More cowbell

I finished a playtest of v15, and while it mostly worked, some issues emerged.  By about the 4th of 7 turns, nearly all of the players had full information about the temple. Thus there were subsequent encounters where no one cared about the info that was available, and those encounters fell flat.   Happily it made for a good stress-test to see whether the new temple system ("poison") works even when everyone has full knowledge, and the answer is a qualified yes.  The experience of wanting to bid high to get to move seemed to come through successfully. 



There are actually two problems bundled together here, players having full knowledge and players having identical knowledge.  We can address the former by making info harder to get, but getting info is fun and increasing the frustration level is a poor solution.  A different solution may be to put more information into the game.


Currently the info you can get includes:

Relic locations (2)
Temple start city (1)
Temple perils, red (2)
Temple perils, purple (3)
Aspects of the true grail (3)


That's 11 total pieces of information that are available.  But, we can't add more temple perils, although that would be the easiest thing.  Each one requires a bid-and-pay-and-move resolution step in the temple, so more perils would drag out the temple.  In contrast, the true grail is just a quick knowledge check, and we could have more items of that sort.



On the other hand, the perils affect the map phase in a way that the grail room doesn't, in that they tell you which peril symbols you should be acquiring on equipment cards.  How could a quick knowledge check also be actionable?



One easy-ish solution is to add a something like a door that is locked and requires the correct key.  There are several possible keys, which are treated like relics, such that each resides in a hidden location.  This adds several pieces of information, but unlike the others you don't necessarily need all of this info.  Some players will go for this info, some won't, so it adds player differentiation.   (And, to mitigate the effect of having spent time acquiring the wrong key, maybe each key also confers a special power in the temple).



The downside of this is that it ratchets up the number of different kinds of things that players need to know, and thus the number of different kinds of operations to perform in the temple, which is perhaps a concern.  However, maybe these knowledge checks are actually different modules, and different combinations of modules, along with where in the temple they occur, can give some variety to the temple.  Maybe more brainstorming on this in a future post. 




The problem of players having identical knowledge is probably exacerbated by the shared encounters, so even though it will take longer, I think we need to seriously consider a return to individual turns, as described by the previous post.  A nice benefit is that it removes at least some of the rules that the shared encounters require.  I think the turn mechanics are shaping up and I'm encouraged by their simplicity.


Map phase:
1. Move, add a cube to the region you're in (reveal a relic if you're in the right city)
2. Face encounter (read card, invest adventure cards, flip 3 resolution cards)
3. View temple cards (total value less than or equal to the point on the succes track you reached)
4.  Receive adventure cards (first is free, after that it's 1/3/6 time to take 1/2/3 cards)


Temple phase:
1. Simultaneous investment bid
2. Resolve in bid order:  incur penalty equal to your bid (offset by having the correct peril symbols on adventure cards), then move on the temple track (commensurate with your relative position; ties are unfriendly)
3. Players lagging too far behind on the temple track incur some penalty


And then a couple of knowledge checks are interspersed in the temple phase.  That doesn't seem all that bad.  v16, here we come!