Encounter structure for v10

[Note:  I had already mostly drafted this before Steve's post on Friday...some of these ideas may have good overlap with that post, and some may conflict -- but I think it's worthwhile to have both posts preserved, for comparison purposes]


Assuming we are going to adopt a v8 scheme for challenges (at least for now), it's desirable to have a few things crystallize.  Here are some possibilities for v10.

In this approach, instead of rolling a die to determine the type of challenge you face, you flip an encounter card. To give a feeling of place-specificity, the encounter card that you face would be determined by the location you go to. In addition to the three main city categories (disregarding Strongholds for now), I think that each city each city type will have several "sub-locations", and each sub-location has associated encounter cards. The questions we need to answer are:

1. How much can a player control what sub-location he goes to?

2. How much knowledge does he have in advance of what reward he will receive for passing the encounter?

3. How much knowledge does he have in advance about the category/difficulty of the challenge he'll face?

4. What consequence(s) does he incur should he fail a challenge?

I'll engage these questions out of order. For question (3), the v7 approach to this has proven the test of time -- a player knows, going to a circle city, that he'll face either a Luck or Wits challenge, and so on for the other city types. The encounter cards should capture this dynamic, and remove the overhead of a die roll to determine the category of the challenge -- the distribution of the challenge categories on the encounter cards handles this organically.

For question (2), I would suggest that, per Steve's suggestion, the reward for passing a particular encounter should be known in advance, and all encounter cards for a given sub-location should pay that reward (and possibly something better as well for some "surprise" cards). I think this is important as a way to aid player planning and move progress along. It's one thing to go to a city, and face a swordsman that you're not adequately prepared to beat. It's another thing to beat that swordsman and find that he gives you a check mark in category X, instead of letting you remove an enemy cube. So I think it's good for the rewards to be fixed and uniform for a given sub-location, but the challenges to be uncertain but bounded.

For question (4), I increasingly favor the scheme mentioned in a previous post. The "vanilla" consequence of failing a challenge would be something minor like "end your turn". BUT, as "enemy operative" cards are revealed, each makes a particular encounter card outcome bad.

For example, for encounters that give a check mark, if Enemy Operative Z is activated, then these ALSO move the enemy progress track, e.g. So in the case of failing a challenge, Enemy Operative Y might, in addition to loss of your turn, ALSO force you to be relocated to a stronghold. (See that post for arguments about how this might help to make the game more dangerous and convey a more tangible sense of the enemy becoming more and more powerful as the game progresses).

Back to question 2: what are the rewards for passing a challenge? I think there should be 6, with one reward on each card:

• Receive a check mark in solution element 1
• Receive a check mark in solution element 2
• Receive a check mark in solution element 3
• Remove (capture) an enemy cube
• Receive an "Ally" card (provides stats boosts)
• Receive an "Item" card (provides a special power)

(For the last 2 items, my thought was that each region would have one card of each type face-up, and by passing an encounter in that region, you would be authorized to take the region's card.)

So, on to question 1, which becomes important in light of the answers to the other 3 questions -- if you want to receive this reward but not that reward, or if you want to face this challenge but not that challenge, you want to have some control over where you go. So how are the encounter cards structured into decks, and how do they convey a sense of place-specificity? I think there are two schemes that could work.

(i) Each city type could have 3 sub-location types, each of which pays one of these 6 rewards, for a total of 9 rewards (strongholds don't count in this since they are special). The sub-locations are appropriate to the type of city you're in; so a "circle" city, a "Major City", might have a Library, Museum, and Hotel; a "pentagon" city, a "Minor City", could have a Market, Castle, and Church. Maybe these are 3 separate decks for each city type, or maybe a single deck and you're given a choice of a couple of the top cards from that city type's deck when you face an encounter.

(ii) There are 6 location types, each with its own deck of encounter cards. Each city type has 3 associated with it: 2 that are shared with the two other (non-stronghold) city types, and one that is unique to that city type. So a Market might be present in both a triangle and pentagon city, but a Church will only be found in a pentagon city (eg).

