Whenever possible, I avoid flash lays. However, as this election has forced me into doing about 17 of them, I would like to take the time to talk about them in depth. Before we start I would like to mention that I theoretically like the "fluff" behind Flash Lays. Discarding your current identity in order to sneak into someone else’s life to learn their secrets is a neat idea conceptually. However, the mechanics behind them are atrocious and turn flash lays into action sinks that can easily take a full candle or more. For those who are not exceptional friends, that is a huge deal and the reward is certainly never consummate to the actions spent.
My problems with Flash Lays are several fold, and so I will be listing them in bullet point format below:
1: Flash Lays prevent you from taking other actions. Now I am listing this first because there are very few other activities in FL that completely consume your character and prevent them from checking their opportunity deck, performing social actions, or attempting other actions. This makes sense in regards to what a flash lay is according to the game’s fluff, however in terms of crunch this is terrible. Nothing other than a menace popping or sailing out from London takes you so completely away from the game. Short Stories (which are also quite the action and resource sink) at the very least allow you to leave and come back when you have actions to burn, however once you begin a flash-lay the only options are victory or restarting from scratch. [/li][li]2: You cannot discard cards in a Flash Lay, which leads to a serious problem given that some of the cards are absolute crap. I am not even talking about the obstacles that auto-play, I am talking about the cards that can only give you 3 points of progress. With the goal of 75 (assuming you manage to draw and hold the card that ends the game) each one extends your time in the Flash-Lay considerably, either you need to draw 2.33 of them to equal out a full 7 point card or they end up as a wasted action because a 7 card comes along and pushes you over the 75 needed. For characters that cannot auto-succeed on the 7 point cards and are forced to play the 3 point cards, Flash Lays are double the number of actions at a minimum. This is a problem for folks with just one candle, since that takes a flash lay and turns it into an activity that might all day long to complete.[/li][li]3: In addition to several of the cards being absolutely awful and the fact that you cannot discard cards, you are limited to only 3 cards in your hand at a time. This is especially frustrating for folks who have saved up enough to gain the coveted 5 card lodging, but only exasperates the above problem because you cannot safely hold onto the crappy cards in order to speed up the Flash Lay. If you had a 5 card hand, Flash Lays would be a snap since you could safely hold onto the poor cards and then only bother to play Up Your Sleeve and 7 point advancements. Not only does this fact reduce the strategic elements of a flash lay, but they also make higher level characters grumpy when they see their huge housing investment come to nothing in this instance. [/li][li]4: The random nature of obstacles is a bundle of crap, as I have gotten flash lays which have pushed multiple menace’s up to 3 simply by playing the two starting obstacles over and over every draw attempt, and then adding in the "you have too much X" auto-play card to boot. Sure, after 5 of these play you might have enough Up Your Sleeve to remove the obstacles but 5 menace increases (even 3 in a row) that occur randomly is frustrating. Especially when the dice gods decide they hate you this particular morning. This could be avoided if Obstacles only triggered after so many actions, or if they only triggered on action failures, or if they had an internal timer that at least prevented them from being drawn one after another. Instead, you can just be obstacle trained for 4-5 actions and that is before you decide to add in extra obstacles for progress (never do this, it ruins your life).[/li][li]5: Up Your Sleeve is not common enough and is not on the right cards, as there are only a few ways to gain up your sleeve (necessary for advancement on a few cards and for removing obstacles) and they are mostly tucked onto cards purely about gaining Up Your Sleeve. If instead these options were divided up and placed onto the lower advancement cards (or if you want to be mean the higher advancement cards) then players would need to make meaningful choices about what they want to do. Do they play the quick advancement, or try to gain Up Your Sleeve to remove the obstacle and progress that way? As it is, a Flash Lay is just a mindless click fest of "Does this give me 7 progress, 2 Up Your Sleeve, Remove my Menaces, or at least get this card out of my hand? Ok, play it"
Anyway, if this was tl;dr to sum it all up: In my opinion Flash Lays are boring action sinks but they do not need to be. Simply changing the cards to provide meaningful choices, or giving the players the ability to discard cards, or giving the players their lodging in card draw, or changing flash lay progress to a reasonable level (3 gain on a 75-100 point limit is LAME guys) would be enough to make them fun or at least action friendly. As it is, I cannot think of something more likely to make me roll my eyes and grumble while playing than being forced to do a flash-lay. And I just did 17 of them. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy election season but the flash-lays are so painful that I always save them until last. I would rather go on 20 cases in a row than do a single flash-lay. Their only redeeming quality is restoring your opportunity deck to full and I’ve no interest in paying 16+ actions for that when I can luck into a party that just flat doubles my deck.
