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RootJam 2025 - Burrow Bureaucracy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #8 | 3.637 | 3.833 |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #8 | 3.637 | 3.833 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #21 | 3.584 | 3.778 |
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?
Yes
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
2,No
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Comments
Nice work on this faction! I love faction abilities of Office Workers and Paper Work. They are so thematic and fit a boring office job setting! I like how you made a swarm of workers that sort of get in the way and are hard to get rid of, but don't attack you and just pressure you into attacking them or paying them cards.
One thing I'm a little confused about is their scoring engine. Do they primarily score through Mindless Paperwork and crafting? Do they also score a point when a player removes something due to a notice?
I guess if they are drawing a lot of cards they should be good at crafting and scoring through paperwork, but let me know if I missed something.
Thanks for the kind words and the feedback!
Yes, their crafting is their only scoring engine. They originally also had a toned-down version of the Rat’s Oppression scoring as a supplement to their crafting. It was too easy to fill up the map and ride to victory on passive scoring, and also just wasn’t interesting - why waste cards crafting when you could spend those cards on actions and get more points from dominating the board?
The crafting/paperwork points require you to choose between action economy and scoring economy, which makes for a more interesting play style.
EDIT: Forgot to add, no, no points for removals due to Notices. Bureaucracy is happy to get the extra card, but they want the building slot. Making it less punishing to comply encourages other players to actually give you what you want rather than paying the tax to prevent you scoring a point. Great question!
Geez you were bolder than I was... I debated not giving my faction a battle action for thematic reasons but ended up giving them a toned down one. I love that you went through and did a faction with a massive warrior count that can't fight at all from their base actions.
All in all, really really cool concept of a faction! Some very interesting decision space in there, and some very cool interactions (Review Notices can be super strong for otters, getting trade posts back in the supply. ) Taking actions from crafting icons is such such a phenomenal idea, to think how indispensable this might make cards such as Soup Kitchens or Prop Bureau.
Would very much love to try these out, seems fantastic so far! Great job
Thank you for the encouragement! I was super excited to figure out the icon- asked action economy. Indirectly inspired by the Bats’ “Bat Poker” from a few PnP’s ago, also the Mechanical Marquise 1.0. Kind of surprised there hasn’t been more done with crafting icons in the true game yet, it seems like there’s a lot of interesting things that could be done there.
Haha I love this so much. The dystopian office vibes are outmatched only by the wit in the action naming, faction overview, and mechanics.
I'm really glad you've put thought into their setup, giving them the biggest initial setup of any faction currently in the game. This lets them have a shot at using their multitude of workers to set up some early game buildings which are gonna be so crucial to them!
One thing that may help is some sort of mechanism to protect you from easy battles to take away your notices. It may be easy for all factions to move out of / battle away your notices for easy points. Leaving you with less cards to craft (your main scoring mechanism) and meaning you spent that setup on not much D:
I do love how they're always defenseless, and using that terminology is easy to follow. I hope it doesn't mean they're TOO easy to squish tho!
Although all of this goes without me playtesting them, so they may be fine. You've definitely got a fun core to work around, and the only other bureau in the game is my lil faction :P
Cheers!
Thank you for the awesome feedback, fellow Bureaucrat :D (or Bureaucat?)
Yeah, the Notices can be tricky. What I’ve found with previous iterations of the Bureaucracy is that it’s easy for them to crowd out a clearing, so if they really commit to protecting a Notice somewhere it’s nearly impossible to dislodge them. That was before I nerfed their recruiting, so maybe less of a problem now. My vision for Notices was that they function more as offensive pressure than engine components, so I generally haven’t been too sad to lose a Notice if it cost somebody else some actions to remove.
:P ok thats huge, I'm glad you've given em a fun way to contribute to aggression. Sweet!
Great job on this faction! I feel like a lot of entries took “swarm” as being fast and violent, but this is a refreshing(?) design approach to make someone that can’t attack. The Notices are nice way to put pressure on other factions, but only to the point they might try and wait it out another turn…
Your faction board is really clearly laid out. The Q&A and Law were just what I needed to confirm everything I thought about the faction.
Just had one question: if you use Overtime to place Notices, does that impact the number of actions you can take? For example, if I end Daylight with 3 Notices on my player board, can I take 3 “Serve Notice” actions? Or, if I take a “Serve Notice” as my first action (leaving only 2 Notices on the board), do I only have one action remaining?
Also, I noticed that Z.3.4 in the Law said that the faction has 9 Offices and 6 Notices, unlike the 7 and 3 on the faction board. Not a big deal; I assume those are just modifications from play testing ;-)
AHHH you found a typo! Yes, they had way too many Offices at first, and your handsize was originally limited to unused Notices, which was cool, but there wasn't a reason to place that many of them. Missed fixing it there :P
Thank you for the feedback! Glad the Q&A and Law were helpful. Yeah, I should've made an entry about the placed Notices + Overtime; I think the best way to resolve it would be to say the Notices are counted at the start of the step and then placing them doesn't remove actions until next turn.
That's what I assumed would happen (since the alternative could get very muddy). Another option could be to say that you can't "Serve Notices" with "Overtime" actions (the boss wants those notices delivered during business hours!), though that might mess with their action potential too much. Either way, I'm intrigued to give this a try myself!