Q: Prophetic Vision, Suggestion, etc?

Ok so I played SotM for the first time last week and I had a blast.  We had a full team of five against Citizen Dawn in the Ruins of Atlantis and I was playing Visionary.  Now, some of the first cards I pulled were Prophetic Vision and Suggestion and I thought they'd be very useful in "warning" my team of what was coming up, but the other players told me that I could look and manipulate the deck, but that I could not discuss what I saw with them.

I skimmed through the rulebook and couldn't find that rule anywhere, but I went a long with it and kept my mouth shut about what was coming up.

Is it true that when you have abilities that let you look in a deck you cannot speak about what you find with your team?

What? I've never heard that before. It's a cooperative game, why on earth would there be rules against sharing information? 

Sure, you could choose to keep information to yourself if you felt like it. (I don't know why you'd decide to do that, but you could.) But there's nothing to forbid you from sharing. 

Yeah I thought that was weird, too, but I don't own the game so I can't check the rulebook right now.

The rules are online if you want to have a look at them. http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/system/files/downloads/Sentinels%20of%20the%20Multiverse%20Enhanced%20Edition%20Rulebook.pdf

Fully cooperative. You can play with your hand out on the table if you so desire. Talking and planning are part of the game.

I tend to feel as if you shouldn't completely share information, but there's no rule enforcing that; it's up to the playgroup to decide whether they want to table-talk everything to death, or keep a certain extra degree of suspense and player agency.  You're also within your rights to re-decide based on who you're fighting...Baron Blade is easy enough even if you make things difficult on yourself, but against the Chairman you need every advantage you can get.

We play the same as your group wanted to.  Reveals are to the player that played the card, and if they wish to share info they can, but you don't show the cards.

There is no oficial ruling either way, so I'd say if your group doesn't want to show the cards, don't.

I don't know why we do it that way, I do find it more fun, and there is never any arguing over what card went where.

We also play with our hands visible, but mostly because it saves time discussing what everyone can do.

To take this off topic, there are co-operative games that don't allow you to share information… and I happened to [url= http://youtu.be/E28W_bMBVhg?t=15m1s] watch a video[/url] on it just last night!

Back on topic, yeah, nothing in the rules against sharing information, you can tell everyone what's in your hand, what's on top of your deck (if you have seen it through using powers/cards), what's in your trash, what's in someone else's trash, what you had for dinner, what your plans are for next turn, all of those things, and more!

I'd check with your hosts to see if it's a house rule they use before pointing out it's not in the rulebook first though, just so you're all on the same page.

The nature of the game is cooperative. Not being able to share information about what you are doing is very much against the spirit of the game.

WIth that said, if your gaming group prefers to do things a certain way then roll with it. But the rational for why you shouldn't share that info is a tad suspect.

Talk about things! Share all the info!

Really?

Care to take your own advice and tell us what the next expansion after Vengeance is called?

I don't see the point in playing a reveal-cards-and-decide type card unless you're going to use that info to help the group. Part of the fun is in planning what you can do together. We often have little discussions about which card to put on top and which on the bottom, taking into consideration what everyone's planning to do this turn and what cards they have. There seems to be an unwritten consensus that the person who played the card gets the final decision but the other players definitely have input. 

Think about it in terms of a solo game where you're playing three heroes. If you know a particular card's coming up you'll respond to that with every hero you control, because it's impossible to un-know that information. A three-player, three-hero game should be no different. 

Or who CON really is?

Or who the big Galactus-looking fellow on Mists of Time is?

Or what other promos we'll be seeing?  And when?

Or…or…or…

Or how about those Base Powers for the Vengeance heroes?!  

[quote=Matchstickman]

To take this off topic, there are co-operative games that don't allow you to share information... and I happened to watch a video on it just last night![/quote]

Sure, Hanabi comes to mind straight away, although the restricting of how you can give information is the entire point of that game.

And also I love the top 10 videos. 

CHRISTOPHER TELL US ALL THE THINGS!

please. 

