[s-d] Proto-Prop: Card cleaning, new cards

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In a number of Mini-mao games I've played, and in the few nomic chess 
games, I've noticed a trend towards rules that make the game suck. 
People seem to have this fascination with making rules that are new, 
different, or somehow 'cool', but that often don't make the game more 
interesting or enjoyable once you've gotten over the initial "oh, 
that's interesting" reaction.

I think we have that problem with Cards. We have a few cards that are 
very complicated and require a lot of mixing things around but without 
any real strategic benefit to using them, and an awful lot of cards 
that are basically never played. Greater Booty, for example, is useless 
unless one player plays a Syn card and then another player hits it with 
RPS. So far, neither card has ever been played, so Greater Booty can't 
be either.

Indeed, seven out of the 21 card types in the deck are cards that can't 
be played until somebody has played one of the nine Syn cards, and of 
those three depend on the next play being RPS, and one depends on the 
next play being Ack.

We also have a drastic imbalance in the quantities of the cards. In my 
original cards prop, I envisioned the deck being much larger, and so 15 
YSHTMF, 20 Petty Theft and 5 Jackpot! seemed like a good balance. 
However, subsequent card types tended to have at most seven added, 
sometimes only one or two, so the deck is currently half Petty Theft 
and YSHTMF. This doesn't help when the other half depends on the 
one-tenth of the deck that is Syn being played.

So, my prop to fix this is included below; I'm not submitting it quite 
yet, because I want to be more familiar with the layout of the cards 
database before I force myself to make lots of changes to it.

Proto-prop:
{{
__Reworking Cards__

[[Fix existing Card texts]]

Amend the definition of Looting the Corpse to change "on Forced Leave" 
to "in The Vat".

[[Create some new Cards]]

Create the following card definitions:
{{
__Hamhandedness__

Image: A man breaking a piece of a model ship he is assembling.
Body: Choose a player. That player discards a card and gains the 
attribute "Hand Job Master", and all other players lose it.
}}

{{
__Smooth Hands__

Image: A man juggling a wide variety of assorted objects.
Body: If no player holds the attribute "Hand Job Master", then you gain 
that attribute.
}}

{{
__Master Handiwork__

Image: A man balanced on one foot simultaneously folding four origami 
cranes, one in each hand.
Body: Draw a card. You gain the attribute "Hand Job Master", and all 
other players lose it.
}}

{{
__Rotary Exchange__

Image: A Queen of Diamonds entering an airport terminal as a Jack of 
Clubs emerges from a nearby one, wearing a beret.
Body: Choose a card in your hand and a card in another player's hand. 
Swap those cards.
}}

{{
__Cash In__

Image: A woman cashing an enormous pile of chips in a casino.
Body: Discard any number of cards from your hand. Gain 2 points for 
each card discarded this way.
}}

{{
__Stock Crash__

Image: A jagged graph line, plummeting downwards at the end of the page.
Body: All players discard all cards named Cash In, Jackpot!, 
Capitalism, or Investment.
}}

{{
__Capitalism__

Image: An enormous pile of bags of money, all with dollar signs on them.
Body: If you have Cash In, Jackpot!, and Investment in your hand, 
discard all copies of them and gain 300 points.
}}

{{
__Six Card Hand__

Image: Six facedown cards.
Body: Choose an integer X between one and five inclusive. Discard all 
but X cards from your hand, then draw 6-X cards.
}}

{{
__Inertia__

Image: A bowling ball smashing through a sheet of glass.
Body: If a player tries to play a card in any of the next three 
checking periods, but that player didn't play a card in the checking 
period prior to that one, then the card has no effect and is discarded 
rather than played. If a player does not play a card in any of the next 
three checking periods, but that player did play a card during the 
checking period prior to that one, e loses 5 points.
}}

[[Adjust card totals]]

For each number:card name pair below, put that number of that card in 
the deck:
2: Inertia
3: Six Card Hand
1: Capitalism
2: Stock Crash
5: Cash In
8: Rotary Exchange
6: Hamhandedness
3: Smooth Hands
1: Master Handicraft
2: Tournament Russion Roulette
5: Poik

Destroy 5 copies of Your Spoo Has Too Much Fleem, 8 copies of Petty 
Theft, and three copies of Jackpot!. These should be copies that are 
currently in The Deck; if the deck does not have enough copies, then 
the extra copies to be destroyed are chosen at random from players' 
hands.

Destroy the card definition of Grab Bag, and all copies of the card. 
[[It's complicated and not very useful for anyone]].

For each card destroyed by this proposal, if that card was in a 
player's hand, deal to that player a random card from the deck.

}}

--
Wonko

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
    - Elvis Presley

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