12.8.24
RUMPUS V. 2, RUMPUS V .2

rumpus is v. 2 now! or v .2, depending on who you ask (if you ask max). we have been quietly and industriously tip-tapping away in a little CAVE for a long while now and i am so excited about what we have done, which i shall tell you about, now.

WELL-ORGANIZED AND EASY TO LEARN

the first biggest goal for this update was to make it very easy to learn to play rumpus from the rulebook. i often make little quick reference zines to hand out to people at the table with all of the actions and necessary tables just right there in the plainest possible language so we tried to do the same thing, except make it the Whole Book, but see how little of words we could get away with. this was so so hard because i love everything i wrote for the first rumpus manual but chop chop chop chop we cut it all down to the bone (1 in 6 chance of becoming an unseelie fairy when you pick it up) and put it in a better order i think for learning to play. so it kind of follows the sequence of what you need to do to play, with the most immediately needed information up front (gathering your troupe, choosing the scenario, what actions you can do on your turn), and more occasional information (like campaign play stuff) in the back.

escape the labyrinth!!	escape the google doc!!

EVERYTHING YOU WANT AND NOTHING THAT YOU DON'T

next max and i resolved something like 6 months of playtesting data and feedback, just made a giant list and went down it. a lot of cards were replaced or revised, and we made two big changes to mechanics. the first was HIDING. we never wanted to hide, ever, while playing the game, and it seemed to basically be the same (mechanically) as RUNNING, which is: you can move a long way across the map without being bothered, in exchange for not doing any other action that turn. so we cut hiding! it is gone. it's nice not to have so many things to remember. the other big change was to FIGHTING and it took a lot of tuning and discussion but here it is: fighting is an opposed roll, and the player who is attacking can also attack with other fairies in their troupe if they are in range. so with some clever positioning, you can get your whole troupe to beat up on one fairy and roll so many dice at once, but a well-armed defender can still mess you up, and if they do, they mess up every fairy in the fight. so you can still pull off classic power stone moves like EAT ALL MY STUFF AND BECOME VERY FEARSOME AND I FIGHT YOU, but it does mean that a fairy with a sword and a helm and a buckler is going to be a threat no matter what.

bury the fairy

4 NEW SCENARIOS

max and i have been spending most of our recent playtesting time trying out new scenarios. up until now, we mostly played WAR, which is just a fight between two or more troupes, because we wanted to make sure that the basic-est version of the game was still fun. but rumpus is best when you are trying to go about some faerie business, so we have made 4 new faerie businesses:

1. trapper's delight
2. escape the labyrinth
3. bury the fairy
4. hurling

TRAPPER'S DELIGHT was developed during FESTIVAL RUMPUS (which i realize i haven't blogged about yet! INSTAGRAM YOU VAMPIRE), and the goal is to catch the opposing fairies in traps. in this scenario, the special Thing You Can Do is set two traps in one turn. also, anytime a 6 is rolled, the Fairy King throws a trap onto the board with a random item in it. i think it's a tie between this one and ESCAPE THE LABYRINTH for maximum chaos.

ESCAPE THE LABYRINTH starts all the fairies in the center of the board, in a labyrinth riddled with traps. they have to make their way to the exit, which moves every time a trap goes off. the fun thing about escape the labyrinth is that any fairies left in the labyrinth at the end of the game are lost in the labyrinth forever, presumably becoming npcs for the eventual rumpus dungeon crawl expansion.

