Same nut, different shell

The latest flurry of posts have reflected a flurry of activity in the last several months, but as the snows have stopped and the shovels have been put down, I think a new 'state of the game' has emerged, and so it might be good to write out a new 'nutshell' post to summarize what that means.

Lost Adventures is (now) a game about the creation of an adventure archaeology movie.  Each player is a screenwriter, guiding the fortunes of their preferred character through the film.  The player whose character emerges from the screenwriting process (a) alive (i.e. not killed by the plot of the movie) and (b) with the film of the shortest total running time, has earned the right to have that character be the protagonist of the film.  The player is given a mat with 7 slots for 'adventure cards', four of which begin filled (but which can be overwritten) -- these represent the iconic attributes that the player's character will be remembered for in the film.

An adventure archaeology film has three key elements (not counting the in media res opening sequence):  a lost artifact is hidden somewhere, and the protagonist(s) must acquire information to locate it; (b) the protagonist(s) enter a lost temple and pass through its perils to acquire that artifact, and (c) a vigorous Enemy is pursuing him/them every step of the way.

The information-gathering happens in the "map phase", a series of nine shared encounters.  Each turn, an active player (furthest back on time track) selects a city to travel to, and flips over an encounter card, which sets the scene.  First that player, and then all other players simultaneously, allocate 3-4 cubes to their player mat, representing their investment in the encounter.  They can play cubes so as to boost the group's chances in the encounter (mostly through the use of adventure cards that match the encounter in some way), or to their 'rewards' box, or they can elect to forego the encounter entirely.  (Joining the encounter incurs a jump on the time track, plus a second if the player must change regions to reach the encounter -- so sometimes you want to sit out).

Once everyone has committed, the 'investment track' is adjusted and we begin flipping 'resolution cards', which represent the storyboarding of the scene.  Each has some check marks and some X's.  X's move the enemy closer to the active city.  Check marks increase the success track.  After each resolution card, players decide whether to stay in or get out and claim rewards.  If you get out, you receive rewards equal to the current number on the success track, but only as many as the number of cubes you allocated to rewards.  And when you exit, you take your investment with you.

Rewards are either the ability to look at temple cards, or the right to receive (draft) adventure cards.

Commentary:  Thus, in the map phase, we have two sources of interplayer tension -- you want to commit enough that the group will be successful, but you also want to entitle yourself to receive rewards, as well.  And, you want to stay in long enough to claim rewards, but get out before bad stuff happens and/or before other players take the rewards you had wanted.

After the nine encounters, players enter the temple.  The temple consists (in the grail scenario) of two rows of cards, each of which has a single peril.  Players will have acquired adventure cards that have icons corresponding to these perils.  Prior to each temple card's revelation, each player may allocate cubes to adventure cards on his player mat, which adds 2 to each peril symbol, should it match the temple card.  Then the card and the player cubes are revealed, and players place their pawns on the temple analogue of the investment track'.  Then we also reveal a resolution card, but this time, all spaces on its track are filled with negative things -- 'traps', 'noise', or 'enemy' -- and the things you incur are those located between your position and that of the player with the highest number of matching peril symbols.  So if the current temple card has 'fear' as the peril, you have 3 'fear' symbols and the player with the most has 6, then you incur the penalties on the resolution card at spaces 3, 4, 5, and 6.  The card lines up with the track nicely so this is all very intuitive.

Commentary:  Thus, in the temple phase, we have interplayer tension of a different sort, but it's specifically related to the cube allocation phase.  You know what cards everyone has, but you don't know (or maybe you don't remember) what information they have -- so do you place a cube to boost your preparation for this next peril, possibly putting you on top?  Or, if you think it's likely another player will also boost their prep for this card, perhaps you're better saving that cube when it can have a bigger relative impact.  Plenty of doublethink happens in this phase, amplified by cubes being a limited resource.

After the temple perils, we reach (grail scenario) the grail room, which contains 10 grails to choose from.  Each has 3 characteristics and cards representing the three characteristics of the true grail were viewable as rewards during the map phase.  Each player picks a grail; those who choose wisely get a small reward, but those who choose poorly take on a curse, which affects them in the final phase.

Throughout the game, you can get better actions, or more of them, by taking on hubris.  Of course, in an adventure archaeology movie, the enemy is undone by its hubris in the end, causing the bad guy's face to melt off.  In this game, this happens via the 'hubris challenge'.  This also uses 'resolution cards', and there's a corresponding investment track.  Your position on that track is given by (a) green cubes you managed to acquire during the map phase, for things like staying in an encounter to the bitter end or revealing the whereabouts of a relic, and (b) cubes in your own color that you didn't allocate to boost your peril symbols in the previous phase.  Resolution cards here are similar to the encounters -- flip a card and all checks below your 'investment level' purge one hubris token each.  If after five cards you're out of hubris, you've passed the challenge.  But it's not so simple, because each card causes some pain, particularly if you took on a curse at some point.

This all sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but because every player is involved in every action of the game, the latency is quite low, and the total game length shouldn't be too bad.  I think that each encounter should be able to play out in about 5-6 minutes, and the temple, maybe 3 minutes per temple card and 1 per hubris card, so with 5 perils, the grail room, and then 5 hubris cards, that's another 20-25 minutes.  So 75-90 minutes seems realistic.  There are definitely some resolution luck elements, and I don't think it is, or intends to be, a deep 90 minute strategy game like Puerto Rico or Goa.  But, there are a lot of interplayer effects and meaningful decisions, nearly 100% uptime, and abundant thematic immersion, so I hope on balance it's an experience players will enjoy.


And taking a step back (maybe this will be the subject of a future post), I think it's actually a nice mixture of previous versions' ideas, albeit after running them through the blender on 'high' for a while.  It has the linear temple and temple perils of v1, the add-cubes-to-the-board-as-you-travel of v4-7, the enemy-chases-you of v10, the suspenseful encounters and persistent adventure card effects of v11, the jockeying for position of v12, and of course lots of stuff from v13.  I might not go so far as to say this is what the game has been trying to become all along, because I still think v7 really embodied all of our original design goals.  But I would say this version is the culmination of everything that came before v7 and everything that we've tried since; and I think it's still true to the original vision, even as it has shifted in player experience from a tense efficiency puzzle to a tense interplayer scramble.