Hey folks, I'm playing around with the idea of an upgradeable stronghold or base for Skull & Shackles. This would be a group asset that would be upgradeable over time.
Here are the two hideouts I've come up with:
Hidden Grotto (front)
Hidden Grotto (back)
Orphan's Den (front)
Orphan's Den (back)
Hideouts function as a special kind of Location.
- Hideouts are set out at the start of a scenario like other locations.
- Hideouts have their own deck.
- Players can move to hideouts, and can explore the deck at a hideout.
- Hideouts start the scenario permanently closed and remain so. Villains may not flee to hideouts.
Each Hideout has 5 upgrade boxes.
Upgrade Path:
OR, I also debated instead of just giving them the feat, making it a choice between getting a new class of ship or getting a hideout upgrade. So anywhere a Scenario gives a ship as a reward, they may choose a new ship or a new hideout feat.
I'd love some feedback! What do you think? Are the choices balanced enough?
I love the design space here; having a 'customisable always-closed' location is a nifty idea and something I might consider playing around with in the future with my table.
The immediate thing to note is, of course, that as a purely optional way of attaining and storing extra boons these Hideouts will serve to make the game a bit easier. As a result, its most helpful to groups that are having challenges with Skulls & Shackles, or else are also playing with homebrew changes/rules to make the game a bit harder (modifying bane difficulty, removing easier banes as the game goes on, shrinking the blessing deck, or more advanced rules changes such as restrictions on moving from location to location).
With that said, I have a few questions and opinions.
QUESTIONS
1. The Hidden Grotto Hideout has its cards drawn from the 'leftover' boons after rebuilding decks. Presumably this is solely pulled from the pool of Boons that were in players' decks at the end of the game, but aren't being kept in any deck. I particularly like the idea here of using the Hidden Grotto as a special "player stash", where they can stockpile boons that they want to use later but not keep in their original decks. For example; they're waiting for an extra card feat, or some power feat that suddenly changes how useful a given card is, or a Loot card that doesn't quite work out for them but they're reluctant to allow to return to the box.
However, that means that cards that were already in the Hidden Grotto (and weren't picked up by players mid-scenario) are returned to the box as usual during scenario-end, right? So it's only a 'stash' that lasts for 1 scenario at a time, unless you're taking the 3-8 explorations necessary to clear up the Grotto during each scenario. Is that intended? If not, it should state that it's decklist is comprised of leftover boons post-rebuild and cards that were already in the location Hidden Grotto, up to the max deck size stated.
COMMENTS - Hidden Grotto
1. The Hidden Grotto can be considered extremely abusable, with or without the "Automatically acquire cards" text. After a scenario, I could just stockpile it with Blessings of the Gods (as many as possible) and one or two cards like Cure, and then spend my first character turn at the location. I explore, almost certainly pick up a Blessing, and discard it to explore again, picking up a blessing, etc, until I hit the Cure. I discard something else to explore again, emptying the deck of the remaining blessings (if any), then use Cure to throw some/all of them from my discard pile back into my deck. As a result, I've bolstered my deck size by a few blessings, which will allow me to take many more explorations each turn, at a lower risk.
This is reasonably trivial to do, though not all characters will be able to use a Cure (or similar effect) without banishing the boon in question (but it's not that hard to continue to acquire similar cards, and later Adventure Decks do have similar effects that don't require banishing). Another option is to stock it full of Aristocrat allies and the ally (Sir McCleah, I think?) that you can repeatedly reveal to recharge Aristocrats from your discard pile. Again, lets you chain-explore through the whole deck, then bolster your deck size with a bunch more 'free exploration' cards.
2. The first 'feat' ability - the ability to recharge a card from your hand after acquiring one from the deck - seems far weaker than any other Hideout feat. Several characters and cards already will give you means of recharging cards to get around your hand size limit (see: Alahazra, frivolous non-attack Spells, "recharge this card" items and allies), and some cards you'll end up acquiring from the location may not be helpful to your character, and so discarding them may even be preferable anyway.