With that rant over, what are your thoughts on Flash Lays? Should they be changed, am I stick in the mud, do you agree, disagree? Discuss.
Well, you are a stick in the mud. Trust me, we smell our own.
You bring up a few good points, though. I usually don’t have much of an issue with them because of Exceptional Friendship and 200 in every stat (I really should start a second character, I guess, or send this one NORTH and redo it all, but I’ve got cold feet).
Being unable to access other actions makes sense, I think. It really means you have to be invested in the Flash Lay. That being said, you’re right in that the investment doesn’t completely match the rewards. You’re also right about some cards being crap compared to others, but part of me thinks that should be kept because it’s the nature of a Flash Lay while another part thinks Obstacles being auto-drawn already gives enough fickleness of fate to the mechanics. At least it’s not like the Pickpocket’s Promenade.
My tentative input is to increase the rewards a bit and allow for the discard of non-Obstacle cards. After all, this would allow lower-stat people wanting to take it slowly and safely the option to do so, while higher-stat people can use their charm and manipulative talents to turn over marks like it’s going out of style.
Then again, this is a casual post I’m making while working on other stuff, so it’s entirely possible I’m not thinking it through and there’s something stupid in what I said.
Isn’t it an infinite deck? Allowing discarding means you can just keep drawing until you get the best card(s) over and over again. Or a non-infinite deck and we get the awful situation that the Nadir/Polite Invitation zones have, where you sit around waiting for your deck to refresh before you can do anything.
I actually have to agree with you on this one, the flash lay just feels like a big action sucker without really any real benefit to it. The idea is pretty good, pretending to be someone else but the way they go about it feels frustrating and boring. The whole "up your selves" may as well be tossed out because by the time i get enough to remove a obstacle, i already got over 100 points. I just wished it was replaced with something worth while, or at least more chances for up your sleeves so we can quickly move pass the flash lay.
Do heists provide Dirty Secrets Parelle? Because that is what I have been farming and goshdarn if I could heist I’d have done that in a heartbeat. Flash Lays are just that bad.
And yes, the deck is infinite because it is the only way to progress. You MUST play a card from the collection, if you get stuck in the Nadir without the right cards you can always leave and come back next week. In the party, you can either toss and wait or just advance time to when you care about it. Either way, those two zones are Ok because they use your lodgings which give you more than 3 cards to work with. In a Flash Lay it is 3 cards and you cannot possibly hold onto the bad cards to encourage the good ones (when you find the Confessional Evening you must hold onto it or risk action waste) which leaves you 1 card slot to hold a bad card you don’t want to draw again.
Parelle makes a good point. Heists (undertaken in Spite) also keep you from doing anything else till done, and also have a three-card (almost completely) no-discard deck. However, you get plenty of opportunity to build up Casing and buy stuff to make it easy(ier) to get good outcomes from cards, so it’s not as painful as a Flash Lay can be.
Other situations that take you somewhere you cannot escape until done: Pickpocketing expeditions in Spite (though they have a rather short fixed duration); Zailing the Unterzee (though again, you get the chance to shorten the trip with certain preparations in advance); all of the locations where you get sent if a primary Menace goes above 8 (Slow Boat, Mirror Marches, Tomb Colonies, Royal Beth).
I agree that, of all of these, the Flash Lay is the least fun, partly because one’s efforts to manage Menaces can be frustrated by the RNG and partly because the cards and storylets involved are so generic that they’re dull to play. I think that the best way to change the Flash Lays would be to let the player prepare for them, analogously to the way s/he/y prepares for Heists. You could even use Casing as the quality whose points buy you assets that make successes in playing the Lay cards easier (e.g., researching your Mark’s tastes; learning about your Mark’s friends/colleagues; etc.).
