The RE Rulebook

[Tylar_Bandai]

Hello everyone,

Its now time for me to consider redoing the weakest point in the game: the rulebook.

What don't you like about it? The more specific you can be, the better we can work to fix it. Let us know why our rulebook sucks!

While we appreciate positive comments on the rulebook, constructive criticism is necessary for the betterment of the product, so please provide!

[SMaster777]

Its actually not bad, although every rulebook should cover the special modes; for example, I only see partner rules in the Alliance manual, and Outbreak rules in the Outbreak manual (that second one's slightly justified, but still. Would like to see an expansion on that mode sometime soon!), and possibly a master custom inventories list, but on a whole, for a single set, the rulebook is fine.

[Darkicon]

Besides some individual cards I think the overall rules are fine the way they are. the only card I think needs a slight rule change would be Barry Burton's ability (Mercenaries Edition). I might be reading what you guys wrote on the Mercenaries FAQ wrong but I believe the ruling you guys made on it was you explore and if you defeat the infected with 70 or less health, you reveal cards at top till an infected with same or more health than the original infected is revealed, then you take all infected with less health that were revealed and add them to your decorations.
example: explores and defeats creature with 40 health, top cards are 20 health, 30 health and stops with third card that has 40 health, Barry takes the revealed infected and the two lower health infected that followed.
Before reading your post I made a ruling call for this character at the local game store i play at that made his ability kick in every time an infected was defeated, instead of basing the health rule on the first infected.
same example with my rule call: 40 health infected revealed, top card is 20 health, now since the 20 health one is the last infected defeated, the ability health rule switches to 20 instead of 40. Barry then reveals a 30 health infected. doesn't defeated it and places it back On the mansion. Then takes the explored infected kill and the 1 additional infected.
I only suggest this ruling because Barry seems fairly unstoppable despite the 7 decoration cost and for this to be a multi-use ability I, imo, think it makes more sense the health limit would change to the last infected defeated including ones defeated by abilities.
Thank you for considering any rule changing ideas from the public and if I got your explanation of the ruling wrong I apologize.

[135forte]

Besides some individual cards I think the overall rules are fine the way they are. the only card I think needs a slight rule change would be Barry Burton's ability (Mercenaries Edition). I might be reading what you guys wrote on the Mercenaries FAQ wrong but I believe the ruling you guys made on it was you explore and if you defeat the infected with 70 or less health, you reveal cards at top till an infected with same or more health than the original infected is revealed, then you take all infected with less health that were revealed and add them to your decorations.
example: explores and defeats creature with 40 health, top cards are 20 health, 30 health and stops with third card that has 40 health, Barry takes the revealed infected and the two lower health infected that followed.
Before reading your post I made a ruling call for this character at the local game store i play at that made his ability kick in every time an infected was defeated, instead of basing the health rule on the first infected.
same example with my rule call: 40 health infected revealed, top card is 20 health, now since the 20 health one is the last infected defeated, the ability health rule switches to 20 instead of 40. Barry then reveals a 30 health infected. doesn't defeated and places it back then take the explored infected kill and the 1 additional infected.
I only suggest this ruling because Barry seems fairly unstoppable despite the 7 decoration cost.
Thank you for considering any rule changing ideas from the public and if I got your explanation of the ruling wrong I apologies.

Your example is how it works.

[Bignasty]

My gaming group's main complaint with the rule book is the lack of a clear and precise method for creating a random scenario. Drafting the weapon/action resources is a cumbersome task, especially without 'draft' versions of the cards and involves everyone constantly thumbing through X expansions worth of cards. It leads to arguments about characters and we eventually move on to another game that clearly defines this process (examples exist in the DBG genre like Thunderstone and Nightfall)

Something like:
1. players draft 2 characters
2. randomly determine X weapons and Y actions for the resources (randomizer cards or some other elegant solution)
3. players select which character of the 2 they drafted
4. draft actions if desired

[Dirjel]

I don't think there is specifically an issue with the rulebook so much as an issue with the wording of some of the cards, which is why you get so many questions on here about specific card interactions.