The advantage of (ii) is that it's a more unified framework, the disadvantage is that there's no way to ensure the challenges you face in a city will be properly bounded, UNLESS we rigidly associated a particular challenge type with a particular sublocation. (Which could work, but loses some of the fun associated with the unpredictability of v7, in which you might go into a circle city loaded up on Luck but poor on Wits, just hoping you'll get a Luck challenge).

The advantage of (i) is that it can be more city-dependent, the disadvantage is that it creates more kinds of cards, but only 3 more compared to (ii). And if all of a city's encounter cards are kept in the same deck, then it might actually feel more compact (but then there will be some luck as to whether you can go to the sub-location you want to go to. To mitigate that, maybe there's a rule that you can draw down into the encounter deck until you get to a sub-location you're willing to face, but each card that you "skip" is +1 to the enemy progress, or you have to pay 1 AP to flip cards, etc?)

Finally, back to question 2 one final time: how does this integrate with "leads"? If we adopted Steve's idea, that most/all theme cards are available but must be pulled on to the board at a particular city type and sub-location, maybe it's simply that, instead of (or in addition to?) receiving the standard reward for passing an encounter, you can pull a theme card into that city, if its associated sub-location matches the sub-location you're in. I think I like this idea -- though it doesn't have the immersive quality of getting a card that says "You've received a telegram from Henry Jones that he's in Vienna", it does permit some planning, some competition between the players, but doesn't require as much bureaucracy as lead cards would. So it's worth thinking more about.

Quasi-Leads that Work Within the System

I really like the aspect of previous attempts to have a system whereby you have information about where something may be located and can act on these hunches. However previous systems have fallen short by adding cumbersome levels to the information system.

The concept of quasi-leads gives the feel of having leads to where something is and a reason to find it with no drastic change to the systems already in place or under consideration.

The system is based on three parts:

The first is a combination of theme cards and city designation. Each of the three city types is given a designation based on shape and region for a total of 6 city types. For example, the circle in the west is a museum and in the near east it is the site of ancient ruins.

The theme cards are then organized into three groups based on the city shapes. For example, the curator can be found in a circle city. Following the themeing of the cities, you get the result that a curator can always be found in either a museum or ancient ruins.

Players have a reference to show which theme cards can be found in what city types, though it is largely intuitive (an informant can be found in bars or markets, books of ancient knowledge can be found in libraries or temples, etc.).

The second is a combination of challenge cards and item cards. Challenges are divided into the 6 cities and regions, so that museums, libraries, ruins, et al would each have a pile of challenge cards. In the v7-8 hybrid, each pile would be divided into 2 known categories (so that players have some control over their route planning and optimizing their turns) that have a value of from 1–3. This value would be added to the enemy in the city to give the total challenge level of from 1–9.

In addition to the challenge cards, there are 12 item cards (or a combination of "No Challenge" and items) that show things like the grail diary or headpiece of the Staff of Ra. The items give a challenge category and value (v7-8) or an image to be decoded (v9-x). If the player passes the challenge, they take the item into their holdings.

The item cards are shuffled and dealt two each onto the 6 piles of challenge cards. Each pile is then shuffled and placed on the board.

A player entering a city (or using an action to face a challenge, giving an option to hunt for items) flips the top of the challenge pile for that city, possibly getting a regular challenge or rewarding him with an item.

The third part is the interplay between items and theme cards. Each item is only useful when taken to a theme card. Only Professor Jones can decipher the clues in the diary, and he has no information without it. Return the headpiece to Marion and digging costs no action while you are with them, etc.

This gives players an in-game reason to try and target specific theme cards over the basic need for information to drive the game forward. A player in possession of the grail diary can look at the reference and know that the professor can be found in a library or temple, so he can target his search in that way.

The benefit to this is that it works well within the current system (or can integrate into newer systems) and give the feel of having leads to follow without having to overburden the information system. Solo playtest have proven very positive so far and I'm interested to get your feedback to see if this is something that can be folded into the next playtest session to test out.

A thought on encounters to tuck away for later

I don't know if this warrants its own blog post. But just wanted to capture a quick idea for posterity.

