Pecking Order has me counting my chickens before they Hatch
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The Wayward Flock RootJam 2025's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #17 | 3.215 | 3.389 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #21 | 3.584 | 3.778 |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #22 | 2.899 | 3.056 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
Yes, does now!
TTS File URL (If you've uploaded to Steam Workshop)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484463434
Comments
Pecking order as an ability is absolutely amazing. You're having to make a decision on the previous turn about what order of actions you'll be taking... Then you forecast the first of those actions to the opponents! This gives them the turn to mess up your plan of action, but still gives you some agency to determine your own life. Really sweet stuff and you've made some great design space here.
Your actions and faction board itself is really easy to follow along with, and have a super duper fun narrative that supports it. Like another co on enter said, this is giving major chicken run energy and I'm a fan.
Bonus points for having a really fun built in policing mechanism in calamity, that ALSO affects your opponents as well! Maybe there's even a way you can weaponize that... It does seem like a really big setback, but maybe in practice your faction is able to bounce back on. Playtesting will let ya know!
The flavour of how you gain points is super fun, but I'm also curious whether you'd actually WANT to do meaningful policing since your warriors are so precious. Some playtesting of their scoring mechanism would reveal that in the future too :P
Great faction!
Submitted
The Bearcat Bureau (ROOTJAM '25)Thank you so much! Glad you were able to dig into the faction so much! Also, I'm glad they're easy to follow, I'm sure some of the wording could be cleaned up, but it's great to hear they're easy to comprehend!
Yeah, I was hoping calamity could prove difficult for others to deal with too, and that maybe if the flock player planned ahead a bit and knew they were about to enter calamity, they could use it to set back a competitor at the same time. Yes! I need to spend some more time testing them to make sure they play smoothly, hopefully the star will align and I'll have a group to test them at the same time as I have time to test them!
Yeah, you're right that their scoring de-incentivizes policing at a certain point, but I think of it as a curve - early game (or just post calamity) their scoring is ramping up and each warrior is precious. Then, eventually, they need to slow down their own rapid and automatic warrior gain or they will trigger calamity. I can see them trying to police through battle and hoping to take just the right amount of hits to ride the high scoring sections of their track without tipping into calamity for one more turn!
Looks really cool! I like the mechanics of the Calamity happening if there are not enough visionary cards. It's a cool way to ensure that people are careful about destroying your clutches.
For the pecking order, if you only have 2 warriors on the board does that mean you resolve 0 visionary cards or 1? I think it would be 1 since it says empty slot and not empty column, but I just wanted to make sure.
But all in all looks like some really cool mechanics! Choosing the actions the turn before but letting opponents only see the first one is a really nice touch. Then they can decide if they want to remove it, although they don't know what action will be revealed next, very tricky!
Submitted
Sightseers of the MireThank you so much! I appreciate your feedback and taking the time to read and understand it so thoroughly!
You're absolutely right that it would be 1 visionary card if you have 2 or fewer warriors. Though whether they'd be in any position to resolve the order you intended them to resolve is anyone's guess!
Glad you like the mechanics! Yeah, I think it'd be a fun dynamic, with almost an element of bluffing - the balance between getting rid of an action you don't like and fearing an even worse action below it! And of course it helps people interact with its mechanics if they can try to do a little planning around it.
Also, on a sidenote, as a relative newcomer to this community, the work you've done on the root database is nothing short of astonishing, and really useful! It's truly incredible, and from all of us just joining this game now, thank you so much!
It's Chicken Run in Root!
Love the look of this faction - Pecking Order is inspired!
Although I love the concept, I worry that Calamity might potentially be too devastating for other factions, like multiple revolts all at once. I'd love to see it in action though to see how chaotic it could be!
I'm a little confused about the specifics of Pecking Order, Set Pecking Order and how Calamity is triggered. From what I understand reading the Pecking Order description, it sounds like Calamity is only ever triggered when you have almost all your warriors on the board and are asked to resolve 7 visionary cards, an impossible task. Is that correct or are there other instances in which Calamity can be triggered?
I'd also love to know how the visionary cards work step-by-step. Where are all the visionary cards at the start and end of your turn? All in a specific order on the Pecking Order slot? Where do the visionary cards go when you resolve them (like it says 'retrieve discarded visionaries' - from where?). And then on the Pecking Order slot, the 'remaining cards' bit confuses me. The way I currently understand it, there would always be all 6 visionaries on the slot at the point during the Birdsong Pecking Order step, so there would never be remaining cards (ie, any number other than 6). I'm obviously missing something along the way.
Anyway, cool faction, really interesting theme and I think the Coop Track is a very effective, elegant way of scoring. I do quite like the idea of the nameless oppressors swooping in to take the chickens back to the barnyard. However, the idea of some terrifying farmer presence stalking around the board in a random automated way is also really interesting to me and might be worth some thought down the line. Not sure it could work but there might be some sort of mechanic there. It takes a few steps in Evening and if it lands on a clearing with your warriors/clutches, some or all are captured again.
Submitted
The Forsaken Cabal (Root Jam 2025)Thanks so much for your detailed feedback! It's really complimentary!
