Renaming Prolix, and Pax Robotica tweaks
by Gil Hova
I am renaming Prolix. I won’t get into why I’m renaming it, but I do have good reason to.
Just like with Pax Robotica, I asked friends on Twitter and Facebook to help me brainstorm.
For awhile, I wanted to base the title off the word “Lexicon.” As I was getting into the shower yesterday morning, a name hit me out of nowhere: Consonance. It has a nice ring to it, and it reflects the fact that the game is mostly consonants.
So, the leading candidates are:
- Consonance
- Lexicon
- Lexation
- Lexica
What are your thoughts?
Meanwhile, I’m still processing the four-player game of Pax Robotica we had at Protospiel. The players enjoyed it, but the game stalled in the last round. The battles also took too long to happen.
I might be able to test the game on Saturday, if my game group is willing to try it. Here are the changes I’m making:
- Extra bots for the 4-player game. Three more Level 1s, three more Level 3s, one more Level 6.
- One more Level 1 bot for the 3-player game.
- I’m tweaking the Tech deck. Right now, there are A-level cards that come out in Rounds 1-2, and B-level cards that come out in Rounds 3-5. I’ll tweak it so that the B-level cards come out in Rounds 3-4, and a new C-level card will come out in Round 5. C-level cards will award points as well as Tech, so the Round 5 Tech draft won’t be useless to half the players.
- Changing the number of cubes to pull from the bag. Right now it matches the round number: 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 cubes from the bag depending on the round. I’m changing this to 1, 3, 3, 3, 6. This way, there’s more action in Round 2. I also like keeping the numerology consistent with the rest of the game, so it’s easy for players to remember. My one concern is that Round 4 may not be dramatic enough with this new scheme, but we’ll see when we playtest.
Formal Ferret Games 
Hey, Gil. Nice article. I guess I still don’t like Consonance. Perhaps it’s because I was an English major with a creative writing emphasis, and “consonance” will always be repetition of initial consonants, e.g., “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” It says repetitive and trite to me.
Gil –
late to the party…. but I thought that Prolix should be named Maximum Verbosity. Infocom shout out and it fits.
A year later, it’s still referred to as Prolix, so perhaps the renaming crisis has pased?
If not, then I like the Lexicon-based names much better than Consonance.
Lexicon – sounds kinda inert and un-fun
Lexation -“lexicon” reference is unclear
Lexication – better, could work
Lexica – could work
Lexicoff – kind of a “lexicon off” competition? I may be reaching here…
Something relating player mastery to the lexicon might be nice. Lexicommander, Lexiconquest, Lexacto, Lexitall (Lex-it-all, like Know-it-all), etc.
Yep, the renaming crisis is over. It’s been released as Prolix.