There are two candidate versions of the encounters/challenges system that we've discussed as a replacement for the approach of v7.

The first was tried in v8: you go to a city, flip over an encounter card appropriate to that city, and it shows you the category (luck, wits, etc) and degree of difficulty of the challenge, as well as the reward you'll receive if you pass the challenge. To attempt to pass the challenge, you add up your stat in that category, any adventure cards you wish to contribute, and the result of a d6. The advantages of this system are that it manages the location-specific distribution of challenges automatically, and that it's very simple: every card has a clearly-specified reward and difficulty.

The second was tried in v9: the encounter card shows only a picture, and you choose a response (category and degree) based on what you think will "beat" the challenge -- eg "Luck 3" or "Wits 5", then slide the card into the Interrogator to see what the outcome is. The features of this approach include the possibility of different outcomes for each challenge, and that it feels thematically appropriate as well as "real" -- you're forced to guess at a "solution" rather than being told by the card how to beat it.

The point of this post is to say that there may be a couple of in-between options that have the simplicity and ease-to-prototype of the v8 approach while still retaining some of the features of v9.

First, I started a discussion on this subject at BGG, and one suggestion that emerged could be adapted in this way. Start with the v9 approach -- you are shown the scene, and you pick your response (category and degree) -- then, you slide the card into the Interrogator, and look up the /category/ you're attempting. And instead of an "outcome", it shows you the die that you roll to find the challenge's difficulty.

For example: You face an Arab Swordsman -- you decide to respond with Fight, and commit, through your stats and cards, to a "degree" of 5. You look up the result for "Fight", and it shows "d6". So you roll a d6, and the result is 3 -- that represents the degree of difficulty of the challenge. Since it's less than the 5 that you committed to the challenge, you pass. If instead you had chosen "Wits", the result may have been "d10", or "2d12", indicating that it's more difficult to fight a swordsman with your wits than with strength.

This approach is more like v8 in that the reward for passing the card would always be the same, but it would still have the possibility of different solutions like in v9. And part of the appeal of this is that you'd often be choosing between an obviously "better" solution (eg fighting the swordsman) and a solution that is probably harder, but that plays better to your strengths (eg debating with the swordsman).

Speaking of which, I wonder if we should contemplate reworking the challenge categories. For example, "fight" could be generalized to "use force" -- you can use force to beat up a Nazi thug, OR to try to push through a locked door.

A second way that some of the v9 concepts could seep into a v8 approach could be through the idea that different visual aspects of the card affect the challenge or the resolution of the card. For example, every player has a weakness/phobia, and if other players see your phobia on a card you're facing, they can announce this and force you to face the challenge at a -2 penalty, or whatever. This kind of thing could encourage players to be attentive during other players' turns, which might make the game feel more interactive. Maybe this scheme also fits in with Steve's idea of some encounters giving you an auto-clue -- it's there on the card, but you have to spot the trigger to be able to get it.

The Interrogator

The v7 prototype has an excellent board concept design by Steve, whereby the 12 cities each have a slot for a solution card, and a little window. To attempt to dig for the temple in that city, you slide the solution card into that city's slot, and then look through the window. The especially cool thing is that the information on the cards is overprinted with red masking, so you can't read it ordinarily, but the windows have red rubylith, revealing the text on the card.

Unfortunately, this would make for a pretty expensive board. I talked to a pretty well-known game printer recently and they had a very hard time figuring out how they would even go about producing this, and felt certain that it would drive the cost of the game up substantially. It's a great concept, but is there an alternative?

I think there's actually quite a simple one. We currently have 12 pieces of information on each solution card, arranged in a 3x4 grid. We could instead simply arrange the information in a 12x1 grid (ie, a row) along one edge of the card. Then, instead of separate slots, we would have "The Interrogator", which is just a card sleeve with two windows, one on each face. Say you want to dig in London. Just slide the solution card into the Interrogator, face-up, until "London" shows through the window.(*) Then, flip the Interrogator sleeve over and look at the window in the back, which will either say "Yes" or "No" or whatever.

