Subject: Re: MN: Re: Subject: Moving

From: riffraff@n...
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 19:56:44 -0500

>I like this, myself, because it makes real-life play very easy - you
>don't need to keep track of LV at all, it's just always three, unless
>certain things are in play (such things giving it enough diversity to
>add strategy). Having to keep tabs on ever-changing variables is
>quite fiddly - anything short of twiddly brass dials would, I think,
>be cumbersome and ugly.

I tend to feel that only three stations per move would become annoyingly
slow - especially out on the outer edges of the board where you get 9 or 10
stations together in a row with no interchanges. 5 would be preferable. I
like 5.

And, there's any number of ways that LV could easily and stylishly kept
track of - a series of small cards nicely printed with the numbers, your
current LV on top of the stack, for example. Or a die numbered 0-5, with
your current LV on the top face. Or just a row of numbered squares, with
a glass bead or something to mark the current value. No problem.

>
>As for the timing thing - I find this just too fearsome, and I'd be
>happy to see this aspect of the game being killed off entirely. The
>"no more than an hour's worth of Actions" is fairly awkward to keep
>track of, particularly in real-time play ("Right - LV increase, Move,
>Drop Token, Straddle, Shunt, Collect Token. Your go. Unless anyone's
>buzzing.") - this would be much, much easier as (again, cribbing
>MC:CG) "one Action before your Turn, one after". Although that does
>limit cunning stratagems a bit, I suppose. Maybe two either side. And
>the "big" Actions having a "This can only be played if it's the only
>Action of your Turn" thing.

Good point, I'd forgotten about real-time play. Perhaps it would be best
to simply have a number of available actions per turn. I prefer 2 before
and 2 after - at least. 1 and 1 would definately impair clever strategy.
Perhaps 2 before and 2 after, with an option to take extra actions at extra
cost?

'Off-Peak Hours' could be implemented as a Game State activated by a
certain action...

--Riff

"This calls for a subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--Vyvyan, "The Young Ones"

---

From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 19:05:23 +0100

> stations together in a row with no interchanges. 5 would be
preferable. I

I'm happy with 5.

> >track of, particularly in real-time play
>

Maybe I'm being too reductionist here, but...

Dump game time, LV, limits on number of actions before/after move,
changing line..... and replace them all with black tokens. It costs 1
black token to move one station, 1 black token to change line and 2
black tokens to play an action (in addition to the action's cost).

This is just an amalgamation the Action Point system Riff referred to
with the "time for LV" PaulWay and I were talking about. But allows
more long term stratergising by stock-piling blacks. We would have to
make black tokens far more easy to come by, probably by giving
players, say, 10 blacks before each turn.

-- Annatov Snow
I can turn myself into the script to episode 3 from Buffy TVS using
only my mind.