Director's Cut

I don't know if this is something GTG/Handelbra would be interested in doing, but (some time down the line, once all the expansions etc are in the game) I'd love to see a director's cut checkbox - instead of technically playing with every card as exactly written, a version which is closer to the original intention of some of the cards. One where incapped heroes always get eaten in The Final Wasteland, for example, instead of getting the choice of flipping the card first (which is clearly not what the intention was). Or where Miss Information's card-counting card doesn't include the Hero Character Card when counting "cards in a hero's play area".

There are a handful of little tweaks like that - they're not gamebreaking, and I know most people houserule around them when playing the physical card game; I'd be keen to see that option in the VG as well.

Pretty sure the way it plays IS the Director's Cut.

If they didn't want it to play that way, it wouldn't.

It plays that way because they've gone with consistency of rules over intent - which is absolutely the right call! I'm just asking for a return to intent for a few cards.

I remember asking once if they would ever consider adding in an option to play the original core edition.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Hahahahaha! Consistency? That's not a thing we're getting with the rulings made. We're getting rulings made for individual cards, not a rule that covers the general situation (as was the case before the Video Game).

If they're not ruling for the way they want the card to perform then I have no idea what is going on.

We find out the designer's intent by asking him, and that's what's in the game. You already have the Director's Cut =)

Ah! I didn't realise. 

Though there have been times where Christopher has changed his mind on a ruling he has made.  

I wouldn't mind an option to roll back the errata, just to see how broken it could be, but as I understand it there isn't actually a whole lot of it.

We meet with Christopher regularly to discuss questions and edge cases, and periodically post them in this thread:

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/clarifications-and-decisions-from-handelabra-christophers-fireside-chats-6773

@Matchstickman - I'm not sure what you're getting at there; almost everything we do applies in the general case.

Consider Sacrosanct Martyr. The "up to" on that card and that card alone was ruled to be 1 to 5, every other instance of "up to" can also be 0. That is an example of what I am talking about. It's not anyone's "fault" (or indeed a fault), it's just a change in the way things are done since everything needed to be codified exactly for the app.

What is the other instance of choosing an amount of damage where you can choose 0?

I never said damage.

But that's important. It's about "up to X damage" not just "up to." If there's another card that works like Sacrosanct Martyr and allows you choose an amount of damage, we would default to not allowing 0 (unless Christopher decides otherwise). It's a general ruling, not a card specific ruling. There just happens to be exactly one card it pertains to at the moment.

I think Matchstickman is comparing that to a card like Throwing Knives or Assault Rifle which uses similar wording but is about targets not damage.  

But, from a programming perspective, those are not comparable.

I can see how “up to” meaning 0 to x when dealing with targets and “up to” meaning 1 to x when dealing with damage can lead to a perception of inconsistancy. It is confusing though.

If “up to” always means 0 to x when dealing with targets than it is consistent for all targets.

If “up to” always means 1 to x when dealing with damage than it is consistent for all damage.

Does it add unnecessary confusion in a game which is already complex and fiddly? Absolutely. But thats not the fault of the programmers, it is the choice of the designers.

Given that the game is amazing even with its flaws, I’ll trust the designers know what they are doing.

And that's the whole point.

Prior to this we were getting rulings handed on down to us in the format of how it works for X situations (in this instance damage dealing cards with up to in their text), but we're not getting it like that now. Now we're getting "This card needs a specfic ruling so a specific ruling that mentions this card only is what we shall get." And it's not consistant with anything else we've seen because we've not seen it in other cards in the app (yet). But you mention it in your fireside chats as "this card" (and no mention of it being a elaboration of a newly defined wider rule) and nothing else, with the answers specifically putting the context of "this card" in the answers why would anyone think that this applies to other cards as well?

You might write them as such but your Fireside Chats are not only applied in the app, they are also applied to games using the physical cards.

Well, only if you play that way.

I don't play Crowbars double dipping, will not be pulling the shenanigans with Friendly Fire and Fixer, and several other unfortunate rulings that may work fine in the app, but make table top gaming in a group a worse experience.

Can we get an option in the video game to play without Rule #15?

Rule 15 isn't game breaking.

Friendly Fire + crowbars is.

You have a chance to end a game before the third player gets to act.  That's not cool.

To take it further, how many villains can force the game to go to the environment turn without losing against this setup, which is possible round 1:

Setback:  Friendly Fire + Silver Lining.

Visionary:  Twist the Ether on Mr. Fixer.

Absolute Zero:  plays Isothermic Transducer.

Guise:  plays lemme see that to borrow Transducer, plays Uh, Yeah to copy Setback's ongoings.

Mr. Fixer:  Plays Crowbars, uses Guise's Friendly fire, changing damage to fire until Silver lining's text destroys Uh, yeah, then hit setback until he's incapped.

