4 hours ago, FireBones said:

"Objective" has an independent meaning that could not be covered by "Forced"

There is one Objective [will not name which to avoid Spoilers] that says "Satisfy the requirements for some other Objective in Play to advance."

And then there are cards in play that say "Objective: If players on location _____ spend ____ clues to (-> R1)"

Having cards that have the keyword "Objective" makes sense here.... but it would be doubly problematic to replace it with "Forced" as there would no longer be the keyword "Objective" to clarify which elements were being referenced by the Act and the specific Objective in question is not a forced action.

I never implied that every Objective effect had to be a forced ability. It was just in reference to the example you gave.

The ones you cite here would be a reaction, or a free trigger. Which is what they're trying to be, they're just not bothering to specify it the way every other ability in the game does.

4 hours ago, Buhallin said:

The ones you cite here would be a reaction, or a free trigger. Which is what they're trying to be, they're just not bothering to specify it the way every other ability in the game does.

Spending clues to advance is already a free trigger, which can be modified by Objectives. This is baked into Act cards by the rules. Objectives can modify that free trigger, in which case another free trigger is redundant. And since triggered abilities are always optional, a triggered ability that modifies the normal doom or clue requirement could simply be ignored.

Which leaves Forced as the only option to impose additional requirements, and it's a very limited tool when you're designing a game and have to decide if it can capture every Act and Agenda you may ever wish to design.

Instead they went with a standard term, and constant abilities that modify normal advancement.

It really isn't an issue, or particularly confusing, even though it clearly isn't to your taste.

5 hours ago, BD Flory said:

Spending clues to advance is already a free trigger, which can be modified by Objectives. This is baked into Act cards by the rules. Objectives can modify that free trigger, in which case another free trigger is redundant. And since triggered abilities are always optional, a triggered ability that modifies the normal doom or clue requirement could simply be ignored.

Which leaves Forced as the only option to impose additional requirements, and it's a very limited tool when you're designing a game and have to decide if it can capture every Act and Agenda you may ever wish to design.

The end of the second act in Gathering is pretty clearly a reaction to the end of the round. So no, Forced isn't the only option.

And I'm not entirely sure why the standard set of ability types couldn't capture every Act and Agenda - they seem to think they're enough to capture every OTHER card in the game.

2 hours ago, Buhallin said:

The end of the second act in Gathering is pretty clearly a reaction to the end of the round. So no, Forced isn't the only option.

Except it's not. Because if it were, it would be voluntary and could be ignored, allowing players to simply activate the rulebook free trigger and advance from anywhere in any player window.

2 hours ago, BD Flory said:

Except it's not. Because if it were, it would be voluntary and could be ignored, allowing players to simply activate the rulebook free trigger and advance from anywhere in any player window.

I'm not sure what your saying here. The Barrier's objective text is:

When the round ends, investigators in the hallway may, as a group, spend the requisite number of clues to advance.

That's still optional. It's attached to a specific game event. It triggers and resolves at a point which has no player window. It is, in every way, a reaction ability. The issue here isn't whether it's Forced or what type it is, it's whether the default Objective is still active. That's completely unrelated to how the objective abilities are structured and presented.

9 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

I'm not sure what your saying here. The Barrier's objective text is:

When the round ends, investigators in the hallway may, as a group, spend the requisite number of clues to advance.

That's still optional.

When you choose to advance is optional, but if it's framed as a react trigger, you don't have to trigger it at all.

You could completely ignore it and spend the requisite clues as a free trigger to advance the act by the normal procedure.

1 hour ago, BD Flory said:

When you choose to advance is optional, but if it's framed as a react trigger, you don't have to trigger it at all.

You could completely ignore it and spend the requisite clues as a free trigger to advance the act by the normal procedure.

Again, this doesn't have anything to do with whether the advance structure is a react trigger. Yes, there would still need to be something that "turned off" the default advance. I even said as much in the very post you quoted, and suggested earlier that it would work well as a keyword. Consider:

Objective: Acts with this keyword cannot be advanced using the standard free action.
or reverse it,
Discovery: Acts with this keyword have [Free] The investigators can, as a group, spend the requisite number of clues to advance.

The Barrier
Objective
[Reaction]: When the round ends, investigators in the hallway may, as a group, spend the requisite number of clues to advance.

