Looney Labs Fluxx Mailing list Archive

["James Hazelton" <jameshazelton@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've been buying out the Fluxx Blanxx in every store in town to stock up, and I decided to spend a few of them. As always, I start by analyzing the keepers and determining which are the least valuable in my current game--today's number of applicable goals to beat is 3 (any less than that warrants a new goal). Then comes the creation brainstorming. I decided that I would focus on three things: revaluing the lesser keepers, adding some more powerful cards, and expanding on the importance of Keeper and Hand Limits. I've been playtesting a little bit, but with such a thick deck, not all the cards have come up. What do you think?

Keepers:
Life [I've been wanting to introduce this for a while, to pair it with Death. Incidently, I didn't make a Life & Death goal, because Death isn't on my list of lesser Keepers. I'll probably do a double-keeper later on that counts as Life or Death.]

Goals:
Tree of Life [Life and any Tree--my trio of Trees already has three goals (Forest, Night Forest, and Christmas & Easter {custom--Cross and Tree}), but I wanted a forth goal, since there are three trees.]
War (Everyone Dies) [This would be War (No Life), but I thought that this new title makes more of a point and connects War and Life more intuitively.]
Gaia [Earth and Life--pretty straight forward.]
Waking Life 

[Great movie--This goal was originally going to Life paired with Sleep, but since Sleep was necessary for the goal with Milk (see below), I changed it to Dreams.]
Warm Milk

 [Milk and Sleep--I have found it very difficult to pair anything with Milk. This is my first custom Milk goal--any other suggestions?]

Actions:
Trash Anything ["Select one of the New Rule, Goal, or Keeper cards in play and place it in the discard pile." This seems a bit powerful, but it doesn't seem any more consequencial in a game than any other card. It's hard to come up with Action cards that are actually relevant to the game.]
Trash N New Rules ["Select N of the New Rule cards in play and place them in the discard pile, where N is the current number of players." This is part of the N series, along with Draw N, Play N, Keeper Limit N, and Hand Limit N, where N is the number of players. I find my games often end with a line of New Rule cards that stretches across the table, so I wanted more NR destruction. This is halfway between Rules Reset and Trash a New Rule, but I don't know how well it plays, since it did not come up in any of the games.]
Rearrange Keepers ["Each player must select one of his Keepers. Redistribute one Keeper back to each player who supplied one. You decide who gets one." It was difficult to phrase this into Fluxx terms while being able to fit it on a card, and I don't think I got it quite right. It's supposed to be a cross between Taxation and Everybody Gets 1 (One, actually), only with Keepers. Any idea how I could phrase this concisely?]
Ignore a Rule ["Choose a New Rule card in play. You may ignore that Rule until the start of your next turn." I can't decide if this should be for just the player who played it, or if the rule should be mandatorilly ignored by everyone. Any input?]

New Rules:
Chicken Scratch ["Handwritten Keepers don't count toward the Keeper Limit." This is one of my favourites. I wanted to make handwritten cards mechanically special, but all I could come up with was that they don't count toward the Keeper Limit. This is kind of unfortunate, because Keepers are the least common handwritten card I have. It's mostly Goals and Actions. I tried to think of a way to make 
all handwritten cards somehow exempt from the Hand Limit, but I couldn't figure out how to do this without revealing most of your hand to prove it. Any suggestions? By the way, the card was going to be called "Chicken Scratch Exemption," but I ran out of room again.
Rule Limit 6 ["Only 6 New Rule cards can be in play at a time. If ever there are more than 6, the turn player must immediately discard New Rules until there are only 6." Definitely the most controversial card I made, and it went over so-so. I'm considering taking it out entirely. I made it in the first place because I often suffer from a huge 15-rule game, and it might be nice to keep that in check once in a while. However, this card suffers severely from a lack of room. Most importantly, you should be able to play as many New Rules as you want, and only observe the limit at the end of the turn. Second, the Rule Limit 6 card itself wasn't supposed to count toward the rule limit. Third, you shouldn't be able to discard the Rule Limit with its own effect, but by the card text, you can. Lastly, I wanted to expressly state that it can be trashed by No Limits and similar effects, but that was left out too. As a result, I'm no longer happy with it. It was trashed pretty soon after it was put into play, so I don't know how well it works long-term. I don't want it to go into effect for one turn, and then die the next. That's no fun. This may end up being a wasted effort.]
Toaster Bonus ["If a player has the Toaster on the table, that player may ignore the Keeper Limit (if any)." This came from a desire to make one of the lesser keepers useful. I also wanted to bring back the old tradition of X Random Keeper Bonus, but give it a new life that's actually useful. I like the idea of players fighting over this one nearly useless Keeper, and having it be passed back and forth. Unfortunately, I also play with the Robot, so in a 3-player game, it's possible that only one person would have to observe the Keeper Limit, and that wouldn't necessarily be fun. Input?
Moon Bonus ["If a player has the Moon on the table, that player may ignore the Hand Limit (if any)." Same as above. The Moon, like the Toaster, has only two goals associated with it (although it also uses the Night Forest), and I wanted it to be more special. I play with the Star, so it has the same two-at-once problem that the Toaster has. It's iffy, buy I like the look of X Random Keeper Bonus on the table. It just has a kitchiness that Cross Bonus, Borders Bonus, or Rich Bonus don't have.]

And that's how I spent my Monday. I don't mean to post every single time I make a new card, but this time I really do want input on some of the more difficult cards. Also, if someone has an idea what I could call a 
double Keeper that counts as Life and Death, I would be most interested. The only thing I have come up with is "A Matter," but I don't know how to draw that.

Thanks for reading!

James