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[GendoIkari]

2nd editions seem to be a pretty tumultuous event, with all of us opining on which changes we think are good or bad, mourning the loss of our favorite weak, complicated, or unfun cards, and generally complaining about things we don’t like. Some of these changes - like the change to Bonfire - can require change for reasons that aren’t immediately noticeable to most of us. I, personally, was pretty disappointed at the change to Bonfire, said as much in the preview thread, and never stopped to consider that maybe the designer of the game had good reasons for changing it the way he did.

On that note, is there a way that we can get answers to our burning questions in a way that’s more helpful/less hostile? Would it be nice to have a mega thread devoted specifically to 2E questions where we ask “Why did Bonfire change this way?” Should we just be more polite and give you the benefit of the doubt as we ask? Stop clamoring and just wait for the secret history?

Or do you not even enjoy discussing the minutiae of every errata and want us to just let it be?

Thanks for all your hard work in making the game the best it can be. I’m sorry if any of my comments have been annoying to read or sound ungrateful.

Followup to this, in that thread it was said that Bonfire had a second reason for changing which LastFootnote had forgotten about. What was the other reason?

[Donald X.]

Statement and not a question: the 2Es and errata have been great, shrug off any online protestors.

Thanks!

Were there concerns that for some Allies (specifically Trappers Lodge and Family of Inventors), you would only use the starting favor, and then ignore it for the rest of the game?

Certainly the intention was, that while that might sometimes happen, that it wouldn't happen too often for any of them. Especially, with Underling in particular, where you have to specifically want Favors rather than anything else from the card (yes there are all the reasons to buy a Pearl Diver, ugh).

Why does Territory have its when-gain? Especially with Warlord, it feels quite rare to be able to gain Golds from it.

The main reason is, I had that premise, and that spot seemed fine for it, and then there it was. I've gained Golds from it plenty. It means the whole pile is interactive, that's nice.

Were you surprised that Clashes have gotten a lot of hate? And what are your thoughts on them now?

They seem pretty awesome? I guess I don't feel like they're hated. I know that Warlord initially looks crazy, but then you have the experience.

There was a lot of Barbarian hate, but man, play with the card, learn the ropes, you will not fear it.

In your experience, which published non-removed cards are the most annoying irl? Honestly Triumph just seems impossible irl (both in keeping track of number of cards gained and running out of tokens).

Keep might be the winner for me; I just do not want to track that stuff.

On TGG my banlist is Rebuild, Keep, Fool, Stockpile. Rebuild just makes me sad whenever I see it. Fool, I'm sad about Fool too (it's way too much to ask of casual players), but Lucky Coin is why I ban it; I don't want to play those games vs. the money-heavy bot. And Stockpile, man, you know we enjoyed those playtest games, but 2-player vs. a bot it's not an experience I need to have repeatedly.

Were there concerns that the reworded Butcher is too concise? Granted, it's a difficult ability to phrase, but it still seems easy to misunderstand.

Well it hasn't gone to print yet, so let me know how it goes. It was always a tricky thing to phrase. There's my current best attempt. Sure there's some concern that people won't understand it; no change there.

[Donald X.]

2nd editions seem to be a pretty tumultuous event, with all of us opining on which changes we think are good or bad, mourning the loss of our favorite weak, complicated, or unfun cards, and generally complaining about things we don’t like. Some of these changes - like the change to Bonfire - can require change for reasons that aren’t immediately noticeable to most of us. I, personally, was pretty disappointed at the change to Bonfire, said as much in the preview thread, and never stopped to consider that maybe the designer of the game had good reasons for changing it the way he did.

On that note, is there a way that we can get answers to our burning questions in a way that’s more helpful/less hostile? Would it be nice to have a mega thread devoted specifically to 2E questions where we ask “Why did Bonfire change this way?” Should we just be more polite and give you the benefit of the doubt as we ask? Stop clamoring and just wait for the secret history?

Or do you not even enjoy discussing the minutiae of every errata and want us to just let it be?

Thanks for all your hard work in making the game the best it can be. I’m sorry if any of my comments have been annoying to read or sound ungrateful.