(*) This is different from the current scheme where each location essentially has its own "sleeve" -- here the possible locations are printed on the card. This does take up more space, but it also makes the interrogator enormously flexible, as it can handle any kind of solution element we want to include, including ones we haven't yet thought up.

The particularly nice thing about this is that I think that it removes the need for the red masking, since the secret information can stay on the side of the card that's face-down. This is good for two reasons:

(i) The "answer" doesn't have to be text -- it could be a picture, an icon, whatever.

(ii) The red masking wouldn't work for color blind players. Since the game is intended to be playable in solo mode, it's preferable to have an approach that doesn't rule out color blind players being able to play without the aid of a non-color blind player.

Additionally, we're not limited to 12 solution elements anymore; although 12 is about the right number, with adequate spacing, for a 3.5" card. But if we just have to have 18 elements for some reason, we could simply make the cards longer. (Since the solution cards aren't handled/shuffled too much, this wouldn't be that big of a pain).

This isn't the most pressing thing to implement near-term, but it is something we could think about if we could to a point where enough changes have accumulated that a prototype change is in order.

Steve Checking In

- Is there a way to make the temple exploration feel more like temple exploration? It's tough -- we don't want to distract the players with more stuff todo. It's more a question of, are we getting the feel right? The stone door slowly swings open, and a staircase leads down into the black depths of the temple before you -- what dangers await you inside? Can we communicate this more palpably? I don't know. Does it matter if we can't? Probably not.

I like the concept of more immersive temple exploration, but have to bring up the importance of keeping the general rules of the temple the same as on the outside. Movement should be the same (one space for free plus AP to move more quickly), stopping at challenges and facing them the same way (die roll plus cards committed). That was a major concern during the last playtest here in Rochester.

Can we make the exploration more immersive without changing the structure or adding to the length of the temple section game (last 1/4)? For now can we focus on the challenge system within the temple and making it more organic.

I also like the idea of some clues costing more than three check marks to access. That would make it OK to have a lot more theme cards rotating through (I imagine 24 for some variety). The absolute most necessary clues are correct grail and temple features. The location of the temple is a close third, but if the worst that happens is that no one gets the 2VP if the enemy finds it, then that's not a big deal. We could make it more of a big deal in the VP award (3 instead of 2?) and starting the enemy track much lower than 35 (or whatever it ends up being) if the enemy finds the temple.

Then the remaining clues would be less valuable and require fewer checks to view.

- What should the structure of the clues be? Right now (v7) they have the virtue of being infinitely replayable. I wrote a blog post about a possible alternative clue structure -- instead of each clue adding 1/3 of a composite total, it would be that each clue potentially (but not always) appends the lower level clues. So you don't know for sure whether you actually need that level 3 clue or not -- in some cases the level 2 clue will be sufficient. But since you can't know, it's always better to get that level 3 clue if you can. It's a different kind of risk assumption. In v7, if you have level 2 temple info, you've got a 50-50 guess on your hands, and it's just fundamentally a guess, a coin toss -- you simply do not have any way to know for sure, period. But an approach where you might know, but can't be certain whether you know, could be interesting in a different way. There may be other possible clue structures as well. And maybe different scenarios can structure the clues in different ways, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a uniform solution across the board.

I like the idea of the more ambiguous third clue, though it only changes the finer appreciation of the system. As such I'd like to keep that change on the backburner until we're ready for an entire prototype overhaul. For now can we focus on everything that can be fine tuned without redoing the clue cards for now? Let's save that for the major anniversary edition Lost Adventures session!

Back to challenges for a minute, I'm on board with the idea of 6 different decks of (undoubtedly half size) cards, one for each type in each region. What should the challenges look like? Do we want a simple smattering of challenge types in each deck (maybe 2-3 of each type per deck)?

I like the idea of having each card be ambiguous in the challenge that you face, but am not in favor of making each challenge a metagame that operates outside the rest of the game. Specifically, I'm not a fan of having multiple paths to succeed from each challenge. That combined with the possibility of recruiting allies with specific bonuses means that the challenges will be too easy to beat and provide no tension.

