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51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 22, 2023, 01:30:37 pm »

Trait outtake from the secret history of plunder

Instead of following its instructions, may play cheaper card with restrictions. Way of Band of Misfits. Ways were poor here, and Band of Misfits is awful here. So slow.

Why are ways poor in traitland?

Because they're Ways. We had Ways, they were called Ways, they're in Menagerie.

You also had landmarks but that didn't stop plateau shepherds from making its way into Allies. (not to mention Obelisk and the project-y events, but their mechanics weren't in a set yet.)

That line of reasoning never gets you anywhere. Each example you can find will either be one I would do differently today, or an exception with good reason.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 21, 2023, 01:16:35 pm »

Trait outtake from the secret history of plunder

Instead of following its instructions, may play cheaper card with restrictions. Way of Band of Misfits. Ways were poor here, and Band of Misfits is awful here. So slow.

Why are ways poor in traitland?

Because they're Ways. We had Ways, they were called Ways, they're in Menagerie.

53

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 16, 2023, 02:12:48 pm »

Do you have plans of updating cbtest14? Is this a reference that anyone else will understand?

I stopped updating it in June of 2010. Probably that was right around when we started testing on isotropic.

When you need new playtesters, how do you decide who to invite? Do you narrow down a list of potential candidates and then interview them?

No, nothing like that. There's no one set thing. When I was doing Adventures I looked at what people were posting and who was doing well in league; I wanted some mix of "is good" and "posts a lot." When we were testing on dominion.games I kept inviting more people who were good, hoping they would somehow get in some games, until I'd invited one too many and one leaked information.

One key thing I have learned is, if someone offers themselves up, I can't have that person. So now you know. It's a filter on who they are that makes them a poor candidate.

What do you think of Exploration post-errata? It and Bonfire have been the 2 cards that people are the most sad about.

It hasn't bothered me.

You've called Souk a "problem card" (along with Fortress). In what situations does it break the game? Is the +$7 the problem?

It rewards you in a big way for not having cards in hand, which can be trivial e.g. with Villa.

How do you feel when people hate on Allies for leading to “slow games” when (let's be honest) their complaints are actually about pre-errata Voyage and Warlord?

Allies is a decision-heavy set, that's part of its character. So I mean it's fair to find it slow. It's not something I can do every time out, but there are people who appreciate those kinds of cards.

What tips do you have for brainstorming new cards (Dominion or otherwise)?

It's hardest when you don't have anything yet; you can build on what you've got, once you've got some stuff. At the beginning, it was a real question, would I even manage 20 good cards for Dominion.

Here are some classic tricks.
- Look at all of your data, and see what triggers and effects it produces, then pair them up.
- Look at all of your rules, and see which ones you can make exceptions to.
- Consider different basic forms of program flow and what they get you.
- Look at what you've got so far; see what will work with it.
- Categorize what you've got so far; see what holes there are that you can try cards for.
- Look for classic variations on what you have so far; especially, little, big, and lots.
- Flavor can inspire new ideas.
- Look at your other games, see what ideas from there will port over.
- Look at the world through the lens of rules on cards. Any random time when you have an idea, write it down.
- Look at what didn't work in the past that maybe now you can fix up.
- When you've got 15 expansions, you really want a strong direction to help you get going. You've got a mechanic to try and you put it through its paces.