On the whole, switching a possible end-of-turn discard for a recharge every now and then doesn't seem very meaningful, but I guess it's the only way this location will actually let you expand your decksize without combining the acquired cards with some form of healing.
3. Being able to automatically acquire cards here seems ridiculously strong with the Letters of Marquee loot, since it's always considered "Closed" so you can just throw a bunch of extra boons in there and acquire them with ease.
4. The second 'feat' ability also seems quite narrow. Letting you look through your plunder and optionally throw one in the deck feels thematic (Sort and stash your plunder), but not all too helpful. Looking at your plunder doesn't change anything, unless you see an exceptional boon that you don't want to risk losing to ship damage (or you really want in your deck during this scenario), and shuffling a card into the location deck is just going to cost you exploration time (and a blessing deck 'turn') if you want to retrieve it.
COMMENTS - Orphan's Den
1. Being able to recharge all offensive cards from a character's hand to evade any encounter feels, often, better than the "When Permanently Closed" Safe House's effect of letting you Banish a card to evade (and I thought that only let you evade Banes, even). Furthermore, you end up appearing at a location with valuable boons (and other upsides), so mid-turn you can evade and continue acting productively. This basically obsolete's one of the core functions of a standard, recurring location in Skull & Shackles.
As a result, I'd recommend a change to the ability (make it more costly or restrictive, perhaps), or a change to Safe House's ability. You could even entwine the two, somehow. For example; when closing Safe House, "Summon and build the location Orphan's Den", and rejig the remaining Hideout mechanics so Orphan's Den can only appear under certain circumstances, or has additional costs associated with it. As an example; the Orphan's Den is always built, but players must blindly banish a plunder card to move to it (a 'cost of entry'?) unless moved on a ship with another character, and the "Evade an encounter and move there" involves both a Plunder cost as well as the weapon/attack recharge clause. The Safe House's when Permanently Closed effect entirely nullifies all requirements to spend Plunder to access the Orphan's Den location; either by Evasion or choice movement.
2. Besides effectively obsoleting going for the Safe House as written, being able to evade at any point in time seems way too powerful; even with the weapon/spell recharge clause. Some characters (Damiel, Alahazra, etc) can run through their deck so quickly that recharging weapons/spells is effectively a non-issue, and by their next hand reset they'll have a new one anyway, so it basically just gives them Merisiel's 'evade everything' ability (which makes Merisiel just worse by comparison). Evading villains is trivial, making cornering villains easier than ever before; and it makes actual dying extremely rare since you never have to face combat unless you have no weapons/attack cards in your hand at all.
Adding a Plunder cost would largely limit how powerful this ability is, but whether because of Safe House or just sheer power of letting anyone evade anything, I really think that ability needs to be looked at again.
3. The Hideout Feat that allows players to explore at this location can lead to some somewhat confusing turns, because it doesn't require that person to be taking a turn at the time. If someone else encounters a bane that summons something for my character to fight (like a Crab Swarm or various Tasks), then I can use the Orphan's Den ability to evade, move to the Orphan's Den, then explore, during another player's turn. It's not unique in PACG for that to be POSSIBLE, but it's certainly rare, but with the prevalence of multi-player Tasks in S&S, this location makes it potentially downright common.
4. The Hideout Feat that lets you draw until you get an ally also seems really, really powerful... especially when you consider how easy it is to move an entire party to the Orphan's Den, particularly considering group-movement rules on a Ship. You can hightail it to here with everyone else, and give everyone a free "draw until they find an ally" effect for their turns. Also, it seems to make it just the outright best position for any character to start the game at, so they get an extra starting ally in their hand before their move step. Not sitting on locations for Temporary Closing is hardly a downside anymore when everyone has access to an Evade if they find the villain.
5. Actually, I just thought of something. If you have a 6 player party, on a ship, and the Commander chooses to move to the Orphan's Den... everyone can come with him, and all 6 get a free exploration, right? That virtually empties the entire Orphan's Den of boons in a single turn! The lack of timing restrictions on those extra explorations, combined with the mass of ways to exploit Movement (either through Evade, Ship movement or the other "Bury an Ally" effect) seems excessive.
