Subject: MN: Re: Year 2, Week 42 Proposals

From: "Kevan Davis" <kevan@z...>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:16:39 -0000

>Proposal 607 - Terminal Velocity [Amendment]

Rather too fiddly for my tastes, I fear, particularly for such a
freely-useable
rule. Special Rulesets work nicely when their quirks are of great impact
but of uncomplicated explanation (I can remember the Ruttsborough
rules off the top of my head quite easily, possibly having to check the
intricacies of the current Slingshot Action if I'm going to perform it).

This Proposal would work pretty much the same if it said "If a Player has
an LV of ten or more, all Termini are considered Wild during eir Turn. If a
Player performs a Wild Action, e may not change Line or Line Direction
during eir Move, unless eir destination is listed as a Wild Station on the
GSD.", or something. But even that's a bit tangled, and doesn't make for
a very interesting rule.

We probably need to establish "themes" for all of the Special Rulesets,
rather than tossing in interesting Rules at random...

>Proposal 608 - Chateau d'Eau
>
>[Comments: This is the first MC game on a non-London tube network... the
>Paris Metro. It is set up under the "Turin '57" rule 2.7.1.]

Excellent. Top marks to whoever put this one together. And sign me up
for the first Game we play on it.

>Proposal 609 - Amendments to "Capture the Flag" (Amendment)

Hmm. Interesting, but I'm not sure if it adds or detracts from the style of
the Special Ruleset. Since we've never actually played a Capture the
Flag Game, it's hard to tell if anything needs fixing.

I think "take the Flag to your HQ" is fairer than "to MC", either way; the
route from one HQ to the other and back is going to be the same for
both teams, but the route from one HQ to the other and then to MC is
unlikely to be reasonably matched.

I quite like the idea of having a Game where you don't have to bother
collecting Golds, too; where you can concentrate all your Tokens on
attacking and defending.

>[Comments: This brings back the actual connection between MC and
>winning - something that is currently lacking in the Flag game.]

Hmm. Do we have a CAMREC sympathiser in our midst?

>Proposal 610 - Day of Action [Multiple]
>
>{ Comment:
> The mission for this Proposal is simple: put all Actions in one table.

Ordered alphabetically, or still by phase? This Proposal seems unclear
on the matter - if it's the former, then I give it the thumbs-down, for I
often browse through the relevant list of Actions to see just what I can
do to Dunx now that I'm at his Home Station, what I can do at Hyde
Park before I Move away from it, or whatever.

Ordering by phase seems a shade superfluous, since they already
are, and it's obviously helpful to have clear divides between each set.

> A secondary mission is to describe Token *effects* rather than just
> Token costs.

Is this really necessary? There are only about half a dozen Actions
that give any sort of Token benefit, aren't there?

> The reason for doing this is primarily ease of navigation. I appeciate
> that this approach is going to produce one mega-Rule, but as the number
> of Actions has increased it has become harder and harder to find those
> which are little-used (particularly if one is not sure which phase the
> Action happens in).

I've always, always just done a normal text search for the Action I'm after,
personally - it usually turns up the relevant bit of the relevant Action
Table
on the first search, and the Action itself when I search again.

>Proposal 612 - The more Targets the merrier!

I'm still unendeared to this whole thing, I'm afraid. It's too
counter-intuitive,
Clamping or Shunting someone a few Stations away.

>Proposal 613 - Safety Dance
>
>{IMHO the [Knocking] action has been far too powerful - there is no other
>action which you can do to a specific player for one red token which does
>not require you to be adjacent to them. If everyone plays a Hands on Hat
>action then the Knocking action is meaningless, and you're reduced to
>shunting them to remove hats. This way, most of the time you don't have to

>play a Hands on Head action unless you're specifically worried about
someone
>Knocking you. For the paranoid amongst us, this might not mean too much,
>but I think this brings the Knocking action into line with the rest of the
>ruleset.}

A good point, really - I remember being surprised when I realised somewhat
belatedly that you needn't share a Station to knock a Hat off. This
amendment makes the business more intuitive, but it also renders the Action
too narrow to be of much use; if you're that near to a Player, you can take
other action (as it were) to foil their millinery.

The whole Hat thing is a bit boring at the moment, really - slowly collect
them, spend 20 minutes a Turn keeping them on your head, and then
claim Golds for them. I venture it'd be better to just remove the "Knocking"
and "Hands on Head" Actions, and leave it to Shunting and more creative
de-hatting.

>Proposal 614 - Extend in Need

>
>Let M be the sum of all the whole numbers between 1 and N.

I'm scared. Any rule which can't be chattily explained in a paragraph or
two isn't worth having, to these eyes.

Still, the Extended Attacks rule didn't get in, so this won't do anything.

