While laying out the rulebook in Affinity Publisher, I’ve come across something that’s given me pause. A slight issue with some of the Omen cards. Omen cards are passive effects. They sit there waiting for certain conditions to occur; cards being discarded, cards changing hands, specific states of the board being reached, that sort of thing. When those conditions are met, the Omen triggers.
The problem is, there’s currently no definitive clarification around timing and order of operations when multiple effects trigger at once. Do Omens interrupt other actions. Do they resolve immediately or do they queue. What happens if two Omens trigger off the same event. Up until now, this hasn’t caused much friction in playtesting. The Omens we happened to draw were fairly straightforward, and their timing felt like common sense at the table. But rules as written need to be solid, especially in a game like this.
I enjoy loose, interpretive games, but Nobles & Glory isn’t really one of those. I want the structure to be firm, even if the outcomes are chaotic. And with a few dozen Omen cards in the deck, I need to be confident they all work cleanly inside a well-defined framework. There’s also the possibility that some Omens just don’t hold up in hindsight, and might need rewriting. That’s all part of the process, but it’s not something I want to rush through or hand-wave away.
So, the book is going to sit in a holding pattern for a little while. There’s still plenty I can do in the layout, but the rules need to pause until this is resolved properly. My wife and I will be getting back into playtesting after the Christmas break. I’ll be focusing heavily on the Omen cards, deliberately stress-testing their timing and interactions, and then updating the source rule document accordingly.
– Jonathan
