I know there can be multiple explorations during a turn, and that in-game events can (infrequently) add cards to the Blessings Deck. But, generally speaking, a game is 30 turns, regardless of how many characters there are. This is significant because adding players adds cards to the Location Decks, making the time constraint greater.
I'm wondering if, during development and playtesting, there was consideration of increasing the Blessing deck from 30 with increased characters.
One player - 30 Location Deck cards/30 turns
Four players - 60 Location Deck Cards/30 turns
Six players - 80 Location Deck cards/30 turns
I know that characters can benefit other players (I'm playing through Burnt Offerings with three characters). But signficantly increasing the number of cards to potentially go through without increasing the number of turns has a real impact on difficulty.
Just curious if this aspect was explored. Thanks.
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I know there can be multiple explorations during a turn, and that in-game events can (infrequently) add cards to the Blessings Deck. But, generally speaking, a game is 30 turns, regardless of how many characters there are. This is significant because adding players adds cards to the Location Decks, making the time constraint greater.
I'm wondering if, during development and playtesting, there was consideration of increasing the Blessing deck from 30 with increased characters.
One player - 30 Location Deck cards/30 turns
Four players - 60 Location Deck Cards/30 turns
Six players - 80 Location Deck cards/30 turnsI know that characters can benefit other players (I'm playing through Burnt Offerings with three characters). But signficantly increasing the number of cards to potentially go through without increasing the number of turns has a real impact on difficulty.
Just curious if this aspect was explored. Thanks.
Everybody goes through this bit of mental gymnastics. When I first showed the game to the greater Paizo team, Jason Bulmahn started down this path out loud. Chad started to correct him, but I held him back. Jason started working it out in his head, and then said, "Nope, I'm wrong. The number's 30."
As the number of players increases, the game can't kill you as easily. It gets fewer opportunities to do so since you have fewer turns. So its job is to get you to kill yourself. You do that by blowing your resources on trying to assist others and exploring whenever you can. Because the pressure is on you to play more cards, you dig deeper into your deck. Racing the clock becomes a "how can I spend more" puzzle, while in a one- or two-player game, it's often a "how can I spend less" puzzle.
That's the theory, anyway. YMMV.
Mike
IMHO It works really well as-is. It's a different kind of difficulty with a large party (but it's still awesome)!
Whilst talking about the Blessing deck - here are some random ideas that popped into my head last night:
1) A card/power that lets you look ahead in the Blessing Deck to see what's coming ("Whisper from the Gods"?)
2) Some scenarios that tweak the deck (e.g. "Urgent mission - only place 25 cards in the blessings deck")
3) Some locations that burn up time (e.g. each time you start your turn in this location turn over an extra card from the blessings deck)
I like the idea on BGG where someone suggested replacing some of the cards in the Blessings deck with monsters. If you turn them over on your turn, assume monster as Summoned at your location. Thematically, that would be "wandering monsters". I'd like that as a scenario.