Three question marks and one known issue

I'm going to be optimistic and posit that the latest design, v16.1, is testing well enough that it's going to emerge as the final version of the game, or at least, a final version.  But we'll certainly need a cycle of development to get all the way across the finish line, as there are still three things that need to be refined, and one issue to address.

First, the issue:  bad rolling can leave a player skunked, and this is unfun.  It should be rare to be skunked for the whole game, but it will happen.  How to address?  One option is giving out some reroll tokens during setup, or maybe "script rewrite" cards that have special effects to mitigate bad luck.  Another is to add a third die to the encounter, the green die.  You can subsitute the green die for the white die (or maybe, either die?) at the cost of taking one hubris.  This prompts players for more decisions, which I dislike, but it may be worth a try.

Now, the three questions.

First, what happens when the enemy reaches you in an encounter?  The first answer was "it ends the encounter, and you get info or cards, but not both".  This worked but was pretty punitive.  The latest answer is "they steal an adventure card from the display, and your next reroll is at -1".  This also works, but results in the enemy really piling up a lot of cards.

I'm really not sure what to do here that isn't fiddly.  Another idea is "they put a cube on a space on the temple track, and the enemy pawn can 'skip over' that space".  Some alternating between this and stealing cards would be nice, but how to govern which is the thing that happens?  Some clarity for what the enemy does is needed.

Second, how to balance cards and time?  Currently you spend time to get adventure cards, each of which are played twice, from hand to table and from table to discard.  This works well but does lead to some card-hoarding.  A hand limit would help this but is inelegant.  We might try something that emulates the previous system, which had a player mat.  Maybe it's that you can have, say, 3 cards on the table in front of you, and these are your "fixed" character attributes.  These can be freely used without discarding.  It costs one time to move a card to the table to make it a fixed attribute, and you must discard a card from the table if you already have three.  Any other card can be played once from your hand and discarded.

Thus you'll want to shift your display over time from challenge symbols (which help in the map phase) to peril symbols (which help in the temple phase). 

Third, how to resolve the temple perils?  I like the draft/bid mechanic previously proposed, but it has a seat order effect, whereby choosing first gives an advantage, in that you're less likely to get stuck with a penalty that you really don't want.  So, who gets to choose first?  First in line (runaway leader?) or last in line (too easy to catch up?)?  A different approach is the subject of a future post, in which you don't claim the penalty cards exclusively, so more than one person can go in on a particular penalty.  This could alleviate the seat order issue but also removes some of the fun of the draft:  it is pleasant to be able to stick someone with something that they don't want, it's just a question of whether it's the leader, or the trailing player, who should be getting stuck with that something.

I think these can also be solved, maybe easily, but I may be too close to the design at this point to be the one to solve them.  Luckily, I think they're all issues of balance and optimization for experience, and not so much core structural design considerations.  Some further testing might make some headway, but if not a developer should be able to resolve them.