This is functionally equivalent to the text as it exists, but is strongly defined just like every other ability in the game. I'm honestly not sure why this is drawing so much defensiveness. Right now, Objective text is a floppy bit of prose - it may be a constant effect, it may be a forced effect, it might modify the default advance activity or replace it completely. You say above that my suggestion would mean players could ignore the text and advance normally - how do you know this text doesn't allow that? The rules say only that it "overrides or adds additional requirements", why should we have to guess as to which is which?

It's a constant effect because the RRG defines it as such. Closely paraphrasing becase I don't feel like looking up the text, it overrides or replaces the normal advance effect, per the rules.

There is nothing in the rules for Objective text that says "sometimes," or "when the objective is triggered," or anything to that effect.

The rules say objectives do x. So they do x. I'm not being defensive, I'm explaining how the rules work. And they work just fine.

Is there an Objective that actually confuses you? Or is your proposal a solution in search of a problem?

I actually quoted the bit of the rules you didn't want to take the time to look up It says it overrides or modifies. How do we know whether the text on The Barrier replaces or modifies? Could it just be an additional option? Maybe? I mean, I think it's a replacement rather than a modification, but if someone were really obstinate about it, I couldn't cite anything from the rules that would prove it one way or another.

Given that this thread was started with a question about one of these constant effects and how they'd work, there does seem to be at least some lack of clarity whether it confuses me personally or not.

Why do we have [Reaction] effects at all? Every reaction in the game could be done as a constant ability with some text to trigger it, and even make it optional (as The Barrier does) by using "may". Honestly, many of FFG's other games do this. So why bother with that? I think the answer is pretty simple - clarity and consistency thanks to strong templating. So they do it for pretty much every ability in the game... except objectives. As I've been saying repeatedly, you could rewrite every one of them to make them consistent with the rest of the abilities in the game, and have them function the same.

Does it confuse me personally? Not really. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be better. Consistency is better. Strong templating is better. Abandoning that for one specific type of ability because... reasons... is bad.

All you're talking about is a different kind of consistency. Objectives are 100% consistent. Every objective is a constant ability that modifies or overrides (which is just another kind of modification) the normal advance procedure.

Every single act and agenda in the game works the same way. None of the Forced abilities or triggered abilities modify or override the advancement of an Act or Agenda or its requirements. Only Objectives do. That's consistency, but it's consistency with an eye toward usability -- it consistently distinguishes Objectives, which FFG has judges significant enough to merit distinction. As they are the win and loss conditions, that's pretty reasonable.

If we were to just be blindly consistent, FFG could phrase every single ability in the game as a free trigger, and add, "spend an action to," "you must activate this trigger if possible," or "activate this trigger when," or similar. You could even phrase abilities to eliminate the need for the trigger icon altogether, if you wished.

It would be absolutely, 100% consistent, and result in a lot of extra text to distinguish abilities, because each ability would have to explain the conditions of its own application every single time. So FFG categorized types of abilities, such that the icons (or their lack) defines certain aspects of those abilities.

Objective is just another shorthand so they don't have to write it out every single time, because again, looking at the Acts and Agendas in the game, it would have been every single time.

It really is as simple as an Act or Agenda's Objective, "overrides or adds additional requirements to [the spending of those clues/meeting this doom requirement.]" There are no exceptions, no special cases, no triggers, and it's true of every single Objective in the game. They could literally remove "Objective" and add that quoted text to every act and agenda and the mechanical effect would be identical to what it is now.

It's not difficult to understand. You say it doesn't confuse you. OP says in a later post that,"on reflection," it doesn't confuse him and that FFG is being consistent. It isn't a question that crops up over and over again with new players. There is nothing wrong with Objectives.

Wow. I'm becoming convinced you haven't even read anything I've said for the last two days. Because after I point out that having different action types is an advantage in clarity, and why it would be better if Objectives used that clarity, you launch into four paragraphs taking the point of consistency to an extreme of completely removing action types to show how bad it is? That's not just a straw man, it's Wicker Man-level stupid.

I notice you didn't address what I said, whereas I addressed your arguments quite directly.

I'm reading what you're saying. I presented several arguments that addressed your thoughts, only one of which was to compare your proposal of making Objectives conform to triggered abilities to the idea of conforming other "unecessarily" distinct triggers, in order to demonstrate that fewer types of triggers is not necessarily better, which you are taking as a given.

You can say it's not so as many times as you like, but Objectives are quite clear, distinct from in their function from various triggers, and gain clarity and consistency by being so.

One of us is addressing the other's arguments. It ain't you.