[quote=Catherine Raymond]Parelle makes a good point. Heists (undertaken in Spite) also keep you from doing anything else till done, and also have a three-card (almost completely) no-discard deck. However, you get plenty of opportunity to build up Casing and buy stuff to make it easy(ier) to get good outcomes from cards, so it’s not as painful as a Flash Lay can be.
Other situations that take you somewhere you cannot escape until done: Pickpocketing expeditions in Spite (though they have a rather short fixed duration); Zailing the Unterzee (though again, you get the chance to shorten the trip with certain preparations in advance); all of the locations where you get sent if a primary Menace goes above 8 (Slow Boat, Mirror Marches, Tomb Colonies, Royal Beth).
[/quote]
Heists don’t limit you to three cards, which gives you a lot more flexibility. Also, they can be completed much more quickly and have a much better reward compared to the time invested. They also have a slightly larger range of outcomes–more Making Waves if you make more progress, more Suspicion if you make noise, a couple of different rewards (including a secret hidden one).
Bringing up the Menace areas raises another point: while the text rewards during the campaign have a bit of lore, the Flash Lays themselves don’t have much of anything that could only happen in Fallen London. The focus on mundane methods is one of their strengths, but the text could be more strongly linked with the world in which all the PC’s other adventures take place. (Also, as a Glassman I think it would be really cool to gain progress by taking some honey/stepping through a mirror and insinuating myself into my target’s dreams.) edited by aegisaglow on 7/3/2017
I also agree that flash lays are too big and too boring for too little a payout during the elections. I always sigh when I see one. I mean, they are a big challenge when your stats are low, and I suppose that you can get a thrill out of them when you are a newcomer (they could be a step of the Shadowy or Persuasive career), but when you have to do them again and again and AGAIN and your stats guarantee that you will always suceed, a flash lay is mind-numbly boring.
Maybe election flash lays could be different from regular flash lays and give more progress per card, or have a lower goal (say, 30 or 50 instead of 100)? This way, they would be shorter. This could be compensated by putting more obstacles in them, so they would not be too easy, but not so action-intensive as they are now.
I’m in the same boat with Flash Lays. I generally regard them as a huge, boring action sink and the rewards are pretty minor compared to the time invested in them. I wa dreading being a fixer for this event, but have been lucky enough with opportunity cards that I’ll get away with only doing the 6 to learn about the campaigns.
One of the more subtle things they might be able to do to make them more bearable would be to either increase the availability of up your sleeve or reduce the amount of up your sleeve required to clear obstacles. Obstacles are annoying, but they give you a huge progress boost when cleared. Building the system more around dealing with and clearing obstacles instead of the boring incremtal progress from cards would make them more interesting and more tense and you have to fight off the menace gain that will fail the challenge.
It also seems as though when you turn an obstacle into an opportunity, the opportunity never shows up, usually because it’s already too late in the Flash Lay. This is a quite upsetting because you take a while to grind that much up your sleeve, but you never get the fruits of your toil.
1 action to pick a target
7 actions to build 20 CP of Casing (6 if we have a gang)
1 action to buy Inside Information
1 action to start the heist
And we’re off! Reaching 7 progress and cashing out could take as few as 7 actions, but easily as many as 10 if we spend time losing and gaining Cat-Like Tread. With the preparations, it comes out to 20 actions, a full candle.
Flash Lays are trickier to estimate. Reaching 75 progress can take between 11 and 25 actions. If half of our progress actions yield 3 progress and the other half yield 7, we’ll spend 15 or 16 actions on making progress. I’m not familiar enough with flash lays to say much more on this, especially when it comes to obstacles and menace cards, but it’s a start.
I find flash lays tiresome too, but I really think all that’s needed is to reduce the target number. For me it’s the length of time that makes them annoying. If you made easy ways to get the cards you want (such as being able to skip through the infinite deck) that might be a bit too much like an "I win" button. The setbacks and menaces ought to be there if you want it to be at all interesting too.
It’s probably less about actual speeds and actions spent, and more of how Flash Lays engage more attention - Heists have you spent half of it in about 2 to 3 clicks with Casing. Flash Lays require more attention and clicks, especially with bad luck, so it at least seems more frustrating on surface.
