Reposted with permission from BGG.
To address the Location theme issues and the lack of co-op for the adventurers in a team adventure game.
The locations need to be barrier and monster themed, the monsters could do with an icon rather like descent. It would increase set up time but vastly increase the theme. (If printed on the card back it would help and knowing you would find a certain type of monster or barrier in a location type wouldn't exactly be a spoiler) removed as it would clearly give away the encounter , although I am sure spotting a monster up ahead is not that difficult.
The locations should also be more freely available e.g. base ones and then randomly choose others. Only the designers would know the play balance required. I haven't the time to play test 3+ player options solo and my game groups first experience was Luke warm (described elsewhere) so I cant see them helping.
The co-op and team play should be more fluid , play order determined each go, six markers or just turning the character token. Characters able to give up their turn to take on an encounter. A character reveals an encounter another character at that location takes over if not already played this turn, effectively swapping turns. The original character can now take his turn. Before encounter powers can only be used once per location.
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This game already take a VERY long time to set up (and tear down). Longer than Mage Knight in my experience, especially if you play with different groups and have to rebuild character decks as well as building then shuffling 5, 6, 7, 8 location decks.
If you really want to theme the decks then nothing is stopping you from extracting relevant monsters/barriers from the deck (you can use the traits to do this) and then randomly choosing from them.
But to impose this upon all players... please no.
The locations theming could only be resolved by the publisher and probably not until a new campaign.
I am interested in your views on the other 2 suggestion.
The random locations thing is the exact opposite of the first suggestion! To me having fixed locations for each scenario is part of what makes the game thematic. (And encourages you to try the much harder 6-character version of the game to see the last ones on each scenario card!)
The co-op suggestion would, IMHO, make the game too easy. A simple, house-rulable, variant would be to let characters play in any order each 'round'. But once they've played, they cannot play again until the next round. This also makes the game easier but it's up to you whether that's a good or bad thing for your play group.
Rules are made to be broken, if you feel that a change is better for you.
Personally, I want to play the game through several times as close as possible to what the designer intended first, and then try to break it up and vary it. Many of the (many) threads I've started on these forums are to figure out exactly how the game is *meant* to work so I can get as close as possible to the intended experience.
But if I play with somebody or some group that likes 90% of the game but can't live with X part of it, we can look into varying that - and so can you.
I wasn't meaning random locations in general just using those listed on the scenario. So random the ones from that scenario, Some would be mandatory and some of the others could be random. for example Brigadoom lists 8 locations maybe only 2 need to be mandatory and for a 3 player game the other 3 can be picked at random from the remaining 6.
For the co-op I wasn't suggesting playing more than once per round. If more than one character is at a location the explore could be done before choosing which player encounters (or evades it).
I get it, but I think the locations are quite well balanced out and think the designers have put some thought into when to add an Apothecary or similar. Some locations are 'harder' than others and this seems to have been well done. You're welcome to mix them up if you wish!
For co-op, I understood what you proposed. My comments still stand - and I think this would make it far too easy. Being able to switch who's dealing with a situation after you know what that situation is takes a lot of the tension out of the game. Getting Valeros stuck behind a DEX barrier, or hit by a Siren, is part of the fun!