Hi guys,

Firstly, as stated in my other posts, this is an absolutely amazing game. FFG have really created an amazing new dynamic here which takes some of the work done in Shadows Over Camelot and really takes it to the next level. This is a snappy, fast-paced and challenging game with amazing visuals.

The point of the post: how have you been interpreting the Secrecy rule, with respect to the ability of Skill Cards? The secrecy rule specifically states that you cannot reveal the STRENGTH of the card - obviously necessary to ensure the intrigue surrounding the Cylon players. But what about stating openly that you have an Executive Orders card? Or that you can decrease the difficulty of a roll with Strategic Planning?

Our first game quickly resulted in players openly discussing these, but not ever stating the STRENGTH explicitly. This seems to be the letter of the rules, but also seems counter-intuitive to the whole 'Secrecy' dynamic.

Thoughts? Did you play with no explicit statements of any kind? Or did you only limit ambiguity to the STRENGTH as stated in the rule?

We too had the same conversation, however to keep within the spirit and fin of the game we only allowed people to say stuff like "I have skills that can help on that problem".

After a few rounds though it was obvious it either meant you had the -2 to skill level, or the +2 to a dice roll.

Near the end (and at 1:30am) we just started to openly say "I have the +2 hit if you want the help" ... but that was because we were very tired at the time.

However I think you should not openly say what you have, as it keeps it more intresting and fun!

We played 4 games in one night last gaming session and did discuss our actions and cards, not their strength or color in skill tests, openly. We played it like we play Pandemic with discussion of every players movment and action and other players halping in their turn, with ex orders. It was a lot of fun, there were 3 cylon victories, one of them was very close, and only one human victory. So the open discussion didnt unbalance the game and increased the fun.

This is purely up to you.

However, I have noticed that if people are to open about their information in a game with a traitor, the game soon becomes boring as everyone can spot who the traitor is too easily. I would say that if you want to continue enjoying the game as long as possible, keep everything as vague as possible.

I dont think that the effects of the cards being open affects the game at all. There is no way to know that a person does not have a specific card to help or is just lying about not having it. So for the cards that can be played to specifically help others we tend to be fairly open about it since it is just confusing otherwise.

As always the numbers and colors are important to keep secret, especially how many of each color you have, and especially the numbers after the cards have been revealed!

One thing to consider is that if you are too open with a traitor in your midst, you may give away information that can/will be used against you. Another thing to consider is that, with vague information, a traitor has more power in the game with being able to mislead others with "table talk" and makes the game more interesting. If you're throwing out colors and numbers, I think that it takes away from the game.

personally speaking: more vague = more fun.

Thanks for the replies guys, I think the consensus is what I was leaning towards: the goal is to maintain a degree of uncertainty.

I definately don't think that revealing the special ability of cards in your hand seriously disrupts the game (whereas revealing STRENGTH obviously would), but overall it prob. makes a better game to remove all explicit comments of any kind.

Thanks, and look forward to more discussion with fellow Toasters in these forums

Agreed. We played that you weren't allowed to talk about what you had in your hand *at all*, and that if you wanted to play a certain type of card (such as Executive Order) you just had to do it spontaneously and on your own initiative. This also eliminates the problem in multi-player co-ops where one person takes charge and tells all the other players what to do. Makes it much more fun and interesting for all players, IMO.

Melonball said:

We already agreed on this on the old forums, but we might as well do it here too.

The way that my group played it was basically that, during a skill check, you could only say something along the lines of "I can't help," "I can help a little," or "I can help a lot".

Anything more specific than that would make it too easy to pass the check without using too many cards and would most likely make it too easy to spot a traitor as well.

As far as other situations, I'm still not exactly sure how it would work. For example, in our game I was president and had a "toss someone in the brig" Quorum card. We knew who one of the Cylons was, so on a trusted player's turn, who was considering using the Admiral's Quarters, I said something along the lines of "Go do something else. I've got this one under control." I think that strikes the right balance, but I'm not sure if it's unnecessarily vague or too specific.

Thoughts?

Omnisiah said:

So it's okay to say "I've got 3-5s of this color, but no 1-2s. I've got no 3-5s of this other color, but I have 1-2s.", but it's not okay to talk about the STRENGTH of the cards you have?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are only two different types of abilities per color, and one of the abilities appears exclusively on cards of values 3-5, the other exclusively on 1s and 2s. It seems to me that any players would realize this after just a few plays (assuming they didn't go ahead and look over the game components before or in between games). Therefore revealing the special ability of cards in hand is equivalent to revealing the STRENGTH (or a very good idea of it) of the cards, and one cannot be acceptable if the other one isn't.