Here are some examples of those.
- You have $, you have cards in hand; we could let you somehow make $ based on the cards. We can say discard them (Vault), or count them in reverse (Souk).
- The rules have phases going in a particular order. We can mess with the order (Villa); we can add a phase (Night).
- There are so many very basic program flow things. We can give you a choice of costs (Animal Fair), choice of effects (Pawn), just do multiple things (Jack of All Trades), do some things now and some things later (Durations). You can do loops, e.g. repeat-until (Library).
- Let's see there are a bunch of Villages, maybe something can interact with those (Diadem).
- At one point I looked at all the basic pairings of resources, what had I not done yet that was worth doing. Not for e.g. Bazaar and Worker's Village, which had just been saved for later. I don't remember if I got a specific card this way.
- Hamlet is a little village, Bustling Village is a big one, Port is two villages.
- Siren is an example of a card that started with flavor. What would a Siren do?
- I'd had Durations in games for years; Greed for example is from 2003, though it was published after Dominion, and has a few Durations. An idea from Rising Sun ultimately goes back to Nefarious.
- I do write down ideas whenever I have them. I'm looking at a notebook page from work on Adventures; the first thing is the VP card that turned into Wall.
- Horn of Plenty is an example I've talked at length about where the original card ("+$1 per Action you played this turn") failed (turning into Conspirator at the time) but I remembered it and worked on it more.
- Plunder had multiple themes from the start, it had Treasure - Durations and next-time Durations and Loot all on day one. So I could get right to looking at, what could I do with these mechanics.

Of course there are other ways to get card ideas too. Village for example, the idea was to limit Action plays specifically so I could make that card. Cards needed things to do.

54

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 09, 2023, 03:40:02 pm »

What's your approach for designing a cardpool? Does it differ between mixes and expansions? Do you do any math to figure out how often you expect Kingdoms to have e.g. an attack? Or do you just playtest a ton to see how a sufficient number of Kingdoms feel?

I worry about the percentage of cards that are: villages, +buy, draw, trashing, attacks/interaction, $5's, other costs, cantrips, $5 cantrips. And how much the set mechanics are used. Sometimes other factors mess with the numbers; especially, the idea that terminals that use an Action from your hand, e.g. Remodel, count less towards how many terminals you have.

For expansions the idea is always, that you might own any mix of expansions, and I want to have a good percentage of everything no matter what.

For mixes (tournaments run on the discord using 75 cards I've picked out from across expansions), well I've specified the entire environment, and sometimes that environment specifically wants to be light on something or heavy on something.

Do you have an opinion on how the full random cardpool currently is? Do you ever wish you could, for example, dump 30 villages into the pot?

Later sets ramp up the percentages slightly to deal with the fact that there are so many cards; it's just a math thing you're stuck with.

I'm happy with how things have gone. I didn't know to value $5's as highly in the very early days, but I caught on and also got to revisit the old sets. Probably more interaction would be good; it's hard to come by interactive cards that work well and aren't identical to things already existing and aren't hated.

Taking a longer view: there're two interesting trends I've seen over the last few years with the full cardpool. One, we've been trending towards faster and faster games turns-wise across all skill levels. Two, individual cards and pairings of cards (from combos such as Donate/MS, to interesting in-set interactions such as Silver Mine/Rope, to card+archetype such as Proc/Horse) become less and less frequent as time goes on. Do either of those matter to you?

The intention isn't to speed up games; I think part of this is, I responded to how players in general were less fond of attacks than I'd expected, and well if you have fewer attacks, the game is faster. But really, what matters is that we had a fun game; I'm happy to make a one-turn game if it's fun.

It's great to have random pairs of cards come up less often; it makes those games more special. Pairs within sets will always come up plenty, because again many people do not own everything. And then there are all the people who mostly play the recommended sets, which will showcase some of that stuff.

Have you played many other deckbuilders? And if so, are you willing to comment on their design decisions or things they've changed? As one example, I've been having a lot of fun playing Astrea, a dice-focused deckbuilder (5 second pitch: StS but with dice instead of cards, so something like a grandkid of Dominion), and find it really funny how it inherited the whole "discard your hand at end of turn" thing from StS, which explicitly chose to follow the Dominion rather than Magic paradigm there.

In general I avoid deckbuilders, because I still might make more, and I don't want any "oh he copied this from someone else." Man, I didn't, let's get that straight. My notes for a Dominion Dice game go back to before Dominion was published.

I have specifically avoided Slay the Spire. Sir Martin always says how great it is and well, glad you're having fun, but, it's not for me, I can play other games.

