, or whether it's, instead, that the nature of the central event (its magnitude) is dictated by the central card, but whether it's good or bad -- i.e. which side of its rank we want to be on, higher or lower -- is individual. This would allow more trades to go through since different cards will have different value to different people, but of course unless the event card is a rank 4.5, some players will have an easier go of it than others.
• Reply: Secret Weapons of the Third Reich:: Rules:: Re: white discs

  by chuskas

  Hi, mail received and email sent to you ;)