The joy and pain of council meetings
March 23, 2007
Council Meetings are what separate cycles of play. They establish a lull of downtime between one series of conflicts and the next series of conflicts. They are a time for mages to restore or improve both their covenant and themselves. But they’re still just as rife for interplayer competition as a conflict.
One of the primary ideas behind Quadrivium is the Tragedy of the Commons. The idea that the actions of a given individual when in competition with others for a shared resource can negatively impact the resource and thus diminish its utility for all users (including the individual themself). Covenant Resources are the shared resource and players are forced to balance the good of the community and their own long-term good against the short-term utility of using the resources to win conflicts.
Council Meetings are one of the places where the “long-term” utility of a Covenant’s resources come into play. These resources can be used to restore a character’s Harm, improve a character’s Traits, support Companions, and more.
Note that in every phase of the sequence except the first, the starting “acting player” is the player who acted last in the prior phase.
The sequence of a Council meeting is this:
1) Covenant Repair
2) Bidding for Resources
3) Pay Support for Companions
3) Mage Actions
4) Decide number of years elapsed
Covenant Repair
Starting with the last player to be the Antagonist and continuing clockwise, each player in turn is given one opportunity to spend Council Votes to restore Harm to Covenant Resources or pass.
Each player can restore Harm on any number of Covenant Resources in one of two ways.
Individually – The player expends 3 Council Votes for each point of Harm they restore on a single Covenant Resource.
Collectively – The player places one or 2 Council Votes on a single Harmed Covenant Resource. One each of other players’ turns, they may add to this collection. Once the amount equals the number of total players that single Covenant Resource is restored. If all players take their turn and there is insufficient Council Votes, the expended votes are discarded and the resource remains Harmed. Note that not every player needs to contribute, so long as the total is equal to the number of players. This is a way of spreading the cost of repair out among all the players, at the risk that the Council Votes are wasted.
Bidding for Resources
A single card is drawn and the suit of the card is used to determine the Covenant Resource that bidding begins with.
Starting with acting player and continuing clockwise, each player may bid any number of Council Votes (up to their maximum) to have first pick of the Covenant Resource under bid or pass. If a player wishes to have first pick they must bid higher than any prior bid (meeting the prior bid is insufficient) or pass. A player who passes may no longer bid on this resource. The bidding continues around clockwise (skipping players who pass) until there is only one bidding player. The winning player must discard Council Votes equal to their bid and may be the first to select from this resource. Note that if no players bid (e.g. all players pass) then the initial acting player for this resource is considered the winner.
Starting with the winning player and continuing clockwise, each player on their turn must do only one of the following:
A) Pass and take nothing. Once a player passes, they are forbidden to take from this resource again during this council meeting. They still receive their turn, but may only pass, declare a Duel, or raise the Ante.
B) Take a single point from this resource, if any remain, or Harm a single point of this resource if none remain (essentially taking past the limit of sustainability).
In addition to the one of the actions above, a player may also choose to do one the following supplementary actions:
A) Declare a blocking Duel (see below) on this resource (only if they passed).
B) Pay one or more Council Votes to raise the Cost of Taking from or Harming this resource. This amount now represents the Cost in Council Votes that any future player must pay to Take from or Harm this resource. Note that using a supplementary action to take resources is also subject to this increased cost. Any future player may choose add to this cost by expending additional Council Votes (not including votes the player expends to pay any existing cost if they take from this resource).
C) Take further resources beyond the first point at a cumulative cost of 1 Council Vote each (e.g. a second point for 1 Council Vote, a third point for an additional 2 Council Votes, etc).
When all players have passed, access to this Resource is closed. Bidding is begun on the next Covenant Resource clockwise in the same fashion. Essences are always bid on last.
Pay Support for Companions
Each mage must now pay support for every Companion they have. Companions require a number of points of Wealth equal to the number of uses they provide (e.g. a Vigor Companion with 3 uses requires 3 Wealth).
If a mage cannot pay the full support for a Companion, they take Harm equal to their unsupported uses (e.g. a Vigor Companion with 3 uses support for 1 Wealth take 2 Harm).
Mage Actions
Once all resources have been bid on and passed, each player may perform one of the following
Duel for Resource
Decide number of years elapsed