I have played a few though, I mean like once each. Off the top of my head:
- Eminent Domain - one of my go-to examples from years ago of how you could be inspired by Dominion without copying every decision I'd made. It's got a Puerto Rico aspect to it and I mean from one game it was fine.
- the Knizia one - I was very sad to see how little he innovated here. Bleah.
- the cows one - Your deck is cows, you make circuits on a board and periodically show them off? I Chapel'd down and won, hooray. It was fine and also again not very derivative, hooray.
- the one with a bag of pure vanilla chits that are like Monk and Knight and things? - And the sequel. It had a certain charm. The uh special ability tiles needed tons of work, both the mechanism and then what they were.

I've never played Ascension, but for me it will always be the game I chose not to make. I outline this in that old BoardGameNews article, from when Dominion was first published. I considered a line of cards and you buy one (I think the editor, W. Eric Martin, referred to that as Show Manager style), and thought, it will suck when a good one shows up and someone else gets to buy it. I considered a mix of resources; one seemed better (and when I tried adding a resource, it was the least popular mechanic ever).

People always talk about how other games don't restrict you to one Action per turn. I of course did that specifically so that I could then break that rule; it gave me something to do, a way to vary cards. It's not that you absolutely have to have that; in fact your game doesn't need to be a Dominion rip-off at all, it can be say that you build a set of cows you're showing off once per lap, and then "action limit" is a nonsensical term. I mean really that's it: for people trying to just copy Dominion, well I think the best game there is the one I made, and I mean of course; I didn't intentionally do something I thought was inferior. I've endlessly gone over ways I've blown it, e.g. how Reactions work (should all be played Sheepdogs not revealed Moats), or how the Curse pile scales, or the whole "what if the card is gone" scene (e.g. Procession'd Durations); but these aren't anything people are talking about in this context.

55

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 08, 2023, 09:54:29 am »

Are you likely to answer questions of the form "What problems were caused by this obvious-ish card idea I have that I assume you also had years ago and never made into a set because it had non-obvious not-worth-solving problems that you found in playtesting" ?

No, but you could post it in variants and possibly LastFootnote will tell you.

56

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: November 04, 2023, 01:18:49 pm »

Are there cards that haven't been replaced that you think are stronger than you thought they were during playtesting? Any that you now think are weaker than you thought they were?

While I talk more about card power level than I used to, I still try to steer clear of it. It's like a spoiler. It's not my role. And such an open-ended question, man, it's so easy to avoid answering. Ask players instead.

57

Rules Questions / Re: Innovating a Duration during Donate

« on: November 04, 2023, 01:15:22 pm »

If you Donate a Catacombs, gain a Cabin Boy and play it with Innovation, does that Cabin Boy's start-of-next-turn effect happen immediately?

Technically speaking, that start-of-next-turn effect was set up before start-of-next-turn effects are actually resolved. But also it feels weird because it's still the same turn. If you Delayed a Wharf, that doesn't mean you get +4 Cards and +2 Buys.

Cabin Boy doesn't happen immediately, because it's not the next turn. It doesn't say "the next time you're doing start of turn stuff," so that we have to wonder, is that part of the batch with Donate or not. It says "next turn" and this is the same turn.

58

Dominion General Discussion / Halloween Kingdom

« on: October 31, 2023, 02:47:04 pm »

Happy Halloween! Here's a Dominion kingdom for the holiday, from me and LastFootnote. (Costumed goes on the Horde of Kids.)

59

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Rising Sun

« on: October 31, 2023, 01:52:32 am »

IIRC spielbox says the promo is promoting the new expansion

The promo is not promoting the new expansion, except to the not-what-you-meant degree that you can say that any promo promotes nearby expansions.

60

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: October 23, 2023, 06:13:07 pm »

Does Rising Sun have any "Whoops this card is flawed in concept" outtake cards that you can show us yet?

I'm looking at the secret history, thinking, "the secret history needs its fun too."