Followup to this, in that thread it was said that Bonfire had a second reason for changing which LastFootnote had forgotten about. What was the other reason?

I wrote up an errata explanations post, I have to proofread it but if I don't get to that tonight I probably will tomorrow. Short answer: loops.

[Donald X.]

Errata explanations: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=21326.0

[trivialknot]

Enjoyed the errata explanations.

One Dominion rule that seems particularly confusing--or so I presume, I don't exactly have a lot of experience trying to explain it to newbies--is the fact that the buy phase is secretly split into two.  There's the first part where you can play treasures, and the second part where you can buy cards.  So if you use Innovation to play a smithy you bought, you can't play the treasures you draw; but if you use Innovation to play a smithy you gained from Horn of Plenty, you can play the treasures you draw.

The coffers errata seems aimed at making that distinction not matter as much; you can spend coffers even on the second part of the buy phase.  But the distinction still matters in other cases, especially with more cards that let you play actions outside your action phase.

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

[Donald X.]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

[dz]

Do you say zee or zed?

It seems that Menagerie hasn't gotten any of the errata? (Supplies/Stockpile should drop "when you play this", and Destrier/Fisherman should match Peddler.) Anyways, what are the plans for Turtle/Horse/Butterfly being able to remove Durations? Add "if this isn't a Duration card...?"

Also will Summon and Reap be reworded to match Blockade?

Monkey seems like a great solution to having to memorize how many cards your opponent gained. Would you prefer to do Goatherd the same way too?

Why did the Guard Dog that-could-react-to-your-own-attacks not work out?

Would you reword Guardian/Ghost Town/Night Watchman/Den of Sin to match Berserker? I think this change would have more upsides than downsides (other than the downside of needing errata)?

[LastFootnote]

Personally I enjoy being able to buy Ghost Town/Den of Sin/Night Watchman and then use Exorcist on it immediately. And playing these cards doesn't seem simpler or more complex than gaining them to hand.

[Donald X.]

Do you say zee or zed?

In most contexts, zee.

It seems that Menagerie hasn't gotten any of the errata? (Supplies/Stockpile should drop "when you play this", and Destrier/Fisherman should match Peddler.) Anyways, what are the plans for Turtle/Horse/Butterfly being able to remove Durations? Add "if this isn't a Duration card...?"

For sure Supplies and Stockpile are supposed to lose "when you play this"; if they haven't online, that's just something I missed due to thinking it had already happened.

I am not sure about Destrier and Fisherman without putting work in there for this post. Maybe they could have better wordings, I can believe it.

I have not been working on Turtle / Horse / Butterfly but you are correct that they cause issues with Durations.

"Non-duration" is also looking likely for Citadel; not in the near future though, since it's not an emergency and we just had errata day dammit.

Also will Summon and Reap be reworded to match Blockade?

I don't know if they will match Blockade in whatever sense you mean that, but they may change.

Normally errata happens as the sets come out. Stef wanted to do a bunch of errata all at once. Pros: people will spot more fixes for you; you don't have the online version with a mix of certain things done and undone. Cons: you miss stuff, you aren't studying fixed images of all the cards; people complain more.

Monkey seems like a great solution to having to memorize how many cards your opponent gained. Would you prefer to do Goatherd the same way too?

Uh, well maybe. It's nice to not have the tracking on Goatherd; that wasn't a secret when Goatherd was worked on and it got the version with the tracking. But maybe there's a better version of it ala Monkey.

Why did the Guard Dog that-could-react-to-your-own-attacks not work out?

I don't actually remember, and it isn't noted in my reports. Probably it was too generous; possibly it was easy to forget because it's unusual. While there was such a version, it almost immediately changed to only working on other players' attacks.

Would you reword Guardian/Ghost Town/Night Watchman/Den of Sin to match Berserker? I think this change would have more upsides than downsides (other than the downside of needing errata)?