So no, I don't think it's a good idea at all (or really even permissable based on the rules as written) to reveal the special ability of cards in your hand.

Hmm, so-and-so was the only one who said they had any executive orders, and we agreed we needed every little bit to make this skill check, and that we need to make the skill check, yet no green 1s or 2s are here; hmm I wonder if they are a cylon?

In my last (4-player) game, the Cylon did not have any politics, and we were able to get 4-5 politics per round. This was enough to play an Investigative Commitee on *every* skill check that we played skill cards into.

Anything more specific than that would make it too easy to pass the check without using too many cards and would most likely make it too easy to spot a traitor as well.

In my last (4-player) game, the Cylon did not have any politics, and we were able to get 5-6 politics per round. This was enough to play an Investigative Commitee on *every* skill check that we played skill cards into.

EDIT: Rosilin played the get Consolidate Power at least once per round (I think there was one round where she did that three times, once for everyone who had Executive Orders. That might have had something to do with it)

I have been quite strict on the secrecy in the games that i have run. I have told people that they cannot say anything about what colour or strength of cards they are putting in, or have put in. I have also told them that when we put in for a skill check we say how many cards we are putting in but once they are suffled into the check nobody is allowed ot say how many they put in, nobody is allowed to ask anybody how many they put in, ie. if you missed it the first time then you weren't concentrating when Adama gave the order or when booster spotted the water.

When people are discussing if they are going to put anything into the skill check we play that the active player asks each player in turn if they are going to be able to help on this skill check and they say yes or no, from here each player in turn puts card(s) in to the check and it ends with the active player. Nobody says anything to do with "help a lot."

I have also been extremely strict with the use of manipulation cards, +2 to die roles, -2 to difficulty and executive orders for example: I have said that if somebody wants to be ordered then they have to do it in character, "I need authorisation to hit the FTL" or "am ready to fire on the basestar once the order is given" exec orders aren't too bad but the other two, executive decision and tactical planning are really difficult, nobody is allowed to say that they are going to play either to influence a decision. For example if a lowering a skill check must be done before any cards are placed in and increasing a die role must be done after the decision to go for the die role has been made, we have to activily avoid the situation where pilots are saying "im going to shoot at the raider unless anyone can give me +2, if anyone can i'll go for the heavy raider" we say that the pilot makes and announces their decision before anyone can play a modifier card.

In the case when a crisis card comes up where a player can make a choice between a skill check or die role and something else then anything to affect the die role or skill check must be played before the player makes the decision of which option, leading to situations where can can be used to no effect because the player still chooses the other option. But the can is played as an additional incentive to choose the associated option.

I know some of these sound quite harsh and limiting but we have a large gaming group that ranges massively in ability, some people are experianced at this sort of game and can control themselves, others can barely resist showing their loyalty card to prove they are not a cylon, so we impose slightly stricter rules to help show these players where the boundaries are.

I also suggest that the interpretation of the secrecy rule is up to eaqch group. We agreed on not quoting a card's text until all cylons were revealed and to keep quotations very vague after the revelation. This worked very well and turned out to produce role-playing like conversations ("Me as the president of the twelve colonies suggest making a spairitula speech to boost morale. What is your opinion, Commander Adama?" )

jakimaru said:

That's actually a change in how the card says it's supposed to be played - you play it after totalling the card values for the check.

As long as we're on the topic of secrecy, an interesting situation came up a game last night. There were 4 players, and no initial cylons. During the sleeper phase, I was dealt the Cylon loyalty card (the sickbay and discard 5 skill cards one), and another person was dealt the Sympathizer (which made him a revealed Cylon).

During a moment of discussion between the two human players about who was a Cylon, I covertly winked at my revealed Sympathizer comrade, intending for him to believe that I was a Cylon (which I was).

My question is, in this context is my winking equivalent to me 'showing my cards'? Or telling what the value of my loyalty card is?

The rules of secrecy are pretty clear about what can be communicated, especially in terms of blind and open accusations. One of the criticisms of my 'winking' afterwards was that I was communicating only with one player. While the rules do not expressly forbid such communication, the rules do not forbid a whole lot of things, and it would not be logical to immediately conclude "since the rules don't forbid it, it is allowed."

This post is certainly not for my own vindication. I thought that I had acted fine within the rules, but I could be wrong. I wanted to hear other people's opinions on the subject.

I'd say winking is ok. After all, you could be "lying" with the wink just as with any things you say. As for comunicating with only one player, it's not your fault the others wheren't paying attention

Sinis said:

C'mon - you're just 'rules lawyering' here. The intent of the game's rules are pretty clear - you are not allowed to reveal any secret information to anyone, and giving just one person such information is way against the rules ... perhaps you should have asked your other fellow players afterwards and seen what their reaction was - I think that would have given you a clear answer .