1 hour ago, BD Flory said:

I'm reading what you're saying. I presented several arguments that addressed your thoughts, only one of which was to compare your proposal of making Objectives conform to triggered abilities to the idea of conforming other "unecessarily" distinct triggers, in order to demonstrate that fewer types of triggers is not necessarily better, which you are taking as a given.

Yes, that's why I made the very distinct point that having Reaction abilities as a separate entity provided better clarity and consistency than just phrasing them all as constant "may" abilities. So I guess by complimenting the greater number I was assuming that fewer was better? Lauding FFG for doing worse? Or something? I don't know. Honestly, I can't keep up with the distortion field you're putting anything I say through, so I'm well and truly done here.

That's exactly the point I was making: That any specific number of ability types is not arbitrarily better or worse than any other. You are continually insisting that having one less by removing Objective is clearer and more consistent, but this premise is simply false.

As you properly note, it depends on what abilities are used for, and I've repeatedly demonstrated that Objectives are both functionally unique and 100% consistent across dozens of cards of no less than four types.

But again, since you have conceded you are not confused, and since OP agrees the rule is both consistent and evident, and since it isn't a common source of confusion, I think we've well established there isn't much merit to the argument that it should be clearer. Nothing is ever perfectly clear. It's the nature of language.

The rule is quite obviously sufficiently clear, just as it is sufficiently clear you've reached the point of repeating the same flawed premises and arguments. So yes, please do stop, so new players who stumble into this thread won't be confused by your posts.

"Objective" lacks consistency because it covers every situation where advancing the act does not just require spending clues as a free triggered ability.

2 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

"Objective" lacks consistency because it covers every situation where advancing the act does not just require spending clues as a free triggered ability.

It lacks consistency because it is always used for the same purpose, and nothing else is ever used for that purpose.

Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

13 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

It lacks consistency because it is always used for the same purpose, and nothing else is ever used for that purpose.

Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

Not a chance.

On 6/22/2017 at 5:26 AM, Khudzlin said:

"Objective" lacks consistency because it covers every situation where advancing the act does not just require spending clues as a free triggered ability.

I don't see this as lacking consistency. It may not be focused in that it applies to lots of events... but that does not make it inconsistent.

The criticism you mention (if I understand you correctly---I may be misunderstanding your point) could be leveled at several other keywords. For example fast is used anytime a card is played that does not require using an action... so it is not focused --- sometimes it applies to events, sometimes it applies to assets.... sometimes it applies to cards played during your turn, sometime to cards played during mythos, sometimes to cards that can played in a variety of phases... sometime to cards that have no additional costs, sometimes to cards that do have addition costs, etc. But that doesn't make fast inconsistent.

Ahhh, I think what you mean is that "sometimes the Act advances with an Objective and sometimes it does not." But that is not an indication that Objective is inconsistent, it just means that the mechanism is "Advancing" is inconsistent. The word Objective always means the same thing, just like fast always means the same thing. It isn't that fast is inconsistent, but rather the playing of a card has some inconsistency in that sometimes it takes an action and sometime it does not. That isn't any sleight to fast though, just like inconsistency with Advancing is not a sleight to Objective.

Plus, in both cases I hardly consider there to be a real inconsistency, it is just a shorthand. Many Acts advance by voluntarily spending clues, so to save unnecessary verbiage, there is a shorthand way of indicating that without using the Objective keyword. Similarly, there is no "Action" trigger symbol on every non-fast card... we just know that playing a card takes an "Action" unless it is fast.

The same silly criticism could be leveled at the Spawn keyword---some enemies have it and some do not. But all enemies spawn somewhere, and [from the Rules Reference] we know that if an enemy does not have the Spawn keyword, it means it spawns at the location of the drawer. I don't see this as inconsistent... I see it as implementing a common strategy of having a default in place so you do not have to write "Spawns engaged with drawing investigator" on most enemy cards.

Sometimes Objective adds conditions to advance (only investigator in certain locations, only at the end of a round). Sometimes it completely replaces the normal condition (defeat an enemy, enter a location, remove all clues from a location). And sure, you can say it's advancing that's inconsistent.

About "fast", I think events should have timing symbols, because fast events can have a reaction timing (Evidence!, Dodge) or a free trigger timing (Shortcut), while non-fast events have an action timing. It would also allow for events that take more than 1 action (they exist in A:NR, which has a timing based on a limited number of actions each round). And the reaction timing is also inconsistent, because it covers abilities that would be reactions (after the timing point, like Evidence!) and interrupts (before the timing point, like Dodge) in other LCGs (SW, Conquest, AGoT2, soon L5R).

As for Spawn, you're being ridiculous on purpose.