What kind of damage output can that reach?  The saddest thing is the video game has turned Mr. Fixer from my favorite hero into a ridiculous gimmick.  I won't even play him on it anymore.

Miss Information can! :P

The Dreamer, Miss Information, The Chairman, Kaargra Warfang, I don't think Akash can even survive that.

That is a good idea. Also perhaps an option for no ordering decisions whatsoever.

Who needs Setback when the game has clearly been broken beyond all recognition since Shattered Timelines?

Rook City Wraith puts Fixed Point into play.

The Visionary plays Twist the Ether on Absolute Zero.

Absolute Zero plays Isothermic Transducer and uses his power.

Game over.

Or maybe it's not really a big deal because that's not a situation that's going to happen every day…

I was suggesting the most controversial thing I could think of as a joke. I don’t mind extending the joke, I just don’t follow the connection. Although, I blame that on being very tired right now.

I didn't read it as a joke. It would make the game play a lot faster =)

remind me, which is rule 15 again?

Fixed point is a card intended to turn everything into shenanigans, it allows all sorts of chaos, from all sorts of characters that don't normally pull them, so I don't worry about it.  But these rulings on Mr. Fixer has made his deck a load of shenanigans, and I don't like that.

Rule 15 is the one that stopped cards like Solar Flare and Pushing the Limits being kept out for free - the hero whose card it is has to take some kind of damage from it in order to keep it out.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/33371#comment-33371

Cards like Chastise or Solar Flare, which require that you deal yourself damage to keep it in play, used to stay in play if e.g. you tried to deal yourself damage, but were immune. Now you actually have to take some of the damage or the card is destroyed.

Oh right, in my head it was the "heroes can choose the order of effects" ruling.

Pydro your joke makes more sense now =)

Man, for the longest time I thought Rule 15 meant “Have Fun” from the official forum rules.

That would’ve been quite the change-- “remove the fun from the game”

How feasible would it be to run a check for common cases where order is relevant and only ask in those cases (like the option you have with card draw)?  I realize this would be tricky for some effects, but at least for things that say "Deal X damage to all Y" or, a bit more ambitiously, "Do X to all Y", it should be fairly straightforward.  You could just look at each Y and see if doing X would trigger an effect (or end a persistent effect) that can affect the outcome of doing X to a "generic" Y.  In fact, the set of such effects is fairly limited, and you could probably manage this by keeping a few hidden variables for each card that has such an effect, basically telling the game "If this card would be [destroyed/damaged/discarded/revealed/etc] at the same time as others, order is relevant".  Of course some cards would also need to say "If this card is in play and any group of Y's would be Xed, order is relevant".

For instance, in the case of damage, off the top of my head I can think of a few situations where order is relevant:

-one of the targets being damaged has an on-damage trigger.

-one of the targets being damaged has an effect that triggers when another of the targets is damaged.

-another card in play has a relevant* effect that triggers when one (or more) of the targets is damaged.

If the damage amount is sufficient you also have to check if

-one of the targets would be destroyed and has an on-destruction trigger or relevant* static effect

-one of the targets has an effect that triggers when it is dealt at least X damage (and that ammount can be reached by some ordering of modifiers) 

-another card in play has a relevant* effect that triggers when one (or more) of the targets is destroyed/dealt X damage/etc (and one or more would/could be).

*relevant means an effect  that changes the damage to other targets in the group being damaged, or can cascade (damage, destruction, play, power) or can trigger any other card in play (draw, discard, reveal, shuffle, etc).

If only Sacrosanct Martyr said “between 1 and 5” instead of “up to 5.” Then, the card-specific ruling (or, the ruling that one counts damage and targets differently under the words “up to,” depending on how one looks at it) would be built into the card text itself and therefore obvious. The problem disappears.

Maybe the idea for a “Director’s Cut” of the video game could just involve rewording the text on some of the cards like this.

@payprplayn - We're always looking for improvements to reduce the amount of decision making. We could potentially do that with damage, but there are a lot of things to check for, and our main priority is to ensure you have the full strategic depth of the game available to you. I'm not sure it's even feasible with all the situations the game has now, and all it would take is one card that cares about "the last target to take damage" to make it all completely moot.

I'm envisioing an interface that:

1. Recognizes when a set of 'damage dealt' occurences have been queued, and provides a checkbox that says something like 'Reuse'.

2. Then, after making choices for the first 'damage dealt' occurence, the user is shows a list of the upcoming 'damage dealt' occurences and can choose at that point which of these should use the same choices.

3. As each damage occurence is evaluated, this could change the future damage occurences, so maybe a new list would have to pop up.

When I saw “Director’s Cut” I thought original version 1 of every card.

Wouldn’t that be fun