Hi,

I know the question is a bit strange but I wanted to hear your thoughts. It happens in real (bribery in team sports , or one just wants other team to win), and it happened in the series too; some cylons still sided with humans. I was thinking not to allow such behavior but would it be house-rule then? Do you think a revealed or unrevealed Cylon can still choose a side in the game?

Just a few nights ago, we played another game of 5 players. Humans lost but at the end our cylon player was little upset because other cylon friend didn't help him much. As we asked the other cylon player, he said it was already bad for humans, he wanted game last longer and he was a sympathizer of humans (he was human in first phase, but got cylon card on sleeper agent phase, even after) he was helping us in the skill checks too, or giving us XO (yeah still we lost (: ). I don't think this is right but shall it be allowed?

thanks

If unrevealed cylons were somehow not allowed to play in favour of humans they'd be made out fast. You can't draw a line what is too much helping and what is keeping you identity secret.

What your friend did sounds bad, what do you think he would have done if humans gained the upper hand? Would he still have played for the humans or done his thing at the worst possible time? If it's the latter then I wouldn't worry about it or him.

Yeah, I don't really think that house-ruling it is practical either, nor is it entirely appropriate. In any game (or as in your sports comparison, which is perhaps even more apt), there's just an implicit understanding that everyone is playing to win. But this isn't really enforceable; if someone's intentionally helping the other side, the only response is to not play with them anymore.

(Unless everyone at the table agrees that it did make the game more fun; there are certain games, especially the more frivolous ones, in which my group cares less about the win conditions than about what else happens during the game, but this is something that everyone needs to assent to in advance.)

I must add some more details
- he was unrevealed cylon
- from his response after the game, i don't think his idea was to keep his identity secret, but more mercy and enjoying that game more before advancing to another one or sleep he didn't see that humans stand any chance and wanted to balance. mikko_r is right if it was good for humans, then he wouldn't do this to other cylon player. He just acted with that situation.
- his helping to humans, draw more suspicion on human players (even we already put him in the brig anyways); I agree with subochre now, we ended up in many politics and discussions, we doubted each other. I (as human) was a couple of times close to be sent to the brig but made a lot of efforts to convince others that right now the enemy is raiders and crisis cards against our resources instead of cylon player (our resources were 1 or 2 for each, didn't have engineering cards to repair more vipers, and lost by population destroyed with raiders on civilian ships).
eventually our character choices were not right as team, and we were unlucky: two or three consecutive cylon attack setup cards on a long jump track journey (we were not lucky with crisis cards with jump track at that time)

I really like this game, as I liked the series. I believe my friends enjoy too, cause we can't stop playing, at least two times once we met for an evening. And each friend adds more with way of their own thoughts, we will definitely play with him again but i guess he will start from the brig next time

thanks for your replies, happy holidays and happy new year to Battlestar Galactica community

Happy Holidays, Nightrider.

The problem of some players playing for reasons other than to win is faced by many playgroups, and not just for BSG. It's a real problem too; If individual players suborn the game's stated purpose to their own privately dreamed up purpose, the game can splinter from a rewarding shared experience to five unfulfilling games of solitaire played in close geographic proximity.

That said, if your group is encountering players playing for purposes other than to win, such as to draw out the game or to roleplay, a house rule is definitely not the solution. *It's already in the rulebook.* See page 1, paragraph 1, entitled "Game Overview." If your players can't obey rule #1, adding it again as rule #27 shouldn't help you much.

That's my two cents anyway. Happy gaming!

nightrider said:

Well, here is another way to look at it. If you are looking at this from a "roleplay" aspect. If the humans win the game and a player is an unrevealed Cylon, then "technically" wouldn't he have won with the "humans" because he never "revealed" himself? What if Boomer never found out she was a Cylon? Wouldn't she technically have "won" when the humans reached Earth? What if a player didn't want to be a Cylon and they were dealt a Cylon card. Couldn't denial be a winning action also? If the player plays as a human through the whole game then technically wouldn't he win as a human even if he was an unrevealed Cylon? I know there were times when I played as a human and would do things as an unrevealed Cylon to make the game interesting. If I saw a skill check that was not that bad against the humans (like Fuel is at max and a losing skill check was -1 Fuel) then I might put in some bad skill cards for people to go "Oh! There were 3 negative cards in the skill check, so someone has to be a Cylon!" And it was really cool when one game I did that and no one was actually a Cylon until the Sleeper phase. After the game they went "Hey! If no one was a Cylon until then, what happened on that one skill check?" So, I think it made the game more interesting. So, I think, in the end, if everyone is having fun before they know who was what., what does it matter?

wootersl said:

There are certainly many interesting questions in this post, but the answer to each is "no."

