Survival Of The Fittest

Attention handlers!

As we are beginning a new version soon, staff will be doing a full review of our board's rules. This includes things for gameplay, as well as for the community in general. Our current rules can be seen here.

This time, we would like to open the floor for users to suggest changes to or the creation of rules. If you have concerns, improvements, or questions you want addressed in the rules, let us know here!

Please note: There is no guarantee that your suggestion will necessarily be included in the final rules. Additionally, we know that site rules can be a contentious topic sometimes, but please refrain from using this thread as a place for discussions or debate. That is what the Support/Suggestions subforum is for.

This thread will be open for three weeks, and will close on July 18th. We will not be posting replies in this thread; this is just a place for you to post suggestions that you want the staff team to see and officially consider. Please keep to serious, on-topic responses only.

Gameplay suggestion:

-> When handlers submit a weapon to staff, give feedback if the weapon is accepted within the list.

Cool cool I do have a few gameplay revisions I've been thinking about that I'd maybe like to see going forward, mostly just around the rolls system and card economy and hopefully this stream of consciousness post doesnt sound like an unhinged crazy person at an open public government meeting, though I'm also just spitballing here.


#1 - Eliminate cards altogether, replace with unlimited Heroes

Obviously I'm saying this with some pretty big caveats. Being able to adjust the rng slightly is really healthy for this game, but I think the current system is too restrictive just to prevent some really improbable circumstances and also invites some behavior i don't like seeing a whole lot when it comes to the current card economy.

So what I'm proposing is this—scrap "Swap" cards and make "Hero" cards an unrestricted resource with some edge case limitations. Change the system so that effectively everybody has the option to hero off any of their own characters for someone else, but limit it so that handlers cannot hero for the same handler over the course of a game (themselves included, which is why Swap cards would be moot in this new proposal). In this way I think players would have more incentive for engagement if they're pretty much allowed to drop characters they're just not enjoying writing without feeling that pressure every time rolls come up and the public unintentionally puts pressure on those same people to use their one use hero card. I think this system would be healthier since it discourages that pressure over optics along with maybe disencouraging those back alley hero deals that still happen every game. Obviously this would maybe start getting muddy when adoptions come into play but I think for 99% of use cases this system would work better for the health of the game and the social economy of the public.


#2 - One-time roll protection for handlers entering the game with 1 character, expires early on

This is always a hot button issue, so I'd like to propose a medium of the ideas thrown around when the notion of handlers having horrible luck and getting rolled out extremely early comes up. I don't like the idea of total roll immunity for any period of time, but at the same time one character handlers are unmistakably at a disadvantage when in the current system they functionally can't even use the roll adjustment cards, so if theyre not heroed they're really just shit out of luck and that really never does feel good.

So what I'm proposing is a conglomeration of these schools of thought. I think it would be most fair if those people who either enter the game with 1 kid or adopt their way in extremely early can have a "second chance" so to speak. If they do get rolled, redo the roll. If they get rolled again in that same set, reroll again like we do when the same handler gets rolled in the same set. But if theyre rolled again in a separate roll set, then thats tough luck and they'll have to either get heroed or kill their kid off. If they were never rolled but make it to a certain point (maybe when inactivity adoptions expire as well), that amnesty also goes away completely, and if theyre a handler who entered with 2 kids that does have one die or get heroed or whatever they would also not be offered that same protection.

This IMO would be the best rule for this edge case so there isn't that pressure over hero card usage early on, and it does give 1 kid writers at least some sort of safety net without inviting people to game the system.

I have a few things to mull (and of course there's always this) but IMO one of the best improvements is also one of the simplest:

Any and all rules changes will be explicitly noted somewhere public, with previous text preserved as part of the process.

This will allow the community to know precisely what the changes that affect them are, increasing transparency, time-stamping iterations, and highlighting differences. It also has no real cost besides the minimal effort of maintaining a change log.

Public rolls done in real time. The more transparency, the better.

Reminder to please get suggestions in before July 18th!

So, I've been putting this off because I have a horrible feeling that I might be about to open a can of worms, but as this is something I feel strongly about... Well, here goes.

6. Members of the staff team are barred from having their characters initiate or engineer escape plans, and may not contribute metagame knowledge to escape plans from non-staff handlers.

I believe that this rule should extend to former members of the staff team. At the very least, it should apply to handlers who were staffers at the beginning of a version, as they would've been involved in the planning process and presumably have insider knowledge that regular handlers wouldn't be privy to.

For the record, I do not wish to suggest that there has been any abuse of metagame knowledge in V8. Nevertheless, moving forward I feel it would be important to discuss whether the above rule needs to be amended.

Thank you all for the suggestions, we will take these back for discussion as we review and revise the rules for V9.

Locking the thread now!