I have no problem with sharing all the inormation.  Just stating that there isn't an official ruling on whether revealed cards are shown to everyone or just the person that is using the effect.  We don't show, but we tend to play in ways that keep the game moving, as our discussion tends to get long winded and drag games out.  One of the reasons I like playing Visionary is because you get to manipulate the game and other people.

I like knowing that with a TtE on another heroes character I can change their damage to anything I want, with or without their permission.

(That has only happened once) and that I can put whatever cards I want wherever I want, It really fits the characters "MY MIND IS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR TEAM!" shtick.

You can play cooperativel without playing nice, or doing what the group wants.  Just play how your group likes to play.

Care to take your own advice and tell us what the next expansion after Vengeance is called?

You will learn that information VERY soon. I am curious to see who the first person to release that info will be...

So it's information contained in Vengeance, awesome.

Is it?

Unless it's a news post it's about the only thing I can see happening soon; you playtesters haven't seen the rulebook or the box itself, or any promo-material in the box have you.

I am expecting a fnord in the box now. Yeah, I'm editing my post to add int his prediction… at 6.00pm on the 29th (GMT)

And if it was a news post, it'd be pretty easy for Christopher to know who was going to release it. 

In fact one of our less experienced games does exactly this as she feels more comfortable about not missing something important.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Something Awesome*

Actually… I think I may know the name of the expansion… The name I suspect is in the flavor text.

*Something Awesome is currently a place holder I am using, I do suspect the expansion's name will be two words. Since every standard expansion so far has been two words.

HAH! Not two words!

Curses! My idea has been completely ruined!

I wonder if it's even worth looking at the cards to figure out the name…

Sentinels in Spaaaaaace!

Thank you for this

In-box promo material? You have more knowledge of things than I do it seems. Edit: Did you mean Grampy Leggy and Panzunker?

Rulebook? Have not seen aside from the front page where all the PT names go. No box either.

Nah, I mean promo(tional material) as in advertising. My copy of the latest printing of the Enhanced Edition came with a little advert in it, for the Sentinels Sidekick app. It's possible (though unlikely) that >G might do a little advert showing their currect, and future, products in the box.

Its entirely possible that it is in the flavor text of a Vengeance card, possibly as a new comic series.  Much like other cards specifically mention "Vengeance" as a comic title.  

Playtesters do get access to proofs of the art/flavor text, but I don't remember any of the titles/text.  So I could be entirely wrong. But thats certainly where I'll be looking first for hints about the future!

Something we do (which I hope is common amongst other groups): We share information and discuss, but any decisions are always that of the person actually controlling the activity. The rest of us can suggest what we think is the best option (and we don't always agree!), but it's the decision of the player with the control as to what is done. It's not a democracy, it's cooperative.

There are some pretty good comic titles in those vengeance decks, I wish we could discuss it openly. I guess we just need to wait a few more days.

Or maybe when Christopher mentioned someone may say something soon maybe the people are the launch party will get a bit of a teaser, and one of them will leak it out.

When I play, we always have our hands laid out on the table - I see no reason you would want to hide your cards from the other players, especially if there's a hero present who can let others do stuff. The Adept, of course, being the prime example - the other day in a really fun game which included him and Unity, I kept checking that Unity had at least one bot in-hand so I knew that using the Accompany of Inventive Preparation was a good idea - the majority of Unity's bots ended up being played thanks to my repeated use of that song. Had I not known what cards Unity (or even the other hero, TLT) had in their hands (both were being played by the same person, though), I wouldn't really have known which songs to use.

With stuff like deck manipulation of the villain and environment, I'll usually show what cards I've just revealed and may consult to try and decide which card is the best to put on top. But sometimes it's an easy decision ("Hmm, Citizen Spring or a Devastating Aurora…") so I'll just say which cards came up and then put them where I know we both want them to go :).

Also, if you hold your entire hand actually in your hand, it'd be a bugger to sort through if you're playing a hero who tends to get a lot of cards out (Tachyon, the Adept, Haka). And it'd cause more wear and tear on the cards.

