Replace action feature

[MrBeck]

Occasionally, it would be nice to be able to replace an action on the fly.

For example, one time when my wife and I were playing it, it had us use ice cubes about 5 times (just random chance I know). By the last time or two, we were kind of tired of them and would just skip those actions. Another example is that my wife is pregnant now (and still willing to play Bliss !!!) and some actions are just not very good right now (esp. those that have her lying on her back for too long).

Sometimes when we get an action we don't want, we just substitue something, or sometimes we skip it, but I find that sometimes this disrupts the flow of the game. It's not that we want to disable the action permenantly in a profile, but for one reason or another, it's not what we want to do right then.

I'd like to see a little button with every action which you could click on that would replace that action (i.e. give you a new action instead of it). If you wanted to be even more elaborate, you could have an option to permenantly disable that one particular action, disable it just for this game, or simply replace it this one time only.

Anyway, great game.

[Don]

MrBeck,

Sorry for the slow response.

We have thought about something like this off and on for a while. Generally we have decided it wasn't a good idea because it seems to lead towards competiveness and potential disagreement between the players. However, you make the best case for it that I have heard.

I think we will seriously look at this for our next release.

Thanks,

Don

[rkaiser108]

Don,
Just a suggestion to go along with this idea is to have the person who wants a mullagan loss something, clothes points, or a property. I know these would be tricky to add in, but you may find that your partner is more darning than you think...

[squarepeg]

Having a "select alternate action" would be a good addition. We have run into several situations where it is needed and one can easily imagine more. 1) you have just done very similar actions several times; 2) you just got out of the shower and now its chocolate syrup time; 3) you need something in the other room but you just heard one of the kids up; 4) your partner really isn't comfortable with it this time around, but maybe another time. When we play Bliss we tend to treat the actions as suggestions, not commands. And modify them as circumstances dictate. Its a fun game and gives a framework to explore new areas but we are not about to make demands of each other. So I don't quite understand the objection because of "competativeness". One could set a pre-game option that allows or disallows an alternate action.

Also sometime I try a dry run to see if a newly created action will play as expected. Clicking through the alternate actions would help with this. Although a debug mode that displays all the ranked potential actions would be better.

[romeo]

I really like the idea of the debug mode. Seeing all the allowed actions could help a lot and save considerable time when developing new actions.

I'm less sure of including a generic opt out option. There is something to be said of having a little pressure to overcome inhibitions within the limits stated at the beginning of the game. I would side with squarepeg that people will know when NOT to do an action and can modify them as they like when needed - but this is outside the game and needs no software. If there are actions where there is a high probability that one would like to opt out, then provide a money option explicitly. What I think worth consideration is providing possibility to add an option to strip - but not as a generic option for every action..

This thread repeatedly raised the topic of how actions are selected. It seems there is sometimes too little variety if you get a run of ice-cube actions. The selection probability of actions could be possibly influenced by ranking actions according to "tool", "main category", "sub category" and how long back it was played last. Not sure it would work, but a debug mode and knowing the allowed actions and their weighting would help here too.

[Don]

Hi,

As of version 1.5, the game uses a system very similar to what you describe. Each category of action (such as french kissing) and each toy (such as ice cube) has a reuse cycle associated with it. Ice cubes for instance, have a reuse value of 11, where Lube has a reuse value of 1. Thus the game won't use ice cubes again for 11 rolls of the dice after they have been used, where Lube could be used every turn. The same applies to the categories.

All of this was new in 1.5, and was not present in earlier versions, so perhaps this issue has already been addressed.

Thanks,

Don

[romeo]

Thanks, good to hear. I assume this makes it into the action editor for user added stuff at some point in time?

[Don]

Hi,

Yes, we will work this into the action editor eventually.

Don

[rapple1]

I had a thought about the 'replace action' feature that some have requested. What about something that works a little like the 'get out of jail' card in Monopoly. You could accumulate one or more 'second chance' cards in various ways (The ? square or perhaps landing directly on payday) Then only if/when you had one of them you could be offered the option of discarding the current action and being dealt a new one.