BURY THE FAIRY is based on the story of teig o'kane and the corpse, which you should absolutely read if you haven't already (it was a new one for me). each troupe must bury one of their fairies in a graveyard, but they have to find the empty grave. all the rest of the graves have skeletons which will fight whoever digs them up.

and last but certainly not least (actually quite the opposite), we have HURLING, based on the ancient Irish field sport. i am so proud of this one, i think we have made something that still feels very much like rumpus, but it's like. it's our blood bowl ok. just try it. i think it's so good.

someday i will finish these models

35 NEW UNIQUE ITEMS

fairyland is full of weird little places and funny trinkets and rumpus has always been about picking up odd magical junk, but when i wrote the first SHENANIGANS (between-game exploration) tables i thought that players would just be writing things down on their character sheets and i didn't worry too much about it. when we decided to use cards i quickly converted them over but didn't substantively change them, until recently when we started playtesting campaign play (or LEGACY PLAY for you boardgame nerds) and discovered some problems. Like! some SHENANIGANS gave the player more items than we had in the deck, or asked the player to track something annoying, etc. so it was time for an overhaul. my first draft of campaign items just had particular instances of items you could generate with the ITEMS and QUALITIES deck (like a SINGING SONGBIRD, etc.), but i really wanted to make each of the campaign items unique. so i went back through all of the CONDUCT REWARDS AND TITLES and SHENANIGANS in the campaign mode and redid them to have unique items and i love them. here is my current favorite:

MATCHING OUTFITS

Magic pockets! WHILE HELD, the fairy shares items with any fairy that wears a Matching Outfit. Each fairy may use any of the items that either fairy is holding. Trap: The trapped fairy wears the Matching Outfit, even if they would rather not.

you get MATCHING OUTFITS if you are the first fairy to split in half.

hurling in the void

WHAT'S NEXT

max and i are continuing to work on new scenarios for rumpus, and are actually about to wrap on another one, called "Collecting", where you have to search logs and toadstools for hidden items, and cache them in a hollow log of your own. we've put it through a few playtests now and are enjoying it quite a bit. eventually we want to have 12 unique core scenarios. it has been fascinating to see how different elements of the game emerge from different scenarios. i am also excited to publish a zine i have been working on, with simple rules to convert rumpus to a scenic diorama game with 3D terrain. max and i are also trying to finish up the FESTIVAL RUMPUS zine (congrats again TANGLE-TAM LIGHTFOOT), and i am busy busy sculpting fairies for the rumpus miniature line and box set. i would love to do more playtesting now that rumpus v. 2 is out! please throw rocks at my window if you want a game.

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APPENDIX A:
here is a partial list of changes. almost every card had some text changed to clarify when the card triggers (WHILE HELD, may be USED, etc.) and we made a lot of small balance adjustments that won't be reflected in this list.

ITEMS

fern: rendered useless by our decision to remove hiding from the game, you can now use a fern to hide a fairy from themself. similar to the "lost" quality. effectively a random teleport.

moss: also useless without hiding, moss has been changed to reflect the adoration it should always command.

horn: one of the most broken items i ever wrote, horn would disrupt any game of rumpus and replace it with a game of single combat, so now you can play an "intricate melody" and other fairies must walk until they can see who is playing the horn so delightfully.

pipe: another hiding item, now rewritten to celebrate vice and wickedness.

ring: added some true name stuff to make it possible to propose to another fairy.

pail: lowered the number of items you can carry in a pail to make it feel different from a sack.

QUALITIES

melting: removed from the game because it's annoying to track. a quality ported over from fairyland rpg. now it's "lucky", which lets a fairy keep rolling dice every time they get doubles ("exploding dice", but for any number), or discard the quality to reroll a die.

luminous: revealed hidden fairies; now mesmerizes all fairies who can see the item and prevents them from acting until they move out of line-of-sight.

mercurial: changed from changing every round to only changing when used, but it's still maybe the most annoying quality in the game, i hope.

screaming: YET ANOTHER QUALITY meant to address hiding, it now makes the fairy the center of attention and any action that can target them, must.

peckish: removed from the game. annoying to track, kind of already included in the "lose 1 life per round" cursed quality? so now it's "folksy", which means that the item is actually a fairy.

baneful: made this a "discard after use" that requires line-of-sight, because having your whole troupe wiped out in three turns by a baneful ear feels kind of bad.

cursed: makes a copy of itself each round has become cursed: while held, the fairy cannot use any other item. making copies of items is something that was trivial in a pen and paper game, but very frustrating in a card-based game.