61

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 23, 2023, 02:02:34 pm »

Possession:
The player to your left takes an extra turn after this one (but not a 2nd extra turn in a row), in which you can see all cards they can and make all decisions for them. Any cards or debt they would gain on that turn, you gain instead; any cards of theirs that are trashed are set aside and put in their discard pile at end of turn.

Will Possession get the Duration type to match Outpost and Voyage?  Kind of like how Prince eventually got the Duration type.

It wouldn't be wrong, but no plans there.

62

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: October 22, 2023, 03:16:02 am »

What can you tell us about Rising Sun (the board game, not the Dominion expansion)?

- It's the new Dominion expansion, best guess currently is that it will come out in March.
- Art has started, unless it hasn't, I sent Jay the artist notes but haven't seen any sketches yet.
- Spielbox wanted a promo and to find out if a new expansion was coming, and we told them the name and estimated date, and they immediately put that up on a kickstarter. So that's how you guys know this set is coming already.
- The promo has no special connection to the expansion.
- More information may be a few months away. I really don't know, but we get nothing special out of getting people excited now about a set coming out in March.

Edit: man I don't know how I was supposed to read this question correctly. All I know about the board game is that it exists.

Do you meet with IRL playtesters at a game store, or do they come to your house?

I do both. At various points in my life it's been all one way or all the other or always both. Currently I have games twice a week at my place and then sometimes make it to a game store. Where I play with whoever wants to play.

What are the chances that you do something like this or that again?

Ah, Swindler. Everyone complained about me thinking about that last turn but man this game is tricky. I don't even remember doing that commentary.

They both could happen again. It's never super-exciting to play because I mean I'm just some guy. With the quarterfinals happening for the Championship now, I immediately thought, I could do some commentary. I can always pointlessly tell stories about cards, or mention what the TGG bot would be doing. I haven't felt like stepping in and treading on any of the other speakers yet though.

What card avatar do you use on TGG?

Smugglers! And man, there's a card to crush the bot with. It will just endlessly pass on buying cards.

Nowadays, do you prefer to use "each time" instead of "when"? (Frigate and Deliver both use “each time.”)

I think probably "each time" would have been better in general from the start, though now there's a lot of weight behind "when" so probably I keep using that in most places.

What do you think of those Quartermaster games where they gain a bunch of cards, but the cards just sit on them forever and you never put them in your hand?

If the set had had even more time spent on it, maybe it would have come up, and I might have tried a version that always alternates, see how that goes (if there's a card, take it, otherwise gain a card onto it). The bot has taught me to be terrified of Quartermaster pile-outs; it will get out four of them in any game with it, and they will pile up cards. I like having the card be as flexible as possible, but it certainly looms, this ability to just stock up cards you're never taking.

What do you think of Falconer, aka my favorite Dominion card?

I still like it fine. I'm a big fan of the Sheepdog family in general, Reactions that you can play in some circumstance. That's how Reactions should have always been, and started out as, and at last they got back there with Sheepdog.

63

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: October 16, 2023, 12:55:14 pm »

To my knowledge, the difference between the prototype version of the game that you play, and the version that we got, is different in the following ways
* Different art, font, icons, aspect ratio, stuff that doesn't matter functionally
* The new expansion(s) you're working on
* Tweaks to a bunch of Hinterlands cards ($2 Mandarin, moving the +Buy from Margrave to Cache, etc.)

Are there any other tweaks? Do your throne rooms secretly say "non-duration"?

I don't have those tweaks to the Hinterlands cards - I took them out when I made Hinterlands 2E. My prototype is functionally the same as published cards, except you know, when there's upcoming errata and I already printed it out for myself (and any new cards I have that aren't published yet). In a few cases there was a non-functional wording change I never bothered to print, like an "including this" or something. And I never printed out City with that name (my copies say Boomtown); I think that's the last one of those. At one point I had several wrong names, but finally printed some of them.