All this roleplay speak is silly to me, because it's going to be confusing to people who haven't played the games, and it doesn't hide any information from people who know what the cards are. You shouldn't go through an inventory of what's in your hand, but if someone asks the table if someone can do something, that's reasonable. You shouldn't be going through what colors and numbers you have in your hand, but how many cards you throw in is public, and some vague description of how much you can help, like none, a little, a lot. Because the cards are added up there's enough vagueness.

Where you should be strict is Crisis and Destination cards that the other players didn't see. You shouldn't say anything about them other than the implied, "it's bad" or "it was worse". Otherwise, you give a big advantage to people who memorize these decks. Memorization is a fine element in the game if you're tracking what color cards people could have in their game, but not if it involves essentially out of game knowledge of you thumbing through decks on your own time (or several plays that other players may not be privy to).

As for the winking, the problem isn't about sharing secret information. You're allowed to say whether you're a cylon or not, and you're allowed to lie about it. The problem is communicating with only one other player. Extreme case: consider a four player game where the sympathizer and cylon are both revealed, so only two humans. The players of the two humans both know japanese while the others don't, so they discuss card strategy in japanese to keep the cylons from mucking with them as well. This is better in that it's obvious that they are doing it, but how is that fair?

timonkey said:

I disagree here. It's not that information is being shared between two people, but that secret information is being given solely to someone who can make good use of it - and you are only meant to say you are a cylon by revealing.

And asking around the if someone has a certain card, i.e. can anyone Exec Order me next turn, is against the secrecy rules as you are not meant to reveal card types at all - nothing wrong, though, with saying 'I think someone should Exec Order me next turn so I can do this'.

TomH said:

TomH: Read my last paragraph again; I'm genuinely curious about what others think. For the record, I did ask the other players afterwards, two of them thought it was legitimate (one human player, and the sympathizer), one thought it was not (the second human player). I did not reveal their opinions because I wanted my question to be as unbiased as possible. The rules say nothing about giving one person information (in fact, there was another thread about whispering and whether it was legal on these forums previously), which is why I asked here.

Secondly, am I 'revealing' secret information? For all intents and purposes, I said to the sympathizer-cylon "I am a cylon." I'm sure at everyone's table, at least one person says at one point in the game "I'm not a cylon!". Is that 'revealing' secret information, too? Would the situation be different if I was trying to fool the sympathizer so that he would not take my repair cards when using the Human Fleet cylon location?

I don't think I'm revealing secret information, I think what the one person in our game had issue with is the direction of the communication, that is, I 'spoke' only to one person. The rules are clear about what you can say, no numbers on skills, no identifying cards like Crises or Destinations, no 'tipping' of hands. Protestations of guilt and innocence are fine (if we couldn't say "I'm not a cylon" the game would be ridiculous). I think what I'm really asking is whether communication with a subset of players (rather than the whole) is legal, and the rules are silent on the issue in either direction.

If I was rules lawyering, I wouldn't have posted about it here.

@timonkey: Interesting perspective. I think that I'd be okay with two people discussing in Japanese or whispering, which I think rules out overt 'secure' communication between subsets of players (i.e. there's communications between subsets, but it is clear they were doing so). So, perhaps the problem with my 'winking' is with the fact that the other players did not know I communicated with my cylon partner. Of course I did it covertly, but if this is against the rules, how can one enforce the other players' attention for future communications that are not covert? How would I go about ensuring that other players saw every communication? Is it my fault, then, if they do not pay attention?

@all reading: again, I want to stress that I am curious about this. I am not certain I played within the rules, though I thought it was okay at the time.

TomH said:

The rules do not specifically say you can't reveal card types. Corey has said it's ok to do it either way depending on your group.

@Sinis: if you want to play with open secure communication I guess that's not against the rules, I just wouldn't. But definitely out in the open. If I went to he bathroom I would expect everyone to be silent about the game while I'm gone, otherwise people have to explain nuance, tipping someone's hand. Well, I wouldn't go to the bathroom during this game really. I can't trust the cylons.

Sinis - you are rules lawyering, don't kid yourself you're not. The whole game theme is about secrecy but you seem to want to find exceptions/occasions where you can pass on information. If your group are happy to play with you then that is fine, no lines crossed and all happy faces. Unfortunately you wouldn't go down too well and last too long in our groups - you would be seen as spoiling a fun game .... that's human beings for you - we're a strange and diverse lot.