In the previous post I proposed what seemed like a simple change -- switch from individual player turns to simultaneous 'group' turns, whilst keeping essentially the same turn logic. However, as I'm fleshing out this idea, I realize that this actually fundamentally re-wires the entire concept of the game. Specifically, with individual turns the game is basically an efficiency puzzle with a healthy dose of risk management tossed in: you want to parse the information puzzle efficiently, and while luck plays a role in that, managing your luck is important to cracking the information nut. Moving to simultaneous turns inevitably moves the map phase of the game in the direction of being a game of brinksmanship, again with a healthy dose of risk management tossed in. It has to be this way, in fact, or the simultaneous turns make no sense.
The encounters in their present form already have an element of press-your-luck tension. You want to keep rolling because the more checks you get, the more rewards you get. But you want to stop rolling before the enemy reaches your city lest bad things happen to you. This will still be the case in a multi-player version, but it can't be the only thing; it seems that there must be some degree of competing not just against the enemy clock but also against the other players who are in the encounter. One problem is that this has already been done to great effect in Diamant, and there's a real risk of just creating a clone of that.
I think there are three ways around this, and this system should use all of them. The first is that the rewards are asymmetric. For each encounter, there are two equipment cards available as rewards, and the ability to look up clues from a subset of the temple cards as determined by the theme card in the city. Second, taking a clue lookup means you remove a cube from that temple area's 'bin', and either discard it (earning you a green cube, helpful for the final hubris challenge) or add it to the current encounter, making the enemy more powerful -- for everyone who is still in! Taken together, getting out early means you're probably going to get less stuff, but you are less likely to get closed out of an equipment card and/or can make the challenge harder for the other players.
The third thing is to add in 'effect' symbols to some of the encounters. 'Effects' are a new feature of the temple, and basically allow you to, essentially, use the machete to destroy the rope bridge. We could add this kind of effect here as well. Some encounters could have two tracks, one which is 'easier' (i.e. gets to more rewards more quickly), but has an 'effect' symbol, such that, if another player reveals an equipment card with a matching effect symbol, all the players on that path take some damage. So in addition to 'stay in/get out', there's a decision about which path to take based on what the other players might be able to do to you. Presumably, only players still in the challenge can trigger an effect, so if you have the right equipment card, you may want to stay in simply to have the opportunity to whammy the other players.
One nice thing about these additional considerations is that they afford some additional 'handles' with which to differentiate the encounters and maybe make them feel more thematic. Version 7 was just 'roll a die and that tells you the challenge category' -- quick and effective but quite bland. Version 10 had encounter cards that showed you the scene you faced, but it was just chrome -- the 'basket game' or 'x marks the spot' weren't functionally different except in the challenge category and difficulty of the challenge. But now with the success tracks and a couple of simple effects it's possible to make them feel different. For example, maybe with the 'basket game' there's an 'explosion' symbol late on the track, so staying in too long runs the risk that another player will blow up the truck, costing you a life cube; whereas 'X marks the spot', on one track you can get to the answer with fewer total rolls but must spend a 'time' examining the room, whereas if you charge in you will have a harder time finding the tomb AND might put yourself at risk of another player throwing a 'lever', which lights the oil in the catacombs on fire...
One semi-related and also nice thing about the simultaneous system. As I might have mentioned in the last post, each player would have several location cards, and each turn, the player who is furthest back on the time track plays one of these cards, indicating where that turn's encounter will take place. There will only be nine turns total, so this controls the game length and makes it the same for all player counts. But more importantly, it essentially eviscerates the 'do nothing' strategy. If you try to sit out too many of the encounters, you'll end up in the back of the time track and will have no choice but to take turns, and this is compulsory -- you can't pass if you're last on the time track. In light of this it might be worth revisiting the changes to the temple that were intended to kneecap the 'do nothing' strategy, as some of them might not be necessary any more.
Apart from this it may add an additionally interesting dynamic, whereby you want to participate in a given encounter to potentially get the info that it will provide, but sitting one or two out will leave you in the back of the track, giving you the ability to control where the next encounter will be, which may sometimes be important. So I think there will be jockeying for position on the time track and jockeying for position on the success tracks, and hopefully these together will create a really nice level of player interaction.
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