64

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 11, 2023, 01:02:31 pm »

As noted this means that a superfluous Outpost gets discarded during another player's Clean-up. It doesn't know that the extra turn won't happen until we're right there failing to do it, which is after Clean-up.

And this would be the case even if Outpost had nothing to do with giving extra turns, right? The fact that it also changes the draw part of cleanup means that it still has stuff to do after the discard part of cleanup.

Yes, the Outpost / Lich business doesn't involve that. Edit: corrected by Jeebus.

As noted this means that a superfluous Voyage... there we go.

65

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 10, 2023, 03:34:17 pm »

So:

I'm changing the ruling on Lich vs. the new Outposts. You can't skip the turn you weren't going to get. Outpost says "Take an extra turn after this one (but not a 3rd turn in a row)"; that can be read as "After this turn, if this wouldn't be a 3rd turn in a row, take an extra one."

Outpost is timed as "in-between turns"; Lich is timed as "when you're about to take a turn." If you play two Outposts and Lich on one turn, Lich can skip the first extra turn. The second Outpost still happens, since you haven't taken 2 turns in a row yet. If you play Outpost and Lich on an Outpost turn, Outpost doesn't generate an extra turn and Lich ends up skipping your next normal turn.

As noted this means that a superfluous Outpost gets discarded during another player's Clean-up. It doesn't know that the extra turn won't happen until we're right there failing to do it, which is after Clean-up.

66

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 08, 2023, 04:05:57 pm »

Yes, I think this is a very strange interpretation of new Outpost - that it actually sets up an extra turn, and then checks whether it would be the 3rd turn in a row right before you start the turn. I don't see why it wouldn't be exactly like original Outpost: after the current turn, it checks whether it will give you an extra turn.

The new phrasing seems to support this even more than the original phrasing did. "Take an extra turn after this one (but not a 3rd turn in a row)" suggests that you only take the extra turn if it wouldn't be the 3rd in a row. Taking an extra turn means that an extra turn is set up. Exactly as GendoIkari said, Outpost does not say: "take an extra turn after this one. If this would be the 3rd turn in a row, skip it."

By the way, this Lich interaction applies to all these "extra turn" cards (except Possession), not just Outpost.

Donald X., maybe you missed this post since it was last on the first page? Seems like at least me, GendoIkari and Majiponi think that the wording on Outpost suggests that Lich can't skip the Outpost turn.

Outpost has to check if the turn will be a 3rd one right before that turn happens. If it checked any earlier, things could change such that you got a 3rd turn in a row; if it checked any later, the turn would have already happened.

Then, given that, how should it be phrased? Currently it's phrased to be clear and simple for people in normal situations, with the idea being that there's a rulebook (though currently there isn't, since the card hasn't been reprinted yet) to cover the tricky cases.

So then, there's two pieces here: generating the turn, and making sure it's not a 3rd one. We could spell these out as:
A) Take an additional turn after this one. When it's about to happen, if it would be a third turn in a row, get rid of it quietly.
B) After this turn, when you've got a moment, if another turn wouldn't be a third turn in a row, take one.

I went with A. I think you're arguing for B.

The card text is: "Take an extra turn after this one (but not a 3rd turn in a row)."

Leading with "Take an extra turn" makes it look like, okay we're taking a turn; now then, what else is there to say? But really we've provided timing and could rephrase it as:

"After this turn, take an extra turn (but not a 3rd turn in a row).

When you look at it like that, the uh amount of reasonableness of B goes up. B still is really seeing it as:

"After this turn, if it won't be a 3rd turn in a row, take an extra turn."

But then, the "if" has to come ahead of the actual turn.

So this does make it seem like Lich shouldn't be able to skip a 3rd turn generated by Outpost. There's no turn to skip until we know it's not a third one.

67

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 05, 2023, 03:37:35 pm »

Or to put it another way: Why is it so bad that players can't take 2 extra turns in a row when there are two of these cards in the same kingdom, which surely isn't very common?