"To hand" is simpler in that maybe something messes the situation up, and if that means it's not in your hand that's no problem, and if it means you don't have the card to put it into play, well it used to be that that was a problem. These days however, we don't play the card if you lost it, so, aside from needing to know that, they would work with "play this." It does seem like I would have done that, and just lived with not being able to Exorcist those cards (as usual Dominion doesn't need any particular cute combo).

But, this doesn't seem like the kind of change I'd make with errata.

[Holger]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

Could you (or someone else) clarify what would "break" if you could play treasures after buying cards? With Merchant Guild errata'ed, I can't think of any card which would be broken when allowing this...

[vidicate]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

Could you (or someone else) clarify what would "break" if you could play treasures after buying cards? With Merchant Guild errata'ed, I can't think of any card which would be broken when allowing this...

I don’t know for sure what would “break” either. But it would be a significant change to how the buy phase works. The most obvious case is where you draw any cards after you’ve started buying: Sheepdog’s and Trail’s reactions come to mind.

[Awaclus]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

Could you (or someone else) clarify what would "break" if you could play treasures after buying cards? With Merchant Guild errata'ed, I can't think of any card which would be broken when allowing this...

You could e.g. buy Grand Market, then play Coppers to buy something else, or buy Mint with only your Coppers in play and then play your other Treasures to buy something else.

[Holger]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

Could you (or someone else) clarify what would "break" if you could play treasures after buying cards? With Merchant Guild errata'ed, I can't think of any card which would be broken when allowing this...

You could e.g. buy Grand Market, then play Coppers to buy something else, or buy Mint with only your Coppers in play and then play your other Treasures to buy something else.

Sure, but that doesn't break anything either IMO - Mint can actually use this small buff, while Grand Market is very strong with or without the change (and you could just increase its price e.g. to $7* to compensate).

[trivialknot]

Is that something that tends to trip up newbies, in your experience?  Have you ever considered trying to address it? I mean, outside the coffers change.

For sure it's bad that the buy phase is really two phases. Either it should be clearly two phases - the easy fix to keeping all the cards mostly as-is - or it should be that you can keep playing treasures after buying cards - which breaks various things but would have worked great if done at the start.

Could you (or someone else) clarify what would "break" if you could play treasures after buying cards? With Merchant Guild errata'ed, I can't think of any card which would be broken when allowing this...

Alms?  I think such errata would be plausible.

[Jeebus]

It's already bad to have certain cards that have errata based on certain other cards with errata, like for instance Pillage being changed because of Band of Misfits being changed, because that means that there are physical cards existing that are incompatible (or "sub-compatible") with other physical cards. Having existing cards that are incompatible with current rules is a whole other level of bad.

Come to think of it, we are already at that level. People owning any existing edition of Guilds and buying the next edition of Renaissance, or vice versa, will have a card that is considered broken (broken enough that errata was necessary) with the newest rule. I'm referring to Merchant Guild or Patron. Changing the rule for playing Treasures and errataing Grand Market in the process will have the same effect.

[Jeebus]

Having existing cards that are incompatible with current rules is a while other level of bad.the process will have the same effect.

What alternative are you suggesting, to not constantly improve the game? That would be far worse.

Second editions exist and it is not as if ignoring errata somehow makes the game totally unpleasant for folks who still own first edition cards.

Not improving the game by constantly "changing" cards that people already own and paid for physical copies of. Nothing was broken enough that people were having bad experiences. Making new editions with removed cards is fine, and doesn't present any of the problems that errata does. Things like putting "may" on Throne Room is also fine, because it hardly changes the card functionally and almost never matters, but even that is not really necessary. I see very little upside to balance out all the known downsides of errata, and especially when that makes cards from one printed set badly compatible with cards or rules from another. Isn't that the kind of thing that errata should be fixing, not introducing?

[Donald X.]

I guess it's true that there may not be a lot of these cards. The classic examples are Grand Market and Mint, but of course there are lots of situations we can come up with, e.g. any way to play draw-to-x in your buy phase. But it might come down to, a few cards get stronger and a few cards have errata like "You can't play more Treasures this turn." It's something I could think more about for the future.

It is of course bad when rulebooks disagree, or players have one printing of one set and one of another such that some interaction is bad. It's a cost of doing errata for sure.

