Playing Toulouse, I often found myself wanting to use Manage Influence, but Learn a Ritual or a story-based action was often more important. I thought that was actually a good thing. In a lot of good board/card games, there are two great moments: 1) when you know exactly which move to make, and 2) when you've got it clearly narrowed down to a couple different, yet equally good, options.
The first of these is obvious, you get a sense of accomplishment and expertise by spotting the clearly superior move. The second is less obvious, but that agonizing moment of decision does more than just slow down the game as you think for a minute or two about what to do. Its really where you need to consider your strategy and preferences and ultimately there's an element of chance involved. This isn't where you just have no idea though, because you've obviously decided on some things not to do, so you still get that feeling of mastery to a smaller degree. Often these are the decisive moments of the game.
With that in mind, I'd like to have multiple personal actions per turn to help facilitate this a little, but also so that if one action does become so optimal that it's basically mandatory, you still get a personal action. I'm not sure what is a good number: 2, 3, or 4. Four personal actions has the benefit that it seems like one per week, and that gives you a bit of a sense of how much you can accomplish with one personal action. Two or three would have the benefit of just being easier to adjudicate.
The actions themselves (thus far):
The first of these is obvious, you get a sense of accomplishment and expertise by spotting the clearly superior move. The second is less obvious, but that agonizing moment of decision does more than just slow down the game as you think for a minute or two about what to do. Its really where you need to consider your strategy and preferences and ultimately there's an element of chance involved. This isn't where you just have no idea though, because you've obviously decided on some things not to do, so you still get that feeling of mastery to a smaller degree. Often these are the decisive moments of the game.
With that in mind, I'd like to have multiple personal actions per turn to help facilitate this a little, but also so that if one action does become so optimal that it's basically mandatory, you still get a personal action. I'm not sure what is a good number: 2, 3, or 4. Four personal actions has the benefit that it seems like one per week, and that gives you a bit of a sense of how much you can accomplish with one personal action. Two or three would have the benefit of just being easier to adjudicate.
The actions themselves (thus far):
- Story Action. I'm maybe not a big fan of calling things story-actions, but the name has stuck thus far. This the write-in option.
- Training/Study. Just like Toulouse, you can nab a little extra XP (1 or 2), but your generation will tell you how much XP that is. Also, this is off the table for any elders in the game. They're just too set in their ways to rapidly learn thing new tricks.
- Manage Influence. This action lets you add your disciplines to your list of augments, not just your Abilities (See the Great Augment Swap). I want to rename it something better, like "Leverage Disciplines". I've considered making this cost blood, but that seems like it'll get super complex super quick.
- Travel. I might ditch this as it is kinda covered under Story Action, and I want to discourage it. If you leave Alexandria, you're basically leaving the game, but I do like the idea that you might use an action to leave the city. If you do it with a story action, you're relying on your own abilities/disciplines/backgrounds to keep you safe from the sun and whatever stalks in the stands or sea. The Trade/Transportation influence can do this too, and might be more reliable.
- Attend a Gathering. This is just meeting up with one or more other characters. The basic benefit is I guess unlimited communication between the gathered characters the next turn. It does leave you open to physical attacks though, but could also be used to get tutoring in an out-of-clan discipline.
- Feed. Most won't want to use this, but it'll go along with the feeding rules. Sometimes you might need to do it though to avoid falling into a feeding frenzy.
Gain a new Influence.This is gone. You can use a level 0 influence and some ability augments to grow from 0.- Deliver a Speech. I think this could be used as a message to all other vampires in Alexandria. It might take a little suspension of disbelief, but any speech made would be written down and posted in Elysium and factions would probably get copies and such as well.
- Correspondence. This gives you a bunch of replies (probably equal to wits + expression).
- Learn Rituals (Blood Sorcerery). Characters with Thaumaturgy or Mortis (Assamite Sorcerers, Capadocians, Lasombra Abyss Mystics, and maybe Setites or folks in a particular faction) use this to master a ritual they've uncovered via influence or been given from a mentor or other character.
- Research a Ritual (Blood Sorcerery). Characters with a sorcerous discipline can research a novel ritual which isn't in the books.
So. That's a lot of possible actions, but two are only applicable to characters with blood sorcery.
I think 4 personal actions might be a bit excessive. I know that during the Toulouse game there were times when I wanted another personal action (thanks celerity) or two, but I feel like maybe that 4th one would be too much...I wouldn't want to waste it, though it might always be spent on training or something not as productive to the game.
ReplyDeleteI kind of agree. I'm leaning towards two right now, though most often I'd assume it would be a communication action (Correspondence or Deliver a Speech) plus manage influence, but I'm a little afraid that communication will get lost at the expense of people attempting things with more concrete results.
DeleteI was thinking 4 actions, but also that between feeding, maintaining your herd/resources/domain, any tasks for your allies/mentor and any duties either to the court our your clan/other groups that most of the time you would only have a couple discretionary actions anyways.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the "be spent on training or something not as productive to the game" thought, you could certainly make training more story specific e.g. "My actions keep being countered so I'm going to work on improving my stealth" or "I would be more effective in speaking to the nobility if my knowledge of etiquette was better". This way you could lock someone in to what they are training to do and either allow them to only use the experience points they gain towards that stat or not allow them to level up any other stat until they level up the one they chose to train.
Yeah, for training I'm not sure if anyone in Toulouse was just training for the heck of it or not. I think I certainly had a goal for those XP, and basically used it to be able to get something one turn sooner than I'd otherwise be able to. In that way, it might just be making things more complicated. So if training gives you a X-point discount on one purchase - like Etiquette or Dominate)... that seems to make it more complex for little practical gain.
DeleteI might have to run myself through a couple sample turns to see what an excess of personal actions would look like.