Design Diaries:
Templating Interrupts and Responses

One of our continuing headaches while designing within the Onyx and Shattered Empire framework has been nailing down the proper templating of our two reactionary stepchildren, Interrupts and Responses. Interrupts have existed since Ivory Edition, and those of you who played live in the environment may remember the implementation being clunky and proper understanding taking some extra time. The templating was all over the place for such actions.

2015 Onyx Design had already decided that Response actions were needed; in contrast to Interrupts' "must be played before the action fully resolves" window, Responses would be "after the action has resolved". Collectively, these would both take the place of most Reactions from editions prior to Ivory.

The problem came in the wording of these abilities. We've had to come to terms with the idea that neither Interrupts nor Responses have any inherent restrictions on play, for the most part; they specify how the effects will apply under certain conditions, but many of them were missing critical verbiage to describe the specific circumstances under which they can be used. The result is that we had multiple "empty Interrupts (Responses)", where the Interrupting or Responding action could be declared for ANY action (even a non-relevant one). We ran into a very problematic interaction when we first released Caravansary (CRI), and had to issue swift errata for the card shortly thereafter.

In the wake of that, we've decided to rectify the problem by doing something that should have been done a decade ago: explicitly defining conditions for Interrupts and Responses, as much as possible. Our indefatigable Rules Guru Brook Cunningham has identified the appropriate phrasing as "if", creating a defined restriction on the conditions of the action. Whereas before, you might have seen a template like:

Response: After the action Equips an Item, draw a card. Gain 1 Honor.

This templating would allow the Response to be used to any action, and you would gain 1 Honor as it is a separate and disconnected effect. A repaired templating would look like this:

Response: If the action Equipped an Item, draw a card and gain 1 Honor.

Not only does this tie the two effects together, but the "If" language makes the conditions under which the Response can be played or activated explicit. Without the condition being met, the Response cannot be used.

To that end, we are repairing the biggest "empty action" loopholes which exist in the Onyx rules set: Courage and Honor.

Previous: "Courage Repeatable Interrupt: Discard a Courage card to give a Fear effect +2 or -2 strength."

New: "Courage Repeatable Interrupt: If the action has any Fear effects, any number of times per action, discard a Courage card to give one such effect +2 or -2 strength."

Previous: "Honor Repeatable Interrupt: Once per action, discard an Honor card to increase or reduce an Honor gain or loss by 1."

New: "Honor Repeatable Interrupt: If the action has any Honor gains or losses, once per action, discard an Honor card to increase or reduce one such gain or loss by 1."

Before, you could take these Interrupts to literally any action in the game -- it was one of the reasons the original version of Caravansary was problematic. While we modified that Holding immediately to rectify the problem, we knew the underlying rules were still an issue, and with an eye towards proper future templating of these types of abilities, we are changing the rules. This change is immediate.

While we were tinkering with the rules (and in the words of BTO, "you ain't seen nothin' yet"), we also wanted to close a problematic case that has continued to come up. To that end, the following rule will now apply to Ring cards:

Other players' card effects cannot banish your Rings unless they specify that it can be done (i.e., "Banish a target Ring").

A couple more Design Diaries will follow with some of our further Design tinkering as we head towards the release of Gates of Tengoku later in the month.