Yeah, have to playtest that one. It was a toss-up between 0 or 1 being the minimum. Definitely not letting anyone move it negative, though.
Maybe something like “if three players in a row choose 0, the clock advances 1.” Allow the choice because it’s meaningful, but don’t allow the game to drag.
Thank you, that is perfect with one tweak. The clock may not move the same amount twice in a row. That not only prevents the stagnating 0,0,0, but also the rush of 2,2,2.
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Ooh, nice simple rule. I like it!
Question for the room:
This relates back to the skirmish game, again as a thought experiment in minimizing components.
How do you all feel about replacing die rolls with card draws?
If I take 12 cards, 3 each of the numbers 1 - 4, and have you pull two and total them, this is the numerical equivalent of 2d4 (assuming you can shuffle them properly).
I could also, instead of that, have you pull two and the resultant combination could correspond to a number 1 - 10, which I believe would result in a flat probability distribution.
How does that feel? There’s something about drawing cards that feels deterministic even though it’s not, and something about a die roll that feels very swingy even though it’s no more swingy than an equivalent deck pull, at least to me.
The card is the ultimate tabletop game component. Any game can be constructed only of cards. A card can be a pawn, a die, a board, anything. No matter what the game is, every component represents an intentional choice the designer made for that component to be, or not be, a card.
So in the specific situation, when to use cards vs dice for the purposes of generating randomness?
The most obvious case is when we are using the randomness to select a card at random. No point in rolling a d52 and then picking the indicated card from a deck when you can just shuffle and draw one off the top.
Another reason to use card, or other non-dice randomness generators, is if the odds we are going for do not map cleanly to dice. e.g.: the aforementioned d52. Design the perfect probabilities for the game in a spreadsheet. If they map to d6, that’s great. If they map to d17, dice are not the way.
A very good reason to use cards for rng is hidden information. Die are best for public randomness. You roll and everyone sees. Hidden dice are bullshit because they lead to so many avenues for intentional or accidental cheating. A dealt card kept hidden allows for random results that only some players know, but other players can trust in.
This most common scenario for decks as RNG is when we want to guarantee a perfect distribution as opposed to a probable distribution. We all know the odds of 2d6. Now imagine a deck of 36 cards. In this deck is 1x2, 2x3, 3x4, 4x5, 5x6, 6x7, 5x8, 4x9 and so on. If you shuffle the entire deck and draw a card at random, it’s identical to rolling 2d6. What if every card that gets drawn is then removed? Actual 2d6 could theoretically hit 12 every time, or never hit 12. The 2d6 deck with removal will hit 12 exactly 1 in 36 times and hit 7 exactly 6/36 times. Bell curve no matter what. If the game wants that perfect distribution, e.g.: Freemarket, then cards are the way to go. This seems to be what you are asking for. Just have to be aware of the problem of player knowledge as the deck gets low.
A card can not be a disc that is to be flicked in order to collide with and bounce off of other discs in a tabletop dexterity game. 
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Sure. But not really
Cards can not be meaningfully flicked. Unless you make them a cm thick. And small. And disc-shaped…
Unless you want to argue that all discs are also cards. In Pitchcar, are we to say that the cars and tracks are just cards?
We should make a game like Bohnanza except it’s just arguing about berries.
You could make a card-based dexterity game that involves sieging castles made of cards. Throw cards at your opponent’s ramparts; if it hits, it does whatever damage it does, and if it misses your opponent gets something. Another piece to add? Points? More ammo?
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Scott has it backwards, cards are a shitty version of pogs.
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So despite the fact that tech writing is a major part of my job, and I have like 12 years of experience developing ISO-17025 compliant documents, and have professional publications - I struggle to write rules docs efficiently. Layout and information flow and just the whole shebang is a challenging process.
In poking around the Internet, I discovered that The Game Crafter has a dead basic “rules document” template, which is formatted in a “put this kind of information in this place” style. I’m finding it a very helpful tool for keeping me on the straight and narrow, focusing on getting rules on paper in a logical way, and saving design and layout for later.
Anyway, if you struggle similarly, it may help.
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Holy fuck that Kickstarter is gonna be lit.
I don’t even play minis games anymore and now I want to make a Kill Team just to have an excuse to buy that.
I always want to get into 40k, but I can never see myself actually putting the work in.
I think table top simulator is the best way to go for this
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In the constant quest to find new prototyping and playtesting platforms that suck less than TTS or Tabletopia, I’ve come across screentop:
So far, out of everything like this I’ve tried, it’s the most suited to games that are primarily 2D information. Tiles/cards, dice, and “containers.” It’s not as fully-featured as TTS (for example, no hand display on the bottom of the screen - instead you need to make a “container” that’s only visible to you and dump cards in it), but as of right now you can build a functional game with it and actually play it. And it’s free.
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Here are some people making tabletop games!