Interesting Interactions from GenCon
We love Gen Con. We sell a lot of games, meet a lot of people, and generally have fun playing games (our own and others)! Of course, a whole bunch of people played a whole bunch of Red Dragon Inn this summer at Gen Con, including at our (in)famous RDI Doppelganger Tournament. Two rules situations came up which were very interesting, so I thought I should share them here.
In both cases, complex situations ended up having “by the book” answers based on the newly revised rulebook and reminder text on the cards. As the main guy who wrote the revised rulebook, I was quite proud of this fact. (By the way, if you haven’t downloaded a copy of the revised rules, please do so!)
SCENARIO #1
In a four-player game, Gerki has 7 Gold and Serena has 3 Gold. Serena plays a damage card on Gerki that will knock him out when it resolves. In response, Gerki plays “Well…I don’t see your name on it” and “Oh, this gold piece? Um… I found it… under your chair…” to steal 2 Gold from Serena. After those resolve, but still in response to Serena’s original damage card, Deirdre plays “Tip the Wench” targeting Serena to make her lose her last Gold.
What happens?
Back in the RDI stone age, situations like this had to be decided by house rules and general consensus. And maybe some arguing. Bleah.
Now, we have an answer under “Losing the Game” on page 2 of the new rules. There are two important bits:
1) “If you run out of Gold or pass out, you don’t lose immediately. First, finish resolving any cards that have been played but have not yet resolved.”
2) “It is possible for multiple players to lose at the same time. If this happens, first determine which players are passing out. Each of those players divides their Gold among the remaining players as described above. After this, if any players have no Gold, they lose the game as well.”
So, the first thing we do in this case is to fully resolve all card effects (rule 1 above). This means that after Serena runs out of Gold, we finish resolving Serena’s damage card, which knocks Gerki out. We then check to see if any players are losing. There are two players losing simultaneously, so we follow rule 2 above. First Gerki, who now has 9 Gold, passes out. 5 of his Gold pieces go to the Inn, the other 4 are divided among the three remaining players. Each remaining player (including Serena) will get 1 Gold. Now that Serena has at least 1 Gold she is no longer losing and gets to stay in the game!
SCENARIO #2
One of our most popular Gen Con events is our RDI Doppelganger Tournament. This format can take up to 36 players, and it always draws a crowd! In the first round, each player plays at a table of 2-4 players who all play the same character and fight it out with their “Doppelgangers”. Once we determine the “real” Gerki, Fiona, Serena, etc, the winning players move on to the second round; two randomly-assigned six-player games. The top two in each game advance to the four-player final table to crown an overall winner.
In this year’s Doppelganger tournament, Wizgille was playing a two-player game against….Wizgille. So, we’ll call them Wizgille A and Wizgille B. It is A’s turn, and she plays “Gambling? I’m in!” as her Action for the turn. B plays “I raise!” A plays “These? No, these aren’t my Omni-sight Goggles” to cheat. In response, B plays “I didn’t activate my temporal dilation field. It’s just deja vu.”
Now, I should pause here in the scenario to describe that card to you the people who haven’t played RDI3 yet. Wizgille’s Temporal Dilation card is pretty cool. It allows Wizgille to Negate nearly any card in the game, BUT the person who played that card may then play another card of the same type.
But there’s a catch! Like so many of Wizgille’s cards, it is a Device Card. This means that when Wizgille plays it, she must flip over the top card of her Gear Deck, which could make the card completely fail, or could make it completely ridiculously awesome. Or it could do something really weird…
So, back to our scenario!
A: “Gambling I’m in!”
B: “I Raise!”
A: Cheat
B: Temporal Dilation Field
B flipped over a Gear Card and got “Wow! That actually did what I expected it to,” so there were no extra effects. Here’s where it gets interesting. In response, A plays a Temporal Dilation Field of her own and for her Gear Card, she gets “Uh oh! I’d better fix that right now.”
Crazy, huh? In this case, though, that last bit of reminder text on the card tells you everything you need to know. A’s Temporal dilation doesn’t take effect, but that doesn’t matter. A’s turn ends immediately. All unresolved cards are discarded and the Gold in the pot goes to the Inn. It is then B’s turn.
Now, here’s an interesting alternate scenario. What if B’s Temporal dilation had been the one to hit “Uh oh! I’d better fix that right now” instead? That scenario looks like this:
A: Gambling
B: Raise
A: Cheat
B: Temporal Dilation Field, revealing “better fix right now”
Assuming that B doesn’t Negate her own Temporal dilation (with, for example, “I don’t think so!”), it resolves. It does NOT Negate A’s Cheating card, and B cannot play any more cards. The reminder text tells us that B may not participate in Gambling anymore. Therefore, since A is the only player left in the Round of Gambling, A wins the 4 Gold in the pot, then continues with her turn.
Thanks for reading! If you have any interesting rules scenarios or questions of your own, please send them to us! We hope to use some of the more interesting and illustrative situations here on this blog to help people understand the RDI rules better.
Until next time, SlugFest Rules!
– Jeff Morrow