The abstraction of having specific challenges designated on the card with two types mainly in each deck (like having more fight and wits challenges in the markets of the near east, etc.) works very well in v7 (in a far more abstract form). Can we use that as the foundation for the next playtest, just with cards instead of a bland die roll?

I'd also like to have special item cards sprinkled into the challenges for players to find and then interface them with character cards from the theme deck. For example, a player turns over a challenge and finds it's the grail diary! He faces a challenge to retrieve it, but must take it to Henry Jones, Sr. to get anything from either ("I wrote them down so I won't have to remember...").

Seth's thoughts on Leads...

The Comment system said this was too long, so I'll make it a blog post instead...

Aside from that random idea in the comments of that last post (which popped into my head while reading that post), I have stronger opinions on this which are as follows. Italics denote quoted text from Jeff's post.:

I first assert a well-worn design principle: rewards paid out by a game system should be commensurate with the opportunity cost paid to obtain those rewards. In this game, the reward is information, so the better the information you get, the more you should have to pay (or the harder it should be) to get it.

I do not disagree with that assertion.

In version 7, nine of the theme cards are out on the board at the start. All cards are equally good -- each gives a check mark which is worth one level of clue (although some have more categories than others).

... so they're NOT equally good. I do not think they're equally good, because even 2 cards that each give 1 check mark toward the location of the Manuscript (for example) give different additional check marks. That's a large fundamental difference, since even players looking for the Manuscript are not ONLY looking for the Manuscript.

The "problem" with this system is that it's a little boring, and that it doesn't differentiate between the cards. Yes, the Grail Diary has information about more subjects than Elsa Schneider, but if you're JUST interested in getting info about the Grail Room, they're equally good.

As I just mentioned, you're never JUST looking for information about the Grail Room. I also disagree that it's boring. However...

Increasing the number of check marks required to get a clue gives room for differentiation of the cards. Now, the Diary can know a lot about the Temple Challenges, by giving 4 check marks, whereas Henry Jones Sr, with his somewhat shaky memory, only provides 2.

I think this would improve things... Suppose each card had, for example, 4 icons... some had 2 or 3 of the same icon, while others had 4 different icons. This would definitely serve to differentiate the info obtained from Theme cards, even if only concerned with 1 category.

But adopting the same approach as v7, where all the cards are laid out from the start, would result in the opportunity cost being essentially the same for all of the cards, despite their unequal rewards.

I disagree with this assessment.

Yes, board geography and the game clock play into this somewhat -- it may be better, for example, to visit Jones Sr in a nearby city, accepting the lower payout, than to burn the time/resources to travel across the board to see that Diary.

Board geography, whatever challenge you face to get the check marks, and the opportunity cost of what other check marks you get (and what you DON'T get) when choosing one theme card over another. I think those are all significant costs, and not essentially the same.

But above and beyond this, it seems that the game has to "protect" the higher-valued information more aggressively. And leads are one way to do it.

This is a possibility, but I still don't think it's necessary - it still feels like additional hoop jumping for no good reason (because I think the cost of collecting info is already appropriately high and varied enough for the game as it was in v7).

In this way, the game can make the more difficult cards harder to acquire, but can do so in a completely organic way, as opposed to adding an additional cost or surcharge associated with accessing the better cards.

I think you don't necessarily want Theme cards that are "better" than other Theme cards - I think you want Theme cards that are better suited to one thing over another, but are less well suited for a different thing. The overall net quality of the theme cards should be more or less equal, I think, which allows for not having to specifically worry about "protecting" the "better" ones.

If theme cards have a hierarchy, then the game becomes about going for the best theme card you can get to. I assert that the game is more interesting if the theme cards you are interested in visiting depend on your strategy and course of action, not on the strict hierarchy of the cards (a hierarchy which would not change game-to-game or based on your situation).

I like the idea that all theme cards are functionally the same, and the game elements themselves differentiate between the various cards simply by the way their built, and not in a way that the players need to explicitly police. It keeps the bureaucratic overhead of playing the game minimal, and I think that's key to keeping the length and complexity down.