6. On the whole, Orphan's Den seems far too powerful, and I'm not sure of the overall intent of it. Is it meant to give the party a bunch of free attempts to acquire allies? Is it meant to give every character a means to Evade whatever they choose? Each ability seems too powerful on its own, let alone together; compare the additional boons to the effect of the special loot Letters of Marquee (it's basically strictly better than the loot card, and available to everyone at every time), and compare, again, to Safe House.
Closing Comments
I love the idea behind Hidden Grotto, but I'm still a little confused by why it seems like a very temporary card storage solution, and I'm wary of how exploitable it is with the aforementioned Letters loot or just stacking it full of blessings/allies to chain-explore and then heal back.
Orphan's Den seems like almost every ability (except the Bury an Ally effect and deck size changes, I suppose) is far too powerful or exploitable, especially in comparison to other effects available during the adventure. As stated, it obsoletes the specific benefit from closing at least one location, it almost obsoletes cards and abilities that let characters Evade (by providing such a powerful one with so few strings attached to everyone), and its 'free exploration' ability is also massively exploitable even on other player's turns.
There are some abilities that could be removed, changed, or at least have conditions added to them to bring the power level down, though. As an example, have Orphan's Den only let you evade non-villain encounters (and even so, it STILL makes almost every other Evade effect in the game much less desirable by being always-available, especially Safe House's).
I certainly like the idea, though. They have some great merit, and I'd even like to see if pre-existing locations can have abilities retrofitted to work alongside a "Hideout" idea. Could closing certain locations cause you to Summon and Build a pre-defined Hideout? Or let you access them in a new way, or empower them in a new way, or throw additional Boons into them? For example, closing a temple-like location could "Add 1d4 Blessings to X Hideout's location deck". There could be a location themed around thieves where if you encounter a bane and do not defeat it, it banishes cards from X Hideout. Could each scenario have a listed Hideout or Hideouts that are 'in play' during them? It's a thrilling design space, honestly.
Great idea!
I've lately been tinkering with upgradable support cards for SnS as well, so I can offer a little bit of advice on top of Yewstance extensive feedback:
In general, you should not give players the means to draw/take from their stashed plunder cards; you only get those cards if you win the scenario, and letting them get them before then is rewarding them for nothing and removes the risk of losing them throughout the scenario.
That being said, adding to the stashed plunder cards and banishing some of them for effects creates an interesting design space that is mostly unexplored so far.
So, working on a stash mechanic, is it? Funny timing, since, I'm in the process of working one out myself :D. That said, I mostly agree Yewstance and Doppelschwert's notes, with a few caveats:
- I believe Royster McLeah was FAQ'd to one reveal per tern, and there are only a handful of Aristocrats in the whole AP; still, a probably "exploit" but definitely not that powerful in itself
- while indeed Orphan's Den "recharge Weapons" evasion is preferable to Safe House for some characters, for many it isn't - given that emptying their hand may leave them un-combat-capable for one or more turns (which has also different impact depending on party size). I would actually prefer to keep the first crap card I obtain as my "banish to evade in Sfae House" card, rather than pay OD's cost
- also, as written, I don't believe you actually need to HAVE an Weapons/Attacks in your hand to use OD's evasion; if that's the intent (though thematically it doesn't make sense) - you should reword it somehow
- Yewstance's worry about out-of-turn explores is unfounded - the rules are quite explicit that a character cannot explore outside of their explore step.
Personally, I'm not a fan of "diminishing returns" for the Stash, as seen in the Grotto - but that's an issue, I haven't yet gotten around myself. Honestly, anything less than 3-cards stash for solo player seems pathetic, but, say, 18-card stash (3x #players) seems a bit too much. Maybe you can also get it to scale with the AD#, for, say (AD#+#characters)? Though, adding even more feats to that may be overkill as well.
