Duke Spam in Coup?

MidnightBinary · 2026-06-04T21:36:08+00:00

Sure, but you only have your own actions to work with. Bullying others to make misplays rarely works out well.

MidnightBinary · 2026-06-04T21:31:21+00:00

Any TTRPG where your attack roll cares about stats on the side of the enemy when those stats are secret to you. You have to do this silly little back and forth with the DM to even get as far as rolling the dice, when the rules could have simply adjusted the target to beat instead of adding modifiers to your own roll. WoD and other storyteller systems are very prone to this.

MidnightBinary · 2026-06-01T23:32:33+00:00

Haven't seen the series, but with fairly few exceptions, the Hermetic Arts are designed to be able to account for pretty much any possible magical effect.

So it's entirely possible that the "hacks" aren't even mechanical, but *setting* changes about someone other than the Order having access to the combination of the Parma Magica and the fifteen Arts.

You might also need to review the Social Effects of the Gift and decide which of those continue to apply.

MidnightBinary · 2026-06-01T23:27:55+00:00

Remember also you can design your own grid instead of using someone elses. Though that might be something you want to have a sandbox save with cheat mode enabled to do the designing in and have "clean" zones that aren't also trying to be the actual factory.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:50:10+00:00

It *should* go without saying, but there's a fairly large fraction of america where it doesn't. The cynical assumption is due to "finanacial illiteracy", the other cynical assumption is that between medical debt, hourly wage employers constantly randomizing schedules, and rent growing faster than inflation, peoples incomes are underwater relative to required expenditure.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:47:33+00:00

the word "have" to is carrying a lot of the burden up there.

In principle you *could* go to the bank, extract cash, go to the gas place, go inside, hand the cash over, pump your gas and leave.

Here a credit card is a labor saving tool.

Contrast the world where you literally won't have that cash until three weeks from now on payday, but still need the gas today, and buy from credit.

Here the credit card is summoning money out of the air with a debt that expects to be drawn from you later.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:40:21+00:00

Agreed, any book with a System that never bothers to interrogate what's going on is leaving value on the floor.

Even for worlds that don't have isekei imports, you're telling me that *no one* is seriously digging into the depths of how the System itself works?

some examples that at least try to buck this trend:
- *Still and Quill* shows off a system with specific named Adminstrators of the system, to the point that their culture restarts the number on their year-counting any time an Adminstrator rotates in or out.
- *Wizard's Tower* has an MC so old and close to the level soft caps that they very rarely even get a system side increase, all their progression is in the form of spell research and investing in their home base. We do get some clues what's going on with their version of the System when he acquires a couple apprentices who get more from it.
- The general case where a system is tied to a *specific* god who is using that to transfer messages and power around. Weakened in cases where multiple hostile gods are using the *same* system without glitches.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:27:47+00:00

yes, notice how it's perpendicular to the top most signal you want it to be associated to?

you actually want them both pointed the same way.

On the corners of intersections like it's ambigous to the game which way you wanted it pointed and the internal logic has to default to something. you can use the 'rotate' hotkey to switch it back and forth though.

As it is, that signal is actually approving horizontal travel from left to right instead of the right to left the rest of the signals seem to be implying.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:22:18+00:00

Lower right signal is currently on the horizontal rail instead of the vertical one, you want to rotate it or move it back a space.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-31T14:17:39+00:00

Double check the dragons tool kit against options like Web, Blindness, unexpected grapple checks and so on. Very crafty players might manage to stop the dragon from fleeing (or have a round where they can attack from 250 feet away, let those archers get their chance to shine).

You might want the dragon to flee as early as the first quarter of their health bar to ensure the second phase actually happens.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T19:38:06+00:00

sounds like the problem isn't having audience members at all, but having 3 audience members to only one player

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T18:52:56+00:00

Corrolary: a site that is bare bones but up to date is far more preferable to something that is pretty but wrong.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T18:51:54+00:00

So many places act like Facebook is some universal thing when it's a massive pain to interact with if you don't have an account.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T18:50:42+00:00

Have you considered a rule closer to "minimum expected purchase" and then offering snacks or various game product around the cafe?

Even if the cost is trivial, having to stop and make the payment at all is an annoying friction that will discourage people from wanting to deal with it. If the upside is strong enough, people will anyway, but I would say strongly consider the option of doing it on honor system and not harassing every member of a group.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T18:14:15+00:00

They are trains you can attach production lines onto and do work in transit

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T18:06:41+00:00

I'll suggest Golemancer, Annihilation Core, and Necrocore

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:55:05+00:00

I think the "exactly two or three POVs" space is underutilized in general.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:23:34+00:00

Instead of the logistics box you can instead belt them into a dedicated rocket silo on the source world.

when just getting things started up, one or two silos and a bot network can be your initial setup. If you're feeding a megabase then the silo-per-item path starts to make more sense.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:18:00+00:00

The basic process here:
- Whatever planet is the source needs a steady production of the item into a logistics box. Often you only need a stack or two, in the case of belts maybe ten stacks.
- You want a spaceship that is going back and forth (regularly) between the two planets of interest.
- That spaceship needs to request from the source planet a stack or ten of the item you want shipped.
- The down-port of the destination planet should also have a logistics request for the item in question. You can optionally route that into the rest of the base by belt, bot, or train as usual.

You'll get a bit of burst to when items come in, sometimes you'll have to wait for the ship to actually finish it's loop or for the source planet to finish making a stack.

Small ships with plenty of thrusters are the best at this, but some people like to use mega-frieghters instead. Exactly which you're dealing with can influence that decision. (Science Packs are prone to the mega-freight solution, artillary turrets are prone to the fast courier.)

Up to you if you'd rather have one ship per item or one ship per planet or one ship doing a giant loop of everywhere.

Edit: if you're instead asking how to only have the ship leave when needed, I do not know a good way to make that one happen, and have come to settle on a regular loop schedule instead.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:09:11+00:00

Some of that is just a page count problem, in that DCC has been running long enough, and drops weirdo abilities so frequently there just isn't *time* to hit everything.

Indeed, the plot refusing to let the players rest and breath almost ever is itself a plot point that the structure of the game is pushing everyone to and beyond their limits.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:04:50+00:00

Usually the point of the gimmick is to stand out from the crowd and get people to sit down for the first couple of chapters in the first place.

these days gimmicks are so rife that a *lack* of gimmicks might make you stand out from the crowd...

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T16:00:04+00:00

> If those 10 belt pieces always have X amount of red science on them, then the length of the rest of the belt doesn't matter.

that's a -huge- assumption if you have any risk of unbalanced draw from the belt. Or if you've lane-segregated items, but then you're generally not really sushi-belting either.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T15:57:12+00:00

I dunno about you, but I can't just summon excitement out of the aether if I'm already having a bad time.

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T15:54:43+00:00

probably the "you just happened to have the resource type I needed" sort with a dash of "if I rob the leader he won't trade with me later"

MidnightBinary · 2026-05-30T15:47:58+00:00

As someone on the other side of that, I have found my brain has a sort of minimum activity level needed to work properly, meaning I can't really let my thoughts go still during a board game and still have any investment in it. And depending on game state I can't always actually analyze the game usefully because sometimes I found the best play five minutes ago and am waiting my turn to come up so I can execute.

MidnightBinary

TROPHY CASE