URGENT: Upcoming Change (regarding 2 Lady's Maid hire play)

[TheReeve]

I support both rules / fixes and would like to see them both become permanent. It puts players in a tough spot to have to choose between the spirit of the game and playing to win. Different people have different competitive streaks. Judging a player's motive for refreshing the market is tricky.

The case may be closed already, but to me the best approach is to not allow taking two of the same servants in one turn. Or you have to take 1 footman and 1 either lady's maid or valet to preserve their scarcity.

Any solution must be a variant. There is no issue outside of BGA (five years of playtesting and feedback confirm this), and the scarcity mechanism is thematic and functional. Given that we are deploying a variant, I wanted a variant with the least rules overhead as possible. The solution is passive and accomplished by tweaking supply. No rule changes. Perhaps this doesn't work well enough, in which case other solutions are on the table.

Dan

My concern is that there are too many variants. Now, when I want to introduce the game to new players, I have to make a lot of (potentially self-serving) decisions. I like the Bronte option. Austen courtship. Friendly. Polite Society. But new players typically prefer to play standard rules and are skeptical of things like variants that can be perceived as house rules to a game they don't yet know. So, do I stick with the base, do I try to explain all the variants, or do I just set it up the way I want and explain later. Then, I have to decide if I want to play to win or play in the spirit of the game. Some variance and customisation is great, but I would prefer to see a bit more standardisation and uniformity in the game experience.

Understood, and I appreciate that.

I play the game differently almost every time I play. Last week, I started each player with a Hall Boy, seeded the initial market with 5 SERVICE tiles (I like service), used a handful of Promos (both tiles and guests), excluded the Howard family, and hand-picked some Milestones. As I routinely exhort people on BGG and FB, Obsession I think is a sandbox, and that the core mechanics—the interaction between activity, servants, guests, and reputation—stand up to all sorts of variants quite well. I am working on a variant catalog, and there are so far over 20 variants that will go in there (if only I could find time to finish!).

True, confidence in the sandbox comes with a good familiarity with the game, but adding an extra LM and V to your starting service IRL would be an easy thing to do if it suits you. To announce to the thousands of game owners that this is a new rule? It hasn't been necessary and would create tremendous confusion.

I do appreciate your input, thanks.

Dan

[mturton]

I got to wondering if two trips to get servants were worth it. Have now run that three times in matches with my wife, who is better than I am. I believe that you fall behind a turn or two by doing that since you get neither income nor reputation by doing it, and your risk of not getting Fairchild in the first season skyrockets. So this change is a good one, I believe, and saves much programming by the developers.

There's a still nasty scenario where you can play Cavendish, get servants on the first turn, then get two more maids by reducing reputation by 3 to refresh the servant. So far haven't seen that or tested it, and I don't think it would work. Same problem as above.

[Besje]

After this announcement was made, suddenly the move of hiring two lady's maids was made more often. Somehow I never experienced that as "now it's broken". There are so many options you still have with just one lady maid and the red wowam pawn. I reallly don't see a problem here.

[jknitnerd]

I had made a suggestion to disallow the hiring of two lady’s maids in the Friendly setting due to just this issue back when the game was in Alpha https://en.boardgamearena.com/bug?id=83449 the taking both, especially in a “Friendly” game is such rubbish.

[TheReeve]

I had made a suggestion to disallow the hiring of two lady’s maids in the Friendly setting due to just this issue back when the game was in Alpha https://en.boardgamearena.com/bug?id=83449 the taking both, especially in a “Friendly” game is such rubbish.

I apologize for missing that! You were prescient. That solution, however, has a ripple effect, because then I must remove the 3 lady's maids objective, and, perhaps the valets objective as well (while the Brushing Room address valet shortages, there is actually more Lady's Maids flexibility in the starting setup because of the inherent ability of the housekeeper). For 3 and 4 player games, rushing valets could be a thing. And there are objectives for getting more servants, which should probably be pulled as well as not being able to get extra of two of the three 'short' servants makes that objective not great.

So I think the Polite Society variant does the least violence to related rules/components. But you had certainly identified the problem way before I did.

[Besje]

Just a question. I play in arena mode regularly. I have one opponent where there is an extra valet and extra maid available. Should I report this as a bug or has something changed and can we opt for this variant? Thanks for your answer!

[TheReeve]

Just a question. I play in arena mode regularly. I have one opponent where there is an extra valet and extra maid available. Should I report this as a bug or has something changed and can we opt for this variant? Thanks for your answer!

That is the Polite Society variant, which is designed to prevent intentionally cornering the market on lady's maids (or valets in some scenarios). Not a bug. Thanks!

Dan

[jknitnerd]

I had made a suggestion to disallow the hiring of two lady’s maids in the Friendly setting due to just this issue back when the game was in Alpha https://en.boardgamearena.com/bug?id=83449 the taking both, especially in a “Friendly” game is such rubbish.

I apologize for missing that! You were prescient. That solution, however, has a ripple effect, because then I must remove the 3 lady's maids objective, and, perhaps the valets objective as well (while the Brushing Room address valet shortages, there is actually more Lady's Maids flexibility in the starting setup because of the inherent ability of the housekeeper). For 3 and 4 player games, rushing valets could be a thing. And there are objectives for getting more servants, which should probably be pulled as well as not being able to get extra of two of the three 'short' servants makes that objective not great.

So I think the Polite Society variant does the least violence to related rules/components. But you had certainly identified the problem way before I did.

Thank you! To clarify, I meant not being able to hire two of the same servants on a single turn. This way the objectives that require multiples could still potentially work AND the other player has at least an opportunity to hire after your turn. The issue became really clear to me during alpha testing when the first player would use their very first turn to hire both lady’s maid before I even had an opportunity to hire!

[SDev]

Hi Dan, I notice in the current season of the Arena the extra ladies maid is not deterring the players at the top of current leaderboard from still hiring twice to collect all the ladies maids. Twice now they ave hired twice in the first five turns. Just an observation at this stage.

[TheReeve]

That is such an enormously inefficient play that only will pay dividends if a player gets a preponderance of female guests. I have played hundreds of games without hiring a lady's maid because the guest distribution doesn't dictate it. I'll give this some thought. With Upstairs, Downstairs and the ability of the Head Housemaid + Housekeeper's Room, I would think this would be a strong counter. I will have Hersh analyze the data.