This sounds noble, and I like the idea of keeping down the bureaucracy and making the game easier to play for the players.

And I too like the mini-race element of the artifacts. As far as I'm concerned though, the Artifacts DID work the same way as the other theme cards, once you found them.

The info hunt to find the artifacts before you could look at them is similar to this leads idea you are proposing in that it adds additional hoops to jump through before you can access that information. I liked that that particular type of hoop jumping is the same type you're already doing in the game (to find the temple info), and I liked that you need not find those particular cards or that you could visit them once someone else did find them.

I do not think the game would work if every theme card required that type of hoop jumping - you need some place to get the initial info to find those other cards. And I think adding leads to each theme card (on top of, or in addition to) having to find the Artifacts is overloading the game with another system.

I liked the amount of info hunting that was in the game before, and I think making the icon system more fine grained will help. What I think you ought to be more worried about changing is the feeling of deduction - you wanted players to be able to deduce information based on player action, and I've never really seen that come through. I did have 1 player who actively tried to use that type of information, but it never amounted to much if anything.

Check marks and leads go together

I am increasingly thinking that, in the possible scheme where multiple check marks are required to get a clue, check marks and leads go together. I first assert a well-worn design principle: rewards paid out by a game system should be commensurate with the opportunity cost paid to obtain those rewards. In this game, the reward is information, so the better the information you get, the more you should have to pay (or the harder it should be) to get it.

In the most recent version, we had leads but no check marks -- every card gives a clue. Since it was hard to know in advance how good of a clue a given card would provide, it was correspondingly hard to know which card to go for. The lead system therefore put a barrier in front of acquiring information, but the barrier was the same height regardless of the quality of the information.

In version 7, nine of the theme cards are out on the board at the start. All cards are equally good -- each gives a check mark which is worth one level of clue (although some have more categories than others). Since you had to visit multiple cards to get multiple check marks, there was an acceptable balance between opportunity cost (more trips to visit more cards) and rewards (more check marks).

The "problem" with this system is that it's a little boring, and that it doesn't differentiate between the cards. Yes, the Grail Diary has information about more subjects than Elsa Schneider, but if you're JUST interested in getting info about the Grail Room, they're equally good. It was not a bad abstraction by any means, but as this blog demonstrates, I'm always inclined to ask whether there's a better way.

Increasing the number of check marks required to get a clue gives room for differentiation of the cards. Now, the Diary can know a lot about the Temple Challenges, by giving 4 check marks, whereas Henry Jones Sr, with his somewhat shaky memory, only provides 2. But adopting the same approach as v7, where all the cards are laid out from the start, would result in the opportunity cost being essentially the same for all of the cards, despite their unequal rewards. Yes, board geography and the game clock play into this somewhat -- it may be better, for example, to visit Jones Sr in a nearby city, accepting the lower payout, than to burn the time/resources to travel across the board to see that Diary. But above and beyond this, it seems that the game has to "protect" the higher-valued information more aggressively. And leads are one way to do it.

A possible approach could be to have the lead system be city shape specific. Again, each theme card has an associated city shape, and you go to a city of that shape to get a lead to that theme card. We could have the lower-valued theme cards take leads that send the players to less-dangerous locations, whereas the leads to the higher-valued cards require you to travel to locales where you'll have to face a challenge. For example, a typical lead to a card like "Sallah", with minimal info, may send you to a major city, whereas a typical lead to a card like the Grail Tablet, with strong information may send you to an Enemy Stronghold.

In this way, the game can make the more difficult cards harder to acquire, but can do so in a completely organic way, as opposed to adding an additional cost or surcharge associated with accessing the better cards. And again, it continues to treat the "relics" as ordinary theme cards, instead of special theme cards with special rules. I think I like this; although I did like the mini-race element that the relics added, in practice I like the idea that all theme cards are functionally the same, and the game elements themselves differentiate between the various cards simply by the way their built, and not in a way that the players need to explicitly police. It keeps the bureaucratic overhead of playing the game minimal, and I think that's key to keeping the length and complexity down.