Or there will be enough hints and stuff in Vengeance or some kind of >G news report/announcement thingy that someone on here will just work it out and "announce" it via guesswork which turns out to be right ;).

Christopher dropped the hint that the title is not two words. Just browsing the Vengeance proofs, if the next expansion title is the same as a comic series like Vengeance was, there are very few options. And none of them strike me as likely frankly. Well…there is one that would be pretty cool, but I strongly doubt we will have back to back Baron centric expansions. Could be wrong though. I have a pretty solid theory (I think) about the next expansion, and all of the titles (that are not two words) were all circles that I needed to be squares so to speak.

My exstensive study has come up with three possible titles for the next expansion:

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Seriously Stop E-mailing Me

Sentinels of the Multiverse: How Did You Get This Number?

Sentinels of the Multiverse: That Strange Guy is at the Door Again . . .

Sentinels of the Multiverse:Oldskool

You play as the parents and grandparents of the heroes.  They're mostly normals.

Well, it could just mean he'll TELL us at the release party...

I will tell NO ONE!

In that case, my money's on a promotional insert in Vengeance itself. Or something like that. Would explain why we never saw the final proofs, like we did for ST.

I know where it is! … but not what

Not with that attitude.

I figured he meant to the forum. Obviously he's the one releasing it, technically, if you care to trace it back far enough.

Isn't that going to make interviews difficult?

Sentienels of the Multiverse:  Dogs on your Lawn.

Maybe it will be written on the walls at the warehouse or something.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Bring on the Ronway

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"Tell me everything."

He won't tell "ONE", he will tell several at once.

Back on the thread topic, I figure that if the card says "Reveal", it's meant to be info for everyone, but if it just says "Look at", you're not meant to share that info.  The game is more interesting with a little mystery to it, don't you think?  Just why is your ally sweating so much, refusing to talk about what their precognitive powers have shown them?

Because the game is Cooperative not Competitive. That would be why.

Wow, that's pretty heroic.

"Well I could tell my teammates there's an Apocalypse/Devastating Aurora/Technological Singularity/other horrible thing in our very near future, but it'd be more mysterious if I kept quiet. Oh look, all our stuff's gone, including the stuff you guys put out last turn that I knew would get destroyed.

"And now some of us are dead. And I totally could have warned you about the butload of damage we were going to get hit with so you could put your armour on..."

Well you've got a problem if your ally is setting you up that bad.

You might want to only invite Dark Visionary around when she's in a good mood.

We in no way prevent people from communicating, we just save a lot of time by having the hero doing teh action decide and then tell us if they want.  Most of the time letting people know that a Gene-bound Guard is coming isn't a big deal.  I often don't even ask.  If it is a forced Deployment or they magically pulled both Aurora's with Turmoil or Eyepiece then I figure they will let us know.

We don't need to debate because we all know the game, and it isn't like Visionary would get a premonition about something about to happen and huddle the team up for a strategy meeting to best decide which way to deal with the possibilities.

She'd make a split-second decision and tell everyone to duck, or to charge, or something like that.

You don't have to show people a card to communicate and work together as a team.  Sometimes it is fun to let people run their own character and trust them to do a good job.

I have some friends who prefer to keep their hands secret, and while it doesn't really serve a purpose, I find no problem with it.  It makes the game quite a bit different, and often harder, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Yeah. It's a damn shame she's not got any sort of mental powers to instantly communicate this information…

"Hey Uncle Ben, did Darth Vader really kill my father?"

"Well actually Luke, he IS your father.  By the way be careful he doesn't cut off your hand.  Oh, and the Emperor shoots lightning from his fingers.  Boy it would sure suck if you had to suffer any dramatic tension."

The point of a game like Sentinels is not for the heroes to win.  The whole reason to bother playing a coop game (well, just about at least) is because it is uncertain whether you can achieve victory or whether the game will defeat you.  Therefore, I don't think you ought to go too easy on yourself.

…Uncle Ben?

Anyway, I think you understand the word “cooperative” to mean something I don’t if the players are not to communicate with one another.