I think we just disagree on the importance of both halves - I put less value on the exotic cases, and more value on the three-turns-in-a-row problem. It would be great to have everything perfect in all respects; this is what I have currently. Playing Throne on Outpost is super crazy exotic when the card makes it clear that it won't work. You won't do it! Asking what happens exactly then is just an intellectual exercise, or something important for programmers of the digital versions; it's not something that really happens in games. Whereas when you can take 3 turns in a row, you do it.

It came up; otherwise I wouldn't have been thinking about it. I had multiple games where players could take three turns in a row. It sucked hard. I thought, damn Donald X., fix that. I fixed it. It wasn't just Voyage; a variety of extra turn cards came up and we had the awful experience. Then Allies was being reprinted and hey, good time to fix this.

68

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 05, 2023, 12:21:26 am »

Other random question:

3-player game. On my turn, I play two Possessions. On the first possessed turn, I make the player 2 play a Possession. Player 3 now takes a possessed turn. I then get to possess player 2 again?

Yes if you squeeze in a turn for a different player, you can get your next Possession to work. However! When two players are supposed to do something at once, we go in turn order, and in these between-turns situations, we go by the last player to take a turn. So you possess Alice twice, and on the first extra turn make her possess Bob; Alice took the last turn (with you possessing her) so we start with her and resolve her taking another extra turn, no wait she doesn't get it due to the wording on Possession, and then go on to Bob's extra turn.

69

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 05, 2023, 12:18:04 am »

I'm reminded of when a new rule was added that if a cost would be reduced to less than , it stayed at . This enabled Bridge and other cards to all not need "but not less than ". Could the same thing have worked for extra turns? Just a general new rule that says "A player cannot take more than 2 turns in a row. If a player would begin a third turn in a row, that turn is skipped". If such a rule existed, then all of these cards could be worded as they are in this errata, but without the "but not a 3rd turn in a row" bit.

Granted, that would also change Fleet and Seize the day, but only in the rare cases when they show up in the same game with other extra turn cards.

Changing Fleet and Seize the Day isn't a problem. Having it just be a rule, no 3rd turns, was proposed, and considered, and wasn't good enough. If it were a new game, with an Outpost in the main set, then it could be in the rules, even though every such rule is super bad, as players never learn them since they don't come up often enough. In Dominion especially, people expect the cards to tell them the rules. Anyway it's not the main set for a new game; it's these cards, and the way for people to know the rule is to put it on the cards. Then you can say, the cards could have treated it like a rule that they were reminding you of: "(Players can't take 3 turns in a row.)" And I mean that was considered too. I don't want a main set rulebook rule like "you can't take three turns in a row" with no way to take extra turns; that's how it is.

"Cards can't cost less than $0" is much different, because it's what everyone expects will be the rule if they don't know the rule, and when they don't know the rule it's very clear to them that they don't know it. As soon as they ask, "hey does it go to negative $," they know they don't know and can look it up. They never think "oh it probably goes to negative, la la la, let's not check." They think "of course it won't go negative" or "I don't know." Whereas! You can't tell that you don't know "you can't take 3 turns in a row"; there's no hint for you that a rule is missing. By default you sure think you can.

70

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 05, 2023, 12:10:59 am »

I'm surprised that Outpost is errata'ed back to its original text, since now we're back to all the confusing stuff that the new (previous) wording was specifically made to avoid:

For me, "you can't take 3 turns in a row" was more important than these things. That's the whole idea; killing those awful situations. I think the new wording is very clear for players in normal situations. IRL players may discard Outpost at the wrong time in exotic cases and that will be fine.

71

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 03, 2023, 01:21:50 pm »

As far as I understand it, Lich and Outpost et. al. work on the same principle: An extra turn that is about to happen now will not happen if certain conditions are met. So if an "about to happen now" Outpost turn would both be the third for its player in a row and the first after that player played Lich, both effects can could apply. Whichver is chosen to prevent the turn wins, the other effect remains.