So far I am still standing by my errata though.

[Jeebus]

How come then that you are constantly asking for rulings on some cards yet somehow disagree with these very rule intricacies at the same time?

I'm asking for rulings because I maintain a rules document. Also, what I like or dislike has no bearing on the actual rules or rulings that exist.

Nothing in life is static. I prefer games that are constantly improved instead of just thrown out and never touched again.

A printed card is static (unless you print an update, cut it out and stick it in the sleeve). Dominion is a card game, not a computer game. Well, it's also a computer game of course, and maybe those two could or should have been two different games.

[Imrahil3]

How come then that you are constantly asking for rulings on some cards yet somehow disagree with these very rule intricacies at the same time?

I'm asking for rulings because I maintain a rules document. Also, what I like or dislike has no bearing on the actual rules or rulings that exist.

So tell us, do you want the game to evolve or be static? You cannot have both, you cannot at the same time desire rule updatings and complain about them.

Did you read what he said? He is trying to keep track of what rules are changing so he can continue to follow them - which he already said has nothing to do with if he likes the rulings or not.

[chipperMDW]

Did you read what he said? He is trying to keep track of what rules are changing so he can continue to follow them - which he already said has nothing to do with if he likes the rulings or not.

That's nonsense. If you use your spare free time to make the effort to design a rule document for a game you obviously like that stuff, i.e. rule changes and rule details.

What you said there seems like the nonsense to me.  That's like saying someone must be happy a tornado destroyed their house because they're interested in meteorology.

[Jeebus]

That's nonsense. If you use your spare free time to make the effort to design a rule document for a game you obviously like that stuff, i.e. rule changes and rule details.
But you cannot have those without the game designer also caring about these very details and actually changing the rules!

That's my point. Either static game design with rules set in stone or constant improvement and evolvement.

I think it is great that DXV is updating the game. But I also don't worry about getting all the new errata right when playing with first edition cards. It's details, not essentials.

I just noticed that this is the Donald X. interview thread and we're off on a tangent here. Also, incredibly, you're somehow questioning my motivations for writing a rules document instead of actually addressing any of my actual points. It's just so irrelevant. That said, you're half right and half very wrong. You're obviously right that I like rule details. But there's no connection between that and enjoying a ruleset in flux. What I originally liked about the Dominion rules was actually things like their simplicity and consistency, so the rules changes to a great extent represent the opposite of what I enjoy about game rules. Now I'm talking strictly on a personal level, not about what is good for the game etc. (Actually, I don't really have the time and the interest to keep updating my document, but so far I'm doing it anyway because I know that the moment it's not being updated, it's a lot less relevant and the work I already put into it loses a lot of its value.)

[Jeebus]

So either you don't care about rule details and perfection and complain about errata or you care about rule details and perfection and welcome the errata. You cannot have it both ways and pretend that game designers should get everything right from the get-go in the case of a still-evolving-game. Might be possible with a DeLaurean but not in the real world.

I just happen to think that Dominion was a great game even before all the errata started in 2019. That's 11 years of the game not sucking. (Not saying that it sucks after that of course, only that it would still be great even without any errata.) Dominion used to be "evolving" in one sense only, that it would get new expansions (and even that not always). There's nothing imperfect about that, since the game was never broken.

[chipperMDW]

You can do meterology without catastrophes.

The magnitude of the event is beside the point. Being interested in meteorology also doesn't require you to be happy that it's raining.

[Jeebus]

Most of the 40 cards getting errata now are not related to funky edge cases.

I have never advocated for a zillion expansions in any way.

It's possible to have many expansions without errata, as you're also saying (contradicting yourself). I could pick apart more of what you're saying (actually I have already), but I think this nonsense has gone on long enough.

[Donald X.]

Jeebus / Nick / Punchball has done a lot of great work, compiling rulings; I direct people to that document. He makes work for me sometimes, and I make work for him.

Every way in which the game could be simpler makes me sad. Errata like the new batch makes "the game, considering everything ever" more complex, but simplifies "the game as it is now."