The lack of new cards or options despite the many, many times Flash Lays are used in many stories (ES, Elections) probably make them duller than they actually are, too. edited by Estelle Knoht on 7/3/2017
For me, the surprising this is that I actually enjoy every other part of the game that uses Flash Lay mechanics except for the actual Flash Lay. I like the Finishing School, I like the Zee, and I think there was a part of Flint that was mechanically similar. In fact, I almost wish it was used more (partly because that would mean more deck refreshes!).
I think the problems with the original Flash Lay originate in the fact that there’s too much content. This is an odd complaint to have, and one that I doubt could apply to anywhere else in Fallen London, but I think it’s an actual problem for Flash Lays. The original Flash Lay feels like it lacks direction, and perhaps is a bit bloated. By comparison, Zailing feels more directed, and the Finishing School is extremely tight and compact.
The fact that Progress builds slowly is related to having so many cards that we could see. Being so beholden to the RNG is exacerbated by the excess of cards. The feeling of lack of control and direction is caused in part by the RNG, and caused in part by juggling too many qualities (two progress, three menaces, a few obstacles, and a quirk).
Meanwhile I’ve never really felt engaged by the narrative, because the Mark is kind of anonymous (necessary to make the content re-usable), and because the progression cards feel so random and disconnected.
Whatever other mechanical changes might be made (and I agree that it should take less actions), I think that slimming down the content needs to happen.
[quote=aegisaglow][quote=Catherine Raymond]Parelle makes a good point. Heists (undertaken in Spite) also keep you from doing anything else till done, and also have a three-card (almost completely) no-discard deck. However, you get plenty of opportunity to build up Casing and buy stuff to make it easy(ier) to get good outcomes from cards, so it’s not as painful as a Flash Lay can be.
Other situations that take you somewhere you cannot escape until done: Pickpocketing expeditions in Spite (though they have a rather short fixed duration); Zailing the Unterzee (though again, you get the chance to shorten the trip with certain preparations in advance); all of the locations where you get sent if a primary Menace goes above 8 (Slow Boat, Mirror Marches, Tomb Colonies, Royal Beth).
[/quote]
Heists don’t limit you to three cards, which gives you a lot more flexibility. Also, they can be completed much more quickly and have a much better reward compared to the time invested. They also have a slightly larger range of outcomes–more Making Waves if you make more progress, more Suspicion if you make noise, a couple of different rewards (including a secret hidden one).
Bringing up the Menace areas raises another point: while the text rewards during the campaign have a bit of lore, the Flash Lays themselves don’t have much of anything that could only happen in Fallen London. The focus on mundane methods is one of their strengths, but the text could be more strongly linked with the world in which all the PC’s other adventures take place. (Also, as a Glassman I think it would be really cool to gain progress by taking some honey/stepping through a mirror and insinuating myself into my target’s dreams.) edited by aegisaglow on 7/3/2017[/quote]
I stand corrected on the card number; it’s been a little while since I’ve done one.
I might be in the minority on this, but Flash Lays and their length really don’t bother me nearly as much as the people here. I just walk in with 20 and use them all up, ending up either at the exit already or rly close to it.
At least, they bother me less than having to write a short story as a Campaigner, which is 30-40 actions spent throwing away resources for a 60% chance at the resources you need.
I do agree that Up Your Sleeve is largely pointless in its current state, and dealing with obstacles needs to cost less of the quality and generally not a disappointing reward for your actions during a Flash Lay.
Ditto on the stockpile of 20 actions before dropping into a Flash Lay. Doing it that is a good way to refresh your deck during the election if you still need to Advance Your Career, too.
I do think that Flash Lays could stand to be a little shorter. I enjoy them as an Exceptional Friend, but half the time they take more than 20 actions, which means your average player can go in with a full candle and still get stuck for upwards of an hour when they run out of actions, which isn’t good for a system that locks you out of everything else until you’re finished.
There’s a good reason I get most of my Dirty Secrets from Campaign Resources or the candidates’ cards. I have much better things to do with my actions than use upwards of twenty at a time on a Flash Lay.