Design Log: Stardate 01.06.2003

Caution: Unloading Zone

"How do I use the Scimitar's Cloaking Device? I can't find the cloaking rules in the rulebook!"
"Benjamin Sisko's card says he's the commander of the U.S.S. Defiant. What benefits does the ship get when I have him aboard?"
"Retaya is an "Assassin." How often can he kill someone?"
"Hazar's lore indicates he was a resistance leader. Does he count as a Bajoran Resistance personnel for Just Like Old Times?"
"Telek R'Mor has an AU icon, but there's no AU Door to let you play him! How do I play AU cards in Second Edition?"

First Edition was loaded – with "loaded" gameplay terms and icons. A "loaded" term or icon is one that has special rules associated with it that you just have to know about in order to play the game correctly. Just a few examples of typical First Edition loading:

A few skills were loaded with "built-in" uses. Miracle Worker skill "included" Transporter Skill; Guramba forced your opponent to have two leaders to initiate personnel battle; and Cybernetics skill used to let you report androids for free. OFFICER and Leadership also included the ability to act as a "leader" required for battle.
Personnel with a Ketracel-white icon would undergo "white deprivation" if there was no Ketracel-White present with them at the start of your turn. The rules described the battle that this entailed.
If your ship had a Cloaking Device, you cloaked it by turning it face down. A half page of rules then told you what the ship and its crew could and couldn't do and how it could or couldn't be affected by other cards.
Some species were loaded. Personnel who were human (or part-human) would be placed out of play if the Borg disrupted the timeline. And for years, androids and holograms were immune to "DNA-related" dilemmas.
Even the lore on many cards was loaded: details of the lore determined matching commanders, species, gender, "Empok Nor-related dilemmas," hand weapon status, and much more.

All this loading contributed heavily to rulebook bloat, FAQs, and confusion. If Cybernetics skill automatically let you report androids for free, why didn't Mindmeld skill automatically let your Vulcan do a mindmeld? If the [KW] and [AU] icons had special rules attached to them, what were the rules for Maquis or Terran Empire icons? The rules told you how to use a Cloaking Device; why didn't they tell you how to use your ship's Tractor Beam? If "Romulan underground" in the lore means the personnel is a member of the Romulan underground, why doesn't "Tal Shiar" in the lore mean the personnel has Tal Shiar skill? Hannah Bates and Riva are both Federation personnel who look human, one "from Moab IV" and the other "from Ramatis III." Why is Hannah Bates human while Riva is not? And on and on...

The designers and rules committee recognized the loading problem some time ago, and for the last few years had been paring away at it by converting such features as Cybernetics' android-reporting feature and white deprivation from rules to cards, standardizing new card terminology, and simplifying rules such as those relating to cards native to a time location. But these were only stopgap measures, and they couldn't do anything about the hundreds of cards that already existed with important keywords embedded – often imprecisely – in the lore.

Enter Second Edition, where almost everything has been unloaded. To start with, nothing in the lore has gameplay implications. It's flavor text, pure and simple, and all the previous lore baggage has been off-loaded into keywords (Admiral, Hand Weapon, Commander, etc.) and a species designation where the personnel classification used to be, or eliminated from use (gender is no longer a gameplay-significant characteristic). This has the happy side effect of allowing greater use of quotes or other interesting information in the lore, because the designers no longer need to make sure they cram in a personnel's gender, mixed species, military rank, dissident status, and the ship they command. So the answer to the question about Hazar – does he count as a Bajoran Resistance personnel? – is no: a Bajoran Resistance personnel is one who has that keyword. Hazar's only keyword is "General," so he doesn't count.

Second, with very few exceptions, keywords, skills, and icons have no built-in functions or restrictions. Rather, they are referred to by other cards and function as those other cards allow.

The answer to "How do I use my Cloaking Device?" is now the same as the First Edition answer to "How do I use my Tractor Beam?" – you use it by playing a card that tells you how it is used (currently, Engage Cloak).
The answer to "How do I play [AU] cards?" is "The same way you play any other card in Second Edition." For example, you pay 3 counters to play Darhe'el, at any place you are allowed to play a Cardassian-affiliation personnel (probably at Cardassia Prime). Since there are no restrictions on playing [AU] cards in the rules or on a card, you can ignore the [AU] icon.
How often can Retaya kill someone? Well, unless a card says he can, the answer is "Not at all." Currently there are no cards that make use of the Assassin keyword, and like other keywords, it has no built-in function.
Interestingly, the answer to the question of what benefits the Defiant gets from having its commander Benjamin Sisko aboard is exactly the same as for First Edition: none, except as defined by a card. Matching commander benefits in First Edition were always card-based, beginning with Captain's Log, and that continues in Second Edition.

You might wonder why there are cards with keywords that have no references from other cards, like Assassin, Glinn, or Crime. Well, in First Edition, keywords as such didn't exist, and in the early days of the CCG industry in general and Star Trek CCG in particular, it wasn't always easy for the designers to foresee the paths that the game might take. Often a new concept introduced in a later expansion, in order to work with existing cards, had to play off of vague lore references, card titles, "laundry lists" in a new card text, or complicated rules. Hence the awkward list of retroactive "Captain's Orders" on Ready Room Door, the errata to older missions to make them part of newly-created "regions of space," the long-time ruling that Jean-Luc Picard didn't give Captain's Log benefits to U.S.S. Enterprise, the confusion over whether Mendak was an Admiral (his ship says he is, but his own card doesn't), and the convoluted rules for deciding what is a "capturing-related card." If only the original designers had been clairvoyant!

But now our trusty designers have the opportunity to plan ahead, using that First Edition experience as a guide. We know that in First Edition, we made use of many "ranks and titles" and other characteristics, such as admiral, gul, senator, kai, dissident, and even dabo girl, waiter, and cook! So why not make as many characteristics as possible into Second Edition keywords right off the bat? Sure, maybe we won't ever really need to refer to glinns – but if a year from now we want to make a card that requires either a glinn or a gul to use it, we won't have to errata Daro or say the card doesn't apply to him, because he has the keyword.

Likewise, our 20/20 hindsight tells us that cards that relate to a particular concept – say, capturing – stand a good chance of needing a way to make a blanket reference to them (as in "capturing-related cards"). How much simpler it will be to label any potential "Crime" cards with that keyword now, before we make a card that downloads "any Crime card," rather than having to define by rules what we mean by a "crime-related" card.

Sit down at the Second Edition card table and take a load off your mind – there's no need to remember a load of rules about loaded keywords.

Kathy McCracken
Major Rakal
Star Trek Intelligence Officer

January 6, 2003

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