>Proposal 615 - "Thank You For Not Smoking or Summoning Satan In the
>Church"

A good point, but it misses "moving to a Holy Station and dropping the
Podume", which locks the Game in the same manner.

I've no problem with the idea of locking the Game in such a manner,
myself. Aside from the availability of possibly-awkward loopholes
(Charge Tunnelling to the Holy Station to collect the PoID, for example),
being able to put the game into stalemate doesn't seem "wrong". If
you manage to lock the game in such a way that you're the only Player
who can benefit from it, then it's applaudable strategy - if you manage
to lock the game so that it can't progress any further, then you've
stopped anyone else from Winning the Game, which is an equally
valid approach (particularly if someone else was about to Win).

>In fact, one could argue that the Player could remain at the Holy Station -
>since they've dropped it, the PoID isn't in their possession at the end of
>the Turn, and thus isn't destroyed.

No argument about it, really; it's very clearly worded.

>Proposal 617 - The Midas Clamp [Action]

My Proposal, so I'll just respond to Jonathan's comments:-

> This is, surely, unfairly advantageous to players who choose Home
>Stations on one of the lines passing through Bank, and disadvantageous to
>those who do not.

This is true. But Parks and Greens Cascades are unfairly advantageous
to Players with a Green as their Home, Pigeon-Releasing biased towards
Players living in distant Parks, and so forth. There are pros and cons to
every choice of Home Station - although this adds a "pro" to all those
sharing a Line with Bank, those Stations still have their drawbacks
elsewhere; I can't see everyone saying "Ooh, ooh, must have a Home
Station which I can return to if someone should Midas Clamp me."

>The reason for this is, players who cannot gain Black
>Tokens will soon run out of the ability to change Line...

Indeed. (Incidentally, RiffRaff, Homing doesn't require a Line Change;
"Special Moves" come after "Trivial Fares" in Rule 1.5.0's validity
checks, so it doesn't matter if you pay the Black or not. Tsk.)

>Meanwhile, the people who aren't on the
>same line as Bank will *never* be able to get to it, as all the tokens they
>need will be immediately converted to gold.

I'm not sure about "never" - there's probably a useable trick somewhere.
[has a look] Hmm. You can use a Stub Link, or Strile. It's not impossible.
I'm sure there are other ways; presumably it'd be fairly easy to bribe
other Players to help you, if you had lots of spare Golds...

> Not to mention the fact of people passing and gaining 2 tokens, both
>immediately converted to gold: someone whose home is at, say, Bethnal Green
>would be in an obscenely rich position with nothing able to hurt him (sit
on
>Home Station, gain 2 gold tokens per turn until bored, move along to Bank
at
>an LV of 2, then you have loads of gold tokens - and of course can buy a
>Money Belt, so you never lose any tokens - and head for MC next go.)

Hmm. I always forget that Money Belts haven't been repealed.

But would this be such an obscene tactic? If someone Midas-Clamps
themselves and starts racking up Golds, the other Players will presumably
be pretty quick to go and guard Bank.

>Of course, probably
>nobody would ever Midas Clamp anyone, because of just this eventuality -
the
> *last* thing you want is to not just allow but force your opponents to
gain
>gold tokens.)

Well, as with the King himself, having everything turn to Gold is at first
glance staggeringly lovely, but when you realise that you can't gather
the Tokens to perform useful Actions, the novelty wears off. I can see
the Clamp being used as a way to foil someone about to Win - even
if they've got enough Tokens to wander off to Bank and get cured,
it'll slow down their path to victory (at the cost of giving them a few
extra Golds, if they want them).

>Proposal 618 - Sling Your Hook [Amendment]

Another of mine, and further response to Jonathan:-

>(in fact, maybe it should stop in such a situation at the
>station before the block. It would give, for instance, some players the
idea
>of bulkheading Camden Town to slingshot from Morden to MC - and others
would
>then have to work out how to remove the bulkhead or repair the damaged
>station, or drop a sinkhole in between the two stations...)

Ooh. That's quite stylish. I'm not sure if this should be extended to normal
play - that with an LV of 10, you can move five Stations and crash against
an adjacent Block, to stop... More useful than Rebounding. Hmm.

> For me, the whole point is that it's a mad, out-of-control rush which
>crashes into the buffers at the other end - not a simple "oh, you can move
>at maximum velocity next turn", which doesn't sound so Ruttsborough as a
>high-speed pile-up IMHO.

[smiles] Well, no, but "your Piece is moved to another Station" doesn't
sound so Ruttsborough as "suddenly you rush back along the line at
the highest possible speed, ready to smash opponents far into the outer
reaches of Zone 6", either.

Hyperbole aside, though, I think an LV boost is better than a direct
Move to a distant Station - the former obviously lends itself to aggressive
play far more than the latter.

A nice lot of Proposals this Week, anyway - good to see things picking
up again.

Kevan

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