Some people complain that RotR is too easy. Some people complain that it's too hard. Some people are always happy. Some people never are...
So, I thought I'd open a thread to stimulate some conversation on this topic. Just how hard do you (think you) want a game like this to be?
In particular:
1) How often would you expect to fail a scenario (time out the blessings deck)?
2) If you played the entire Adventure Path (packs 1-6) through ten times (just imagine!) with an average of 4 characters per playthrough (i.e. 40 characters in total), how many times would you expect to see a character die?
3) What would you do if a character died (and was not legitimately resurrected by some game effect)?
(a) stop the scenario immediately and restart
(b) instantly resurrect them and continue
(c) keep playing, but resurrect them afterwards (ready for the next scenario)
(d) kill them off then generate a new character with the right number of feats for your position in the AP to continue on the path with you
(e) stick to the rules: kill them off then generate a brand new character (with no feats) to continue on the path with you
If you'd like to share some stats about how often you've actually timed out the blessings deck or died that would be great to!
I'd really like to understand the different viewpoints on this to round out my understanding of the game and the community. I don't have any real experience in RPGs (I played some infrequently about 20 years ago) and know that the community here is a mix of RPGers, computer game players, board gamers, families, all-of-the-abovers and none-of-the-abovers.
My gut feeling is that different groups would have very different expectations of a game, but look forward to seeing your comments!
As for my own thoughts, see below. I've put them in a spoiler block in case you'd like to answer first without prejudicing your responses with my own thoughts!
1) How often would you expect to fail a scenario? ... at least 1 in 5 (i.e. one scenario per adventure pack), but no more than 3 in 5. At least 3 out of 5 should feel like close calls.
My actual 'results' are that I think I've failed (timed out) 1 or 2 scenarios out of about thirty, but Hook Mountain was pleasantly more challenging than the early packs and I hope the challenge continues to mount.
2) How many times (in ten play-throughs) would you expect to see a character die? ... maybe 3 or 4 times (roughly one in 3 play throughs).
Before I started playing I read the rules and actually thought "OK, lets plan ahead for *when* (not if) somebody dies... what will we do?" I then started taking TWO parties through the AP so that I would have some 'spare' to put together the parties if somebody died.
Nobody has died on my watch (yet!).
3) What would you do if a character died? Answer (d) - this seems reasonable to me, since you *could* go through the whole AP-to-date with the new character but I don't have that much time on my hands. Giving them all the feats and a starter deck seems like a reasonable compromise.
Oh, and I would consider the first character 'dead' and have to pick a different one to continue.