Holy Outlaw said:

That's the great thing about owning your own copy of the game. Since there is no rules that state you "can't" do any of those things. You can pretty much do whatever the heck you want. The game is a game of intrigue, espionage and guile. Gaius Baltar was a human who was working for the Cylons, then he worked for the humans and god knows where his ultimate loyalties lay. Oh wait, I know, his loyalties were to himself. So, you want the humans to win, yet you are an unrevealed Cylon? Then do it. If you had fun playing, that's all that matters.

You're right to say each group can play how they choose. I'm a huge believer in that. But you're wrong to say there's no rule saying you "can't" do those things. The rules explicitly state that each player should play for their side to win, and that someone holding an unrevealed YAC card has lost the game. You can change those rules freely and I encourage you to do so if your group likes it better. But at this point you're talking about a different game than the one prescribed by the rulebook. To me, it's a worse game. I'd rephrase your cardinal rule of "If you had fun playing, that's all that matters" to "The most players having the most possible fun is all that matters." And I would find it decidedly unfun if I was the one lonely losing cylon getting trounced by four humans because wootersl decided it was story time. But if your group digs it, then more power to you.

Interestingly, this came up during a recent game.

It was my first game with a new group after moving across the country, and they'd apparently played the game several times before- never to have a human victory. The game got fairly desperate quickly when the sympathizer came up and the player decided to use his new position as a revealed Cylon to wreak havoc. He cast suspicion on me quickly (having seen my loyalty cards as human) to break us up, and I found myself in the brig. Our President revealed himself as a Cylon a few turns later (after making a devastating decision on a Crisis Card). The game went on and the humans won by the skin of our teeth (a -3 early jump with 4 population). At the very end, though, our two Cylons became very confused because there should have been one more (again, sympathizer rules). They were clearly frustrated because this person could have helped them by revealing at some point. At this point, our sole pilot raised his hand and when asked why he never contributed, and why he, in fact, played a brilliant human game, he responded that he "really wanted to see the humans win."

Obviously, I don't feel too bad about winning personally (I didn't do it!), but I still feel like the win wasn't quite... right, and a few members of our group (the Cylons) were quite angry about it. I suppose there's no rule against it, but I think there's been enough negativity around that something like that probably won't happen again.

Uh, this is ridiculous. It's like deliberately scoring on your own net in hockey, thereby cheating every other player out of a real game. Just as there's no "scoring on your own net" penalty in hockey (aside from inevitable locker room beatdown), absurdities like this are entirely outside the bounds of the rules.

Much better to scathingly rip on that player for deliberately ruining the game for anyone who did not just invest several hours of their time only to have one player undermine the spirit of competition by being a selfish idiot.

Wow. I'm tapping into a surprising and quite unexpected wellspring of anger on this subject. Evidently, if this happened at my table, I would be seething .

Eunomiac said:

Clearly! There is certainly still some anger and frustration, but I think this group I've found is quite a bit more casual about their gaming. The overall sentiment seems to be that fun was had nonetheless so no one is getting too worked up over it, and it looks like it'll become a running joke (though there's enough resentment that it won't happen in game again, I think).

I agree, though- it clearly violates the spirit of the game.

Yes, I'll second Eunomaniac's post. (Or third it, I guess.) There's a reason every game's rulebook starts with a paragraph called "Object of the Game" (or in BSG's case "Game Overview") that explicitly states what each player's purpose is. It's that important. I can't think of a game, from Monopoly to Checkers, that wouldn't be significantly negatively impacted by a player actively ignoring this paragraph. And I don't know why it's being mystified in some of the above posts: *It is a direct violation of the first and most important rule in the rulebook.*