BREEDING TRIBBLES

third in a series about the The Trouble with Tribbles card development process

From the very beginning of development on The Trouble With Tribbles expansion, Product Development was looking to put three major "themes" into the set: a time travel/kill Kirk storyline, a self-sufficient "original series" deck option, and of course, the Tribbles themselves. Though all three of those elements were under intense scrutiny every step of the way, it was the Tribbles (being the title "characters" of the set!) that were under the microscope the most.

Tribbles began, at least conceptually, as equipment cards. Given their personnel-level interaction in the game, it made sense to implement them as a card type that already had rules for personnel-level interaction in place. But that was only conceptual.

The original draft of tribble game text was several lines long, so the actual first draft of a Tribble card was an Incident. All of the rules about playing and moving tribbles were right there on the card in italics. For example, the 1 Tribble card said "May be 'carried' (moved) by a personnel present", while the 100 Tribbles card said "May be beamed by a personnel with Transporter Skill." Furthermore, each different Tribble card also ended with a standard phrase along the lines of "Each personnel is 'stopped' after carrying or beaming any Tribble card." It seemed rather tedious repeated on so many different cards, however, so before playtesters even got a look at them, they morphed again.

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Tribbles Game

Article 1 of the series: Captain Kirk 23

The first tested version of the Tribble mechanic started with a Storage Compartment Door, which required a player to download an incident called "The Trouble With Tribbles." That card actually had almost no gameplay function; it instead used its 7 lines of game text to explain the rules on how Tribble incidents entered play and were moved around -- the goal at this point in the process was to avoid putting a lot of details on the rules sheet, and instead keep everything on the cards themselves.

At that stage in the process, Tribbles functioned quite a bit like money, and breeding them was not unlike going to a bank. They came in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Once every turn (yes, both players' turns), every group of Tribbles in play bred. You either had to double the number of Tribbles there by downloading new Tribbles from your side deck (1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16, etc.) or watch your Tribbles "starve" -- half the number of cards there would be discarded (random selection). You could add your new Tribbles in any denominations you chose. When doubling 100 Tribbles, you could add a 100 Tribbles card, two 50s, or even a hundred 1s!

This was the version tested at the big weekend playtest for the set. Firm functions for Tribbles were not yet settled. Instead, the test was all about breeding them and getting rid of them, and seeing if it all worked.

It was like riding a pendulum. At first, Tribbles were just too easy to get rid of. It took only one Transporter Skill to get rid of any number of them; they were "no Tribble at all." Early Saturday morning, it was suggested that each unit of Transporter Skill could beam only one Tribble card each turn, which swung the pendulum in the other direction. Since you could download any denominations of Tribble cards when "breeding" your Tribbles, the entire stack of mockup 1 Tribble cards instantly vanished. It was flat out impossible to move even just a handful of them at the rate of 1 per Trnasporter Skill per turn (all the while as they quadrupled from one of your turns to the next).

As functions for the various Tribble cards were tested over the weekend, other denominations surged briefly in popularity. The highest denomination Tribble card was briefly able to damage a facility each turn it was aboard. Tribbles quickly proved more effective at this than a Breen CRM114, and that function was scrapped. Still more ideas were crafted by the designers even as the playtesters sat at the next table poking holes in others. By the end of the weekend, it felt as though Tribbles needed to go back to the drawing board.

When work on the second full version of the Tribble mechanic began, that the big question that everyone had been avoiding was finally asked. What about a new card type?

At first, that didn't sit well with everyone. Did a game with 15 different card types really need another one? But the case for it was strong. Tribbles had all these new rules including breeding, starving, and even a new side deck. That sure seemed like a new card type, whether it was actually being called one or not.

And so the designers began again with Tribbles as their own card type. One of the biggest problems with the already-tested Tribbles was the breeding mechanic. Doubling the number of tribbles in play every turn was just too much. By Sunday afternoon of the big playtest weekend, another option had been offered. What if each Tribble group could "breed" just one single card each turn, and the player could choose to download any card up to ten times the total number of Tribbles present? For example, where 1 Tribble was prsent, you could download another next turn. Where 10 Tribbles were present, you could download a 1, 5, 10, or 100 Tribble card.

Then there was the question of scale. In playtest games, no one had managed to ever get more than a few hundred tribbles in play. In the episode, hundreds of thousands came pouring out of every nook and cranny. Spock states that an average Tribble litter is 10, so that prompted the change from the "money" system of tribbles to something new -- 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 Tribble cards became 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 Tribble cards.

So far, so good. With a new card type in place, the rules for moving and beaming tribbles could be taken off "The Trouble With Tribbles" incident card (which was then scrapped), and put on the rules sheet. With the new "one card each turn per group of Tribbles" rule in place, the rules on breeding Tribbles could be trimmed down to a single sentence: "Breeds from XXX tribbles." The text on the lowest Tribble cards was changed to simply "May report anywhere" in the hopes that the understanding of the familiar term "report" would instinctively tell players where Tribbles could exist -- anywhere a personnel card could.

This new mechanic was run through playtesting, and fared much better than the first version. Still, Tribbles proved too easy to get into play. A guaranteed download of a Tribble card each turn at every location where there were Tribbles was a force to be reckoned with. What's more, all that downloading was really bogging down gameplay.

Both these problems had the same solution. Instead of a fixed download each turn, a Battle Bridge-style mechanic was introduced. Each turn, a player would draw a number of cards from their side deck, play what they could, and return the rest. If they didn't draw anything they could use, oh well -- they'd have to try again next time. Not only did this address the two big problems with breeding, it brought strategy into building a Tribble side deck. You would no longer just bring every Tribble card you owned along for "making change" (though the thought of that was quite amusing). Instead, you'd have to pick and choose certain cards in certain proportions to be able to draw the one you wanted when you needed it.

Speaking of strategy, shortly after Tribbles became their own card type, another radical suggestion was made. What about making another card type -- Troubles. Then you'd have your Tribbles, and you'd have your Troubles. Although at first rejected as just being gimmicky, the merits of the idea soon presented themselves. Even after Tribbles had become a card type, not everything they did could be explained on the cards. There were several incidents and objectives still around that "expanded" the abilities of Tribbles, like accidentally dragging them along whenever a personnel beamed away from a group of Tribbles, or becoming so numerous they "spilled" out to adjacent areas. Putting these abilities onto Trouble cards would allow a player to take full advantage of all the abilities of Tribbles without giving up seed slots or draw deck space -- everything could go in the side deck.

At last! A working Tribble mechanic! Over the next few weeks, the abilities of the actual Tribble and Trouble cards did change a bit. The number of cards the Storage Compartment Door allowed you to draw and use was tweaked. But that version of the mechanic itself is what finally made it to press.

As for those funky icons in the top left corner of the cards? That's a whole story unto itself.


Evan Lorentz
"Mot the Barber" (mot@decipher.com)