Correct. We don't know if the Outpost turn will actually happen until it's time for it; when it's time for it, you can choose how to resolve Lich and Outpost. I've just been figuring you wanted to not skip more turns than you had to, but you can choose to miss the turn due to it being a 3rd one in a row, then also skip a turn due to Lich.

I thought "Outpost effect between turns" tries to let Bob take an extra turn only if he had only 1 or fewer turns in a row, since Outpost instruction is a single statement, unlike E1 clause - "This can’t cause you to take more than 3 consecutive turns".  So, I guessed Lich cannot cancel Outpost; nothing was about to happen.  As far as I know, this must be a new ruling.

I don't know what the ruling used to be. For me today, Outpost can't know if it will be a third turn in a row until it's about to happen. At the point at which we're looking at whose turn will be next, Outpost and Lich both speak up to answer this question, and you get to pick an order to resolve them.

So then, on the Lich side, Lich skips an upcoming extra turn. It can't wait until the turn has already happened; it's always an upcoming turn. The Outpost turn is upcoming until Outpost tells us it isn't.

That's how I see it currently. I'm happy to be argued into having Lich be screwed over in this ubiquitous situation (this situation is not ubiquitous).

Lich could possibly have made nothing happen on the turn, rather than skipping it, to clarify this; but then Lich was trying to not be a mess itself, and in most situations "skip a turn" is super-clear.

72

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: October 03, 2023, 01:13:28 pm »

Is there any plan for physical reprints of Captain/Prince with the 'Command' type?

From my perspective, yes, I'd like the up-to-date wording used the next time they're printed, for all cards. The promos aren't intended to be limited edition; they get reprinted as needed. I don't know what the current stock is though. And the next time they get reprinted, it's possible that we'll miss the step where I say, here is the up-to-date wording.

73

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: October 01, 2023, 01:49:38 pm »

As far as I understand it, Lich and Outpost et. al. work on the same principle: An extra turn that is about to happen now will not happen if certain conditions are met. So if an "about to happen now" Outpost turn would both be the third for its player in a row and the first after that player played Lich, both effects can could apply. Whichver is chosen to prevent the turn wins, the other effect remains.

Correct. We don't know if the Outpost turn will actually happen until it's time for it; when it's time for it, you can choose how to resolve Lich and Outpost. I've just been figuring you wanted to not skip more turns than you had to, but you can choose to miss the turn due to it being a 3rd one in a row, then also skip a turn due to Lich.

74

Rules Questions / Re: Errata to extra turns

« on: September 30, 2023, 05:05:03 pm »

Example 1: 2-player game
T10: Alice played a Lich on her regular turn.
T10: Bob played his regular turn.
T11: Alice skipped her regular turn.
T11: Bob played an Outpost on his regular turn.

The skipped turn doesn't count as a break in Bob's turn count; he's had two turns in a row, so Outpost can't give him a 3rd turn.

Example 2: 2-player game
T10: Alice played a Lich on her regular turn.
T10: Bob played his regular turn.
T11: Alice skipped her regular turn.
T11: Bob played a Lich and an Outpost on his regular turn.

Bob can apply Lich to skip the Outpost turn.

Example 3: 2-player game
Alice played a Possession on her regular turn.
Bob played a Lich and an Outpost on his Possessed turn.
Bob skipped his Outpost turn.
Bob starts his regular turn with 3-card hand.

Outpost doesn't care if you get the extra turn or not; the 3-card hand is independent of that. If you play Outpost, you only draw 3 cards (for your regular hand draw) in Clean-up; we don't even know yet if that turn will be skipped or what.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: September 19, 2023, 02:27:14 pm »

When playtesting non-Dominion games, do you feel a need to use external blind playtesters? Or do you trust the people you know to give good feedback? Or some third option I didn't think of?

It's a good idea to have people who haven't been playtesting the game the whole time try out the intended-to-be-final version. Usually I manage this at least a little.