Finally, the value of a stash may vary wildly depending on the manner of your party's playstyle and/or if the stash is accessible during the scenario. Example: if your party does NOT look at the Villain/Henchmen before the scenario - you then discover that each Henchman deals 1d4 BYA Fire damage. Now, that one Fire-reduction card in the stash becomes really valuable - but only if you're actually able to get it during the scenario. If you *could* - I'd argue there should be a very steep cost associated with it - say, reveal cards from the stash until you find your Fire-reduction card, than bury (1+#or revealed cards) from your hand/top of deck, etc...
I'll reply to everyone, but first off, special thanks to Yewstance for such a detailed commentary! You've got a great eye for the game's design.
On to your thoughts!
Hidden Grotto
Is that intended? If not, it should state that it's decklist is comprised of leftover boons post-rebuild and cards that were already in the location Hidden Grotto, up to the max deck size stated.
Good catch! That was an unintended wording glitch. I'll tweak your suggested wording to: The Hidden Grotto can be built from leftover boons and any cards that were already in the location deck.
The Hidden Grotto can be considered extremely abusable, with or without the "Automatically acquire cards" text.
I'll confess that I'm not super familiar with all of the S&S cards, so everyone's comments on where this can be abused are very helpful. I've played through RoTR on the app, but only recently got the S&S box and started playing that.
All that said, here are a few possible tweaks for hidden grotto:
- To the back of the card, add: You may not put include more than one instance of a card when building the location deck. This could cut down on spammy strategies like the ones you've pointed out. This also gives the stash more of a "treasured oddities" feel.
- To the front of the card, add:You may only perform one exploration per turn at this location. This would effectively limit burning through the whole deck. Thematically, I envision the stash as "buried" or otherwise difficult to get to.
- To counter the above, remove the "plunder" feat and add the following tweak on Longshot11's suggestion: On your turn, instead of exploring you may reveal all cards from the location deck. Add one to your hand. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the deck and bury the top 1d4 cards. This would give a way to find a specific card, but at a cost.
Thoughts?
Orphan's Den is a little more problematic. I'll deal with that in a separate post.
Personally, I'm not a fan of "diminishing returns" for the Stash, as seen in the Grotto - but that's an issue, I haven't yet gotten around myself. Honestly, anything less than 3-cards stash for solo player seems pathetic, but, say, 18-card stash (3x #players) seems a bit too much.
Forgot to deal with Hidden Grotto's stash size. I am definitely still tinkering with how best to size the stash. As written right now, the minimum size is 3 (for a solo character with no feats) and the maximum size is 11 (for 6 characters maxed out).
That doesn't feel terrible, but it definitely gets better as you add more people.
So, two possible tweaks:
Option A - Change the base size to be number of characters plus 3. Increment the feats accordingly. This is mostly a boost for those small party sizes.
Option B - As you suggest, tie it to Adventure Deck number, or more thematically, fleet size. So, location deck size is equal to number of characters + number of ships in the fleet, + 2 (3, 4, 5)
All right, now on to the Orphan's Den
As mentioned, I'm relatively new to the S&S box, but not to the game overall. I'd not yet really examined Safehouse, and hadn't used it's abilities at all. Soooo, on further inspection, I think I need to rework the Den. It has a bit too much overlap with the Safehouse.
Orphan's Den to me was intended to be the "ally" centric hideout. I might eventually get around to creating a hideout for each of the boon types. And I really like Yewstance's idea of building a predefined hideout in the middle of play! That could be way fun.
Anyway, on to a whole scale revision of Orphan's Den:
- See image above. Remove all text from the front of the card.
- Add: On your turn, instead of exploring you may search this deck for the Ally with the highest check to defeat. After shuffling the remaining cards back into the deck, encounter that Ally. Your checks during this encounter are increased by the adventure deck number of the current scenario. If your check succeeds, display the ally next to your character. Choose one trait on the Ally card - for the rest of this scenario, add +1 (2,3) to your checks that invoke this trait. At the end of the scenario, banish the displayed Ally. I need to refine the wording, since right now it is overly long. However, the thematic goal here would be for the character to best an NPC at the Orphan's Den so profoundly that they get a boost for the rest of the scenario. I also played with the idea of making it "If you defeat this check by more than X"... There could also be a cost here to being defeated, such as suffering combat damage equal to the failure...