"Luke, with great power comes great responsibility. Now go clean up these droids."

 - Uncle Ben

Okay, crossed wire there.  I meant Old Ben.

The game is cooperative in that the players are all working toward the same goal.  That doesn't mean that their ability to coordinate their efforts ought to be perfect.  Would Lord of the Rings have been a better story if Frodo and Sam and Merry and Aragorn had all had magic radios that let them talk to each other constantly across any distance?  Don't spy thrillers set in the modern day, where everyone does have a radio, periodically have the heroes unable to get a signal for some technical reason, specifically because the story requires that they be out of touch?

A game is a bit different than a story, but they both have a goal which is not always ideally served by making everything easy.  The goal of the story is to entertain, and making the characters' lives difficult can create more drama.  The goal of the game is to be engaging, and rules that impede player success can make for a more meaningful challenge.

The idea is cooperative. That doesn't mean that the group gets to override the decision of a single player controlling one deck. The game is not to tell a story. The game IS the story, including all the decisions the players make. The object is to win.

"If winning is not important, then Commander, why keep score?" ~ Worf

I don't think we're going to agree here. I see the game as primarily a game, and the aim for me is to try to win as hard as I can within the confines of the rules. The story is very much secondary - if I wanted to make up a story I'd play Fiasco or some other collaborative narrative RPG.

Sure, a movie where the plot twists were revealed too early would suck. But this is a game.

Ah, a woman of great wisdom.

I agree with Silverleaf.  If this were a movie, yeah...foreknowledge would spoil a lot of the drama inherent to one team member learning that "Oh, no!  My allies are about to walk into a trap!"  But, this isn't a movie and narrative tropes don't really apply here.

In the context of the game, the heroes are supposed to use every advantage at their disposal to defeat the villain.  The biggest piece of that arsenal is the use of human intelligence, as opposed to the Villain and Environment decks, which run pretty much automatically.  Sharing information falls into the purview of human intelligence.

Beyond that, this is a game that has a finite "win" and "loss" condition.  Either you defeat the villain or you don't.  The goal isn't to "play the game in an engaging manner" but rather to "help the team defeat the villain".  Where an RPG can still be interesting or even fun when the heroes lose, as a loss provides interesting plot points to hang new stories on, there's nothing beyond the single game of Sentinels (barring continual campaign-based SotM games, which are certainly not the norm).  In seeking a more desirable "win" over the "loss", sharing information is always a better idea than not.

For what it's worth, my group does use "closed" hands most times (though we do have players that play with "open" hands--it's personal preference, really).  However, we often ask or say things like "Is someone able to take care of that Ongoing this turn?" or "Hey, focus your damage on the big bad--I've got the minions this round."  And, anytime we reveal a villain or environment card, those get shared with the group.

I love this game, but simply as mechanics you can do a lot better.

Sentinels shines because the mechanics are good, the cards are attractive and the characters are engaging.

I don't play the game to tell a story, but to fight as Fanatic or Visionary or Expat etc.  The decks do a great job of giving us the character and personality of these heroes, and integrating that into my playing of the game is a big part of why I love this game.

Nothing is ever "just a game," Silverleaf has already said that she doesn't play solo, so the group experience is important for her, others try to kill off every hero they can while still winning, some go for high scores and some for the most difficult matches they can get into.  Everyone takes more away from the experience than just the game itself having been played.  That's why we love it.

There isn't one way to play.  Each game is the domain of the group playing it.

Well…that's not exactly true.  You told me, even though you didn't mean to 

SHUSH, YOU!

So can broccoli be the first one to leak it here then?

Go ahead. Any time.

And I was told something deliberately today...

We have ways of making you talk veggie man…

Lol, the funny thing is, Reckless referenced this post at the party, and at first I had no idea what he was talking about.  He explained it, but I didn't see it until today.  Well played, but alas, others have beaten me to the revelation punch.

That was actually my friend, Mr. TeslaRoyale who cracked the ranch dressing joke. I’ll take the credit, though!