Untested BSG Loyalty Variant

Hello loyal Signpost-readers,
I know I owe you some session reports, reviews, and reactions on laptop gaming, but instead I'm presenting you with an untested variant I came up with for Battlestar Galactica.
Let me know what you think!
(cross-posted to boardgamegeek)

Note: I have not thought deeply about the full implications of this variant, but it seemed interesting enough to share.

This is just a random idea I had for a loyalty variant which focuses on the probability of players being a Cylon rather than a hard and fast number in the Loyalty Deck. Adjust paranoia accordingly.

It does require one person to be an impartial moderator with the ability to obscure die rolls and card draws, so maybe it's best for PBF games.
But you could work out a system for a face-to-face game with an especially patient moderator.

Here we go:

At the beginning of the game, shuffle the "You Are A Cylon" cards. If you're playing with Personal Goals/Final Five, then shuffle all of the You Are Not A Cylon (YANAC) cards together in a separate pile (otherwise it doesn't matter if you shuffle, since all YANAC cards are the same). (This variant does not use any Sympathizer card, no matter how many players).

For each player, secretly roll the die. On an 8, that player gets a card from the Cylon pile. Otherwise, that player gets a card from the YANAC pile. Roll twice for Baltar.

At the sleeper phase, do the same thing again (roll twice for Boomer).
If there were zero OR one Cylon pre-sleeper, then add +1 to this set of rolls. 
Don't give these Loyalty cards out until you have finished this set of rolls, because of this:
After this set of rolls, if there would still be zero Cylons, or if it's a 6+-player game and there would be only one Cylon, randomly choose one player who will receive a You Are A Cylon card instead.

Before the game begins, you can decide how Executing human characters works. Either Pegasus-style (no new loyalty card) or Exodus-style (roll a die as above for the replacement character).

You may even adjust probabilities up or down by changing the die type (with the top value of that die being the target for Cylonity, of course) -- d6 for a harder human game, d10 for an easier human game.

So you may end up with a 5-player-game with 3 Cylons, or even a 6-player game with 6 Cylons all wondering who they are screwing.. On average, though, you should have a similar experience to the base game with just a wee bit more uncertainty.

Is this worth an experimental game?

(BSG) Increasing Paranoia with Executions

I posted this over at BoardGameGeek, and unsurprisingly it wasn't a very popular idea.

So I'm thinking,
When I first heard about Exodus, and played my first couple of games with it, I liked the new rules for the Loyalty Deck partially because a character wasn't guaranteed to be Human when coming into the game to replace an Executed character.

But in practice, the newly-drawn card after being Executed is rarely "You Are A Cylon"; it might be a Final Five or a Personal Goal, but those don't really hurt the team that bad.

So here is my idea:

At game setup, create the Loyalty Deck as instructed by the Exodus rulebook. Follow the rules as-printed until the sleeper phase.

After the Sleeper Phase, the first time a character is executed, instead of shuffling a new You Are Not A Cylon card into the deck before drawing your new loyalty, shuffle a "You are a Late Cylon" card in.
(This could use a better name, but I don't even know if the mechanic's any good)

YOU ARE A CYLON

Action: Reveal this card.
You may not use the "Cylon Fleet" or "Basestar Bridge" location.

Only do this once. Future executions are handled by the normal rules.

It makes you a worse Cylon than the Sympathizer, for sure. It barely gives you an incentive to Reveal. But it adds more uncertainty to the Airlock As Cylon Detector, and maybe people will start using the Brig more often again?

What do you think?

BSG card idea

This was just a brain-dump of a thought I had. Feel free to skewer it.
(Cross-posted to BoardGameGeek)

People don't often suggest new skillcards, because it's really not the kind of game where you can just substitute a card like that in.

But I came up with this simple idea, and felt like sharing it with the peanut gallery.

VIP Shuttle
Politics
Value: High (3/4/5? Maybe even 6?)
Movement: Move to a location on another ship. Roll a die. On a 6 or higher, put this card back into your hand. This ability is only usable if you are in a ship location.


