Friday, June 26, 2015

Eminent Domain: Oblivion - prototyping

I've been doing some prototyping this week - in addition to updating all my Alter Ego files, I've finally gotten to work putting together a prototype for Eminent Domain: Oblivion!

Here are some pics to prove it:

 Clout Tokens

Agenda Display


In case you don't recall, the basic idea of the Oblivion expansion is that there are Agendas, which are global effects that apply to everyone. You can bring them into and out of play via the new Politics role.

When choosing the Politics role, you will reveal a new Upcoming Agenda from the deck, placing it in the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Upcoming Agendas row (above the Central Card Display) - sliding other Upcoming Agendas down to make room. Return any Agenda sliding off the rightmost space to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

You may boost the role as normal with Politics icons, and other player may follow (playing Politics icons of their own), or Dissent (drawing a card as normal). After all players have Followed or Dissented, you may use ALL Politics icons played (by you and your opponents) in order to EITHER:

1. Activate one of the Upcoming Agendas, moving it to the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Active Agendas row (below the Central Card Display) - sliding other Active Agendas down to make room. Return any Active Agenda sliding off the rightmost space returns to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

OR 

2. Remove one of the Active Agendas, returning it to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

In order to do either of these, you must have the required number of Politics icons, printed on the board in the Agenda's current slot. Again, you may count ALL Politics icons played by yourself and your opponents.

In return for offering their Politics icons, opponents who Follow your Politics role draw 1 Clout token from the supply. Clout tokens depict a Politics icon on the back side, and one of the other role icons on the front. These tokens may be kept until spent to boost or follow either a Politics role, or whichever role the other icon applies to. For example, a token with a Produce icon on the back may be spent to boost a Politics role or a Produce role.

I expect that sometimes players will Follow a Politics role because they want to hep the active player get a particular Agenda into or out of play, and I expect that other times players will Follow just to collect a Clout token. Still other times I expect players to Dissent, perhaps because they don't want to help the active player out, or perhaps because they need better cards for their own turn.

My current draft of Agendas might not be spectacular. I just wanted something to test out. I think many of them will need to be more impactful things that really stand to help or hinder someone's strategy.

In the lower right corner of that 2nd pic you might even be able to see the Market tile I mentioned before. For a first draft I went with the following version: 

Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Research: Spend 3R to upgrade to Improved Market.

Improved Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Action: Exchange 2 resources for up to 3 other resources.
+1vp whenever you Trade 3 different resource types in 1 Trade role.

I intend to make a few techs that interact with Clout tokens and Agendas, maybe swapping the locations of Upcoming or Active agendas (making them more/less expensive to activate/remove, or making them stick around longer) for example. I think I will keep the tech to a minimum though, since I've added so much in the other expansions. I think this one will be mainly about the Agendas.

Now, to playtest!

2 comments:

Josh 'Dagar' said...

Hey Seth,

sounding nice so far. although you do not want to bring many new techs to the board, I'd recommend some 'protecting your favourite agenda' stuff in the higher tech regions. What immediatley springs to my mind is placing your clout tokens on agendas, making it that much more costly to discard or activate. Maybe even as an alternative to dissenting the politics role if you do not want to follow? Another option would be to pay some stuff in order to take an agenda to your personal play area. The effect only counts for you, but you have to discard it the next time politics is played.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to reports from playtesting!

Is a current PnP version of EmDice available somewhere? Though my free time is very limited at the moment, I'd like to try what you have come up with.

Sincerely,

Josh 'Dagar'

Seth Jaffee said...

Hi Josh, thanks for the comments! I think you're onto something with adding clout tokens to Upcoming or Active agendas to make them more costly to activate or remove!

The latest files for EmDice (as of May 2013) are here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4093/My%20Games/Eminent%20Domain/EmDice/EmDice%20Proto.pdf

And here are some tokens someone made for it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4093/My%20Games/Eminent%20Domain/EmDice/EmDiceTokens.pdf

Feel free to give it a go! If you do, please let me know how it goes... maybe in a comment on this post: http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/04/emdice-playtester-prototype-pics-and.html

Thanks!