Let's use the terms from Magic, a CCG that's been around for almost 20 years, and apply them to RE:DBG. In Magic, there are

"Activated Abilities," abilities that you manually trigger by paying a cost (which can be nothing).
RE:DBG example - Excella's "gain 1 infection for +20 gold" ability, Mercenaries Claire's "Lose 1 buy for -20 ammo requirement" ability.

"Triggered Abilities," abilities that happen automatically when certain conditions are met.
RE:DBG example - Sergei's "+1 explore when you defeat an Infected" ability, Schadenfreud Wesker's "when an opponent has less than 30 HP, you get +1 card" ability.

"Static Abilities" are abilities that are always on.
RE:DEB example - Premier Krauser's "all knives get +10 Damage," Pistol Leon's "You may use all Pistol Weapons twice."

Now, in Magic, all ability types are easily identifiable by the phrasing on the card. In Magic, all activated abilities are written as: [cost]: [do this thing]. In RE:DBG, it's harder to identify the timing of certain effects because all of the abilities are written the same way, which is [wall of text]. It doesn't matter if it's a static ability or a triggered ability or an activated ability; at a glance, they all look the same.

This can be extra confusing when it's a triggered ability with the word "can" in it, such as Mercs Rebecca's "when you buy a card [trigger], you CAN move it to an opponent's discard pile." It sounds like it's a triggered ability, which is normally a repeatable action in RE:DBG, but the ability is intended to only be used once per turn, a limitation usually reserved for activated abilities.

Long story short, it would be nice if abilities we activate manually had a symbol or a different format so we could tell them apart from abilities that kick in automatically, and if an ability is to be used only once per turn, then by all means, include the phrase "once per turn."

The rulebook itself is... mostly fine. It could use some better organization, and it would be nice if the rulebook had the rules for Outbreak and Partners in it so we wouldn't have to carry three different rulebooks if we had a question about something.

[The Archivist]

The rulebook has certainly come a long way since Premiere, especially in its clarification of exploring and terminology. I thought Mercenaries was quite effective aside for some minor issues. Here's what I'd probably address:

1) Have an appendix with the different modes/mods with short descriptions and links to the rulebooks where they occur (or updated rules documents). This tips off players about other ways to play without cluttering up the rulebook. Trying to cram the complex rules of Outbreak or Versus mode (the latter which doesn't see a whole lot of play) just makes for a longer document. Emphasis should probably be on Story and Mercenaries modes unless something new is being introduced or featured. I liked how partner mode was hinted at this way in the Mercenaries rulebook. This should be done with the master FAQ and older custom inventories as well.

2) Only use pictures from the the current card set, at least when explaining the core game rules. Although the publicity is nice, showing older cards (like the old ammo) complicates things. Players will see micro images and then want to look at the actual card for clarification. They can't do this if they don't own them.

3) I like the aforementioned advantages of using Magic language for cleaning up ability text. RE has more or less successfully standardized its own language with "can", etc. Skills and some of the new abilities introduce "while", which is essentially a static ability. This one in particular needs some clarification. Maybe just continue to look for ways to tighten up language for easier comprehension. Toughness LV. 1 isn't a pretty read.

4) Agree on inclusion of an example for random/draft setup of resource area.

5) Have webspace and a link at the end of the rulebook dedicated to Bandai approved fan-created content, such as apps, scenarios, etc. This stuff is scattered all over the place right now, but there may be some cool way to pull it all together. Zombicide does this effectively. It has a map tile editor, blank character templates, scenarios, etc.

[Gibb]

It's a minor thing, but I think this would have helped my friends and I out a while back when Alliance came around. In the rulebook there is a sentence that says something like "the following things can be done in any order", then it lists all the things you can do each turn, Take Actions, Use Items, etc. However, it has all these things in a numbered list, making the person referring to that list think they occur in that order. I believe Rulebook 1 actually didn't say "in any order", which is how I learned the game, but I didn't realize the rules were revised to allow you to buy at the end of the turn for example. If the things to do had asterisks in front of each one instead of a numbered list, it would be clearer. Also bold the font for "in any order" to make that really clear.

Example:
"On your turn, you may perform any of the following actions in any order.:"
*Use Actions
*Use Items
*Use Character Abilities
*Use Skills
*Purchase a card from the resource area
*Explore the mansion
etc