MAGIC

transform: NERFED. being able to change anything into anything else broke too many games. now you can transform items, and on a potent you can transform things you can see into items. so you can still turn a fairy into a sausage.

double: broke when we switched to cards. now "doppelganger": you look just like another fairy, and when anything happens to either of you, you roll a die to see who it happens to. much weirder and more fun.

grow: ability to become a giant removed from the game for mysterious reasons. now you can grow toadstools instead.

luck: became "gamble" and luck turned into the quality "lucky". we really liked the idea of "gambling for life", but it didn't really match the mechanic we had made for the end-of-round tracker, so now the end-of-round tracker has become the "wishing well", and this magic is actually gambling for life with another fairy.

big black cloud: toned down in some ways, and in other ways it's more vicious. originally spawned big black clouds from every fairy it killed, but it made a real mess of the board. now it's bigger and more unambiguous when it gets you.

baleful touch: being able to instantly kill a fairy by touching them was not fun. now you roll a die and you each lose that much life.

CHERISHED ITEMS

enchanted scented letter of affection: became "scented letter" to remove qualities and magics that are available in the core game.

haunted looking glass: became "wet window". welcome to, welcome to, welcome to the heights.

enchanted gossamer lace of glue: became "gossamer gown". lets you avoid traps more easily.

floating flying pail: became "homesick slippers". reward for moving a cow with a whirlwind. to do: add cows to the game.

crystal ring of doomed beauty: became "ring of fateful beauty".

eponymous diary: became "dear diary".

singing songbird: removed from the game.

splendid boot: became "beautiful boot".

luminous spectacles: became "radiant spectacles"; changed to allow a fairy to see through an obstacle.

famous giant ear: became "huge hand", and then removed from the game for mysterious reasons.

splendid shining cup: became "meaningful trophy". changed from a drinking item, now it makes everyone sing.

floating flagon: became "flying flagon", to use the excellent trap effect from the erstwhile "floating flying pail".

disconsolate fragile sausage: simply "disconsolate sausage".

verdant bowl: "blooming bowl". removing core qualities and rewriting effects to avoid CONFUSION. this item was bumped up a bit to make everyone gain life when the fairy uses it. very bacchanalian.

screaming embroidery: became "unspeakable embroidery".

many campaign items were simplified by having core qualities removed (fragile, broken, enchanted, splendid, bloody, etc.):

"rustic cake"
"useless charm"
"simple charm"
"mortal soul"
"fairy teardrop"
"silver bridle"
"hair of the sleeper"
"bloodstained shirt"

the "overgrown barrow" items were reworked so they could each have cards (previously they were just random items from the item deck, each with the "haunted" quality):

worn coin
tarnished effigy
great torc
filigreed dish
three-faced head

the "ancient dais" items were similarly reworked:

golden chessman
ruby brooch
beguiling harp

the "thorny tree" weapons were redone because most of them were not fun or annoying to track:

dagger of amity: became "horrible hammer"
sword of wrath: became "gruesome greatsword"
spear of drowning: became "toothed whip"
club of home runs: stayed exactly the same, it's perfect.
burning bow: became "convenient catapult"
dart of fascination: became "jumping javelin"
giant killer's sling: removed from the game for mysterious reasons

energy shield: beefed to allow it to cancel all damage, but nerfed to require two turns to charge.

and here are the rest of the new items:

happiness
hurling hedge apple
somber shovel
tormented tube
memorable skull
stingy lantern
flaming sword
curly shoe
matching outfits
ribbon of regard
certificate of authenticity
?
smoldering pitchfork
list of unfinished chores
ominous cloud
murky potion
bubbly potion
tasty morsel
jig of life
olden ballad
wretched mask
pale gem
soft eye
delicate robe
coniferous rod

APPENDIX B:
you might notice that the fairy appearance tables have been removed from the rulebook. they will return! in a sculpting and kitbashing zine, part of or concurrent with the diorama conversion zine.

<3 you

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