My wife and I consider ourselves experienced PACG players now. And one thing we find ourselves doing more often than we'd care to admit is forgetting to read and apply the rules/powers listed on the Scenario and Location cards! Sometimes these are helpful rules, sometimes they hinder, and sometimes that can completely alter an encounter.
My suggestion is to add some text to the turn overview on the rulebook. Something like "check/read the scenario and location card rules to see what will apply during your turn." before or after the "advance the blessings deck". On one hand, having a reminder may help eliminate the forgetfulness of excited players who want to dig into that next exploration. On the other hand, it adds complexity to the rules... and in all honesty, experienced players won't be reading the turn overview anyway. (Perhaps if it was written down when we learned how to play, it would have been more ingrained into our heads to do this step.)
Which actually leads me to a follow-up suggestion: It would be nice to have a six copies of a card (so each player could have one) that had the turn overview on it. And perhaps some of the other info from the back cover of the book. Say a nice two-sided card as a companion to the character cards. I suppose someone could make these themselves. Or perhaps a PDF file from Paizo we could print out, cut and use. It would be more convenient than passing around the rulebook. And I am often reminding other players what order they can do things in...
I made "rule" cards if you want to print them out yourself. They are in this pack of accessories:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98267/game-accessories-layout-guides-remo ve-from-game-wo
I made "rule" cards if you want to print them out yourself. They are in this pack of accessories:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98267/game-accessories-layout-guides-remo ve-from-game-wo
All you need to do now is modify it to add the "check the scenario/location rules" text. ;-)
I think the tricky part with that kind of thing would be that some of the scenario rules don't apply every turn. Some do apply every turn (like Here Comes the Flood).
But others apply only when certain things happen. Like Trouble in Sandpoint which requires you to roll a die after you encounter a Wrathful Sinspawn. But that encounter might not happen every turn. And it might not happen on your turn.
And the same thing is true for locations. Some apply if you start your turn there, but that means they don't apply when you move there. And some apply only when you play a certain card. But you could easily not play that kind of card on a turn.
So those rules are always in effect. Really you have to be aware of the location and the scenario powers every time you do something. Actually, you have to be aware of every location power, since some (like Giant Lair) have an effect for things not at their location as well.
I've been thinking about this. What about a sheet that had the turn sequence, encounter sequence, and check sequence, as well as a space for you to write in the effect from a scenario or location in the appropriate step? Would that be helpful? If you used pencil, you could erase and re-write when you moved to a new location or started a new scenario.
Ok. So I worked on this a bit. Basically, my idea was to make a few guides that highlighted the various steps/part of the turn, encounters, and checks, put the keywords for the effects from location and scenarios next to them, and leave space for you to write on them if you want to for each scenario. Here is a link to see how it stands right now. It is still a work in progress though. Here is where I need some feeback:
Are you likely to use something like this? (Especially you Pixel Hunter and huskyskins, you are the reason I started this.) Maybe it would work better for just the scenario effects since your location is probably more visible to you.
Some things might not really relate to just one step/part. For instance, the Farmhouse's bury allies effect. You could be discarding allies during a turn, an encounter, or a check. Or an effect that deals with being dealt damage. That can happen before the encounter, as part of a check, after an encounter, or even when encountered. And even the "move or moved" effects can happen anytime, since lots of things can make you move even after the "move" part of the turn. So I made another sheet for those "anytime" effects. But that is definitely a weakness. Does that seem to work?
Are there any keywords I'm missing? Keep in mind, I'm just going for location/scenario effects.
Let me know. Thanks.
Hawk, I think your guide sheets are a bit more complex than I was suggesting. I didn't intend to suggest that text be added to the rules that specify that scenario or location effects will only happen when you are told to read them, hence having to make sure you cover every possible instance of a scenario or location effect. I just wanted something to remind players to review the cards they may normally forget to check each turn.
If you are reminded to review the scenario and location cards each turn, you're more likely to remember to apply any relevant effects when they do occur during your turn. Especially handy since you're unlikely to remember 8 distinct location rules throughout the course of a game.
However, the more I think about it, the less I think adjusting the turn reference would actually help. Once you have a couple scenarios under your belt, you're not likely to reference that turn order sheet again anyway. Having played as much as I have (three groups as far as AP2) it's incredibly rare to pull out the rules at all anymore. So I can only imagine those of you who've made it to AP4 are not looking at it either.
Well, I've only invested about 15 minutes in it so far, so its not loss to me. And it was an interesting exercise to try to recall when all possible effects might be applicable.
If nothing else, I might end up turning it into a "walk through" of sorts for one of the early scenarios to use in my "Guide For New Players" to illustrate applying such things.