So re your calamity/pecking order rules questions - I think what you missed is in the pecking order rules at the top of the board. Whenever an enemy player removes a clutch, the top pecking order card is discarded. This means that you can end up with fewer than 6 visionaries in the pecking order, and can trigger calamity with fewer than 19 warriors on the board. If you suddenly have fewer visionaries in the deck than actions you can perform, you'll trigger calamity when you try to resolve them on your turn.
This also allows other players to manipulate your pecking order, and forces the flock player to think carefully about their order - if they put their most essential action on top of the deck, to guarantee they'll have access to it next turn, other players can destroy a clutch to discard it, putting that visionary out of action for the round. Alternatively, the flock player can bury the actions they want several cards down the order, but risk not being able to use them if too many of their warriors get removed. I think it's both an interesting layer of tension and allows enemy players to have some say in when calamity occurs - do they risk destroying a bunch of clutches knowing that that will make it calamity more likely next turn?
As for where the visionary cards are - At the end of our turn you set your pecking order and all 6 end up on the slot on your board in order. Then, if during opponent's turns any are discarded, they are moved off the stack and off your faction board - they cannot be resolved in your next birdsong. In birdsong, you resolve the remaining cards in order from the top down. If you're ever asked to resolve a visionary by the coop track and no visionaries remain to be resolved, you trigger calamity.
I hope this helped clarify your questions! I'm sure there are clearer ways I could have worded some of these interactions. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks again for your feedback! Glad you find the coop track effective (though I should clarify somewhere that the coop track here takes the place of the supply for warriors)! The idea of an automated farmer stomping around the board is really fun!
Totally clarifies my questions - I'm not sure how I missed that in the Pecking Order ability berry.
I wonder if having Pecking Order info spread around so much of the board is part of it (the berry, the Birdsong action, the card outline). But there's a lot of info to get out there and you wouldn't want it in one big block. Perhaps just trimming some words out and a bit of reordering is all that's needed.
A few suggestions to consider for rewording and ordering:
- With the ability berries, put Pecking Order first, then Calamity as one triggers the other. I feel like the second half of the first Pecking Order sentence can go as it can be later detailed in the Evening phase and on the pecking order slot itself. So it reads 'Your actions are determined by the order of your visionary cards. Whenever a player removes a clutch, discard the top card from the pecking order'. I don't think you need 'enemy player' unless there is a way for you to remove your own clutches.
- Calamity could read something like 'Calamity occurs when you are asked to resolve a visionary card and none remain in the pecking order. Remove all pieces from clearings you rule, return them to the relevant supplies and score no points for their removal.'
- Then the Pecking Order in Birdsong could read: 'Resolve a number of visionary cards equal to the number shown above the rightmost empty slot on your Coop Track. Check for Calamity.' This is perhaps a shorter way to point players to the Calamity ability berry for more information without having to go into more detail in the Birdsong actions.
- Set Pecking Order could be simplified to: 'Arrange your visionary cards, including those discarded, in any order.' I think the title "Set Pecking Order" suggests placing them in the Pecking Order slot without having to specify in the text.
- Then the Pecking Order slot text could read: 'Place visionary cards here in any order, face up so only the top card is visible.' This ensures that exactly what you need to do with the cards is written in the spot you'll be looking at while wondering what to do (if that convoluted sentence makes sense!)
These are all great suggestions! Thanks!
You're right, the order of the berries should be reversed. The reason the "enemy player" line is there is because during calamity you'd end up removing your own clutches, though I suppose that wouldn't matter as calamity would only trigger if there are no visionaries to resolve... So I think you're right, it's totally unnecessary!
I think all your wording changes are good ones, I get so in the weeds with a design that sometimes I end up missing easy spots to simplify, so thank you! I think the only thing I'd add to your changes is in the visionary card slot I'd clarify that you only place your visionary cards there whenever you set your pecking order, so we don't have people placing already discarded visionary cards in that slot between turns. Basically 'Place your visionary cards here in any order during Set Pecking Order, face up so only the top card is visible.'
Yes, that makes sense.
I think when we spend a lot of time thinking about things, it becomes extremely hard to then think about it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time. We have so much knowledge about our factions that subconsciously, we can fill in the blanks when reading through things. It take fresh eyes to go 'wait a minute, so how does this bit work exactly?!'
Not that my suggestions should be taken as gospel - it's just an interesting task to try and interpret someone else's vision so that you understand in the clearest way possible. What makes sense for one doesn't necessarily mean it's 100% clear for another coming in and looking at it for the first time.
But I definitely feel like being ruthless with word count is a bonus - it's hard though - my own faction could really do with a bit of text trimming, especially in the Healers section, but you end up tying yourself in knots with it!
And I don't know if you'd need to add anything about the Coop Track being where your supply of warriors go. It felt intuitive to me and could simply be clarified in the Law of Root rather than the faction board.
An alternative solution could simply be calling it the Coop Supply or Coop Supply Track. So something like:
'Remove warriors from the supply column by column from left to right, top to bottom. If warriors return to the supply, place them on the track from right to left, bottom to top.'
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