Can't be played on New Caprica or while piloting (wording could be better about this), but _can_ be played in the Brig.
You won't Strategically Plan the roll (probably), because you might as well just discard the Strategic Planning to move.
It needs a high value because the movement ability isn't useful incredibly often.

BSG Pegasus *minimal* integration into Base Game

I'm just really excited about getting Exodus (although I haven't ordered it yet; online places still list it as a "preorder" and I'm not falling for that trap again, and I also don't want to place a "preorder" at the FLGS in case I can't make it there for awhile, so I'm waiting until I can get it within normal shipping time).
So I'm spouting random ideas about the BSG game.
Not really expecting any sort of epiphany here.

One of the things about the Pegasus expansion is that it is too tightly coupled to its own new rules in a lot of ways.
Which makes it difficult to teach new players the game, or to "fall back" to a base game without removing a ton of components.

Here is just an idea of how to use a minimum amount of the Pegasus components, with only a few modifications, but still have the feeling of playing the Base Game:

Please note that some of these are generic-sounding rules because I don't care enough to actually go through the decks and name cards. :)

1) Use the Plastic Basestars. This is an easy one.

2) Destination is always Kobol.

3) Don't use the Pegasus ship.

4) Don't use the Cylon Leaders.

5) Modify the other new characters in the following way:

Kat - no change, other than her official errata

Dee - Her penalty is changed to this:
"If Morale is 2 or less at the start of your turn, you start that turn in Sickbay." (Harsh, but better than being dead, and a Cylon Dee will still have incentive to reveal)

Ellen - She draws 1 Piloting skillcard instead of Treachery, and can not pilot a viper or use the abilities printed on Piloting cards. (Yes, this means she can hump pilots to enhance their firepower, but that seems thematically appropriate :) )

Cain - Is second in line for Admiral title (between Adama and Tigh).
Change her "Intolerant" ability to "Cannot contribute skillcards to the check for other players to exit the Brig".
Use your choice of House Rules for Blind Jump however you feel is necessary, as usual.

6) Any other reference to "Execution" is replaced with "Send to Sickbay". Any card which refers to a player previously being Executed is removed from the deck(s).

7) Use the Pegasus replacements for Investigative Committee.

8) Do not use Treachery cards. Any card which refers to Treachery cards is removed from the deck(s).

9) Maintain balance within the Skill Card decks; that is, if a card was removed from one deck because it referred to Treachery or Executions, remove the equivalently-numbered Pegasus card from the other decks.

10) Acknowledge the "Movement Step" as part of the rules, for the cards that refer to this.

Battlestar Galactica Character Selection variant.

Crossposted and updated from my BoardGameGeek post:

With the release of Exodus, there are now 18 non-Cylon-Leader characters available (5 Military, 5 Political, 5 Pilots, and 3 Support).
And without Cylon Leaders, the game goes up to 6 players.

This got me thinking about a simple variant for choosing characters, and spicing up this phase of the game a bit:

At the beginning of the game, set aside the 3 Cylon Leader characters.
Shuffle the rest of the character sheets.

In turn, each player goes through the following process:

A) If a Cylon Leader hasn't been chosen yet, the player may opt to choose any one of the Cylon Leaders. Otherwise:

B) Deal 3 character sheets, face down, to the player; he chooses one. If he doesn't like any of his choices, he may draw another character sheet to choose from, at a cost of starting with one fewer skillcard at the beginning of the game. You can do this up to 3 times, reducing your starting cards by 1 each time. (If you somehow would start the game with fewer than 3 skill cards anyway, for example being Samuel Anders and going first, then you have to "pay off" this debt with the next 3 cards you would otherwise draw).
You may not tell other players which characters you did not choose, by name or special ability. You may only discuss their category (Political, Military, Pilot, Support). For example, "I choose Saul Tigh, the other 2 were Pilots". You may, of course, lie about this, but it's a little too early to be deceptive.
Put all of your unchosen character sheets on the bottom of the pile, in any order you choose.

Remember that this may throw off the rulebook "balanced character selection" rule, so this variant is not recommended for beginner players.