- Add: Feat box - You may bury (or discard) an ally to add 1d4 to a check by a character at another location. Thematically, this would represent being able to send out allies from the Den to other locations.
Thoughts?
Variant B is largely as described in the post above, but with cleaner language.
Variant C allows you to gamble Plunder on your Wager!
To keep my posts readable, I'm going to first respond to Longshot's detailed response, then move on to the tocath's updates. Looking forward to seeing where this goes, honestly!
- while indeed Orphan's Den "recharge Weapons" evasion is preferable to Safe House for some characters, for many it isn't - given that emptying their hand may leave them un-combat-capable for one or more turns (which has also different impact depending on party size). I would actually prefer to keep the first crap card I obtain as my "banish to evade in Sfae House" card, rather than pay OD's cost
The thing is; when you move to Safe House, you almost certainly have no action left to take, since the permanently closed Safe House has no location deck left to explore (Letters of Marquee excepted). So the rest of your turn is wasted following your Evade, unless you use a mid-turn move effect. This likely leads to a loss of turn/explore efficiency, unless you evaded what was going to be your final exploration anyway.
In Orphan's Den, you have the option to continue exploring in a monster-less environment for more cards, but even if you just end your turn immediately (like you would've been forced to in the Safe House, most likely), characters with a high reliance on combat would be highly likely to draw a new weapon/attack item or spell from their deck after recharging a few for the effect.
Admittedly, being able to have some means of shuffling your deck (heal effects) or intentionally recharging more cards to sort through your deck (Alahazra) greatly helps.
So it only slows down your potential for combat for 1 turn, often... and in that turn you can still be productive and pick up allies from the Orphan's Den. I think it's reasonably rare that you could use Orphan's Den evade power (and redrawing a bunch of cards at end-of-turn) and be delayed in contributing to the scenario for longer than using Safe House's evade power and already lose the rest of your turn.
- also, as written, I don't believe you actually need to HAVE an Weapons/Attacks in your hand to use OD's evasion; if that's the intent (though thematically it doesn't make sense) - you should reword it somehow
Honestly, that occurred to me several times, but I'm not 100% certain, and I didn't want to go digging through the forums to get a clear answer on what this wording implies. I'm pretty sure the intent here is that you need at least one legal card to recharge, or else you can't fulfil the condition. With that said, it's thematic to allow someone who already has no weapons/attack spells into the Orphan's Den (basically a murder-free zone), so I disagree with the suggestion that it wouldn't make thematic sense to let it be a 'free' evade.
- Yewstance's worry about out-of-turn explores is unfounded - the rules are quite explicit that a character cannot explore outside of their explore step.
Ah shoot, my bad. Point taken.
Personally, I'm not a fan of "diminishing returns" for the Stash, as seen in the Grotto - but that's an issue, I haven't yet gotten around myself. Honestly, anything less than 3-cards stash for solo player seems pathetic, but, say, 18-card stash (3x #players) seems a bit too much. Maybe you can also get it to scale with the AD#, for, say (AD#+#characters)? Though, adding even more feats to that may be overkill as well.
It's 3 + Players, not 3x Players. I think the number is pretty good, honestly; no complaints at all. Adding an extra 1 card per Adventure Deck is possible, but honestly I think just being able to use your feats to increase your stash size if you want is fine, which is already on the card.
All that said, here are a few possible tweaks for hidden grotto:
- To the back of the card, add: You may not put include more than one instance of a card when building the location deck. This could cut down on spammy strategies like the ones you've pointed out. This also gives the stash more of a "treasured oddities" feel.
- To the front of the card, add:You may only perform one exploration per turn at this location. This would effectively limit burning through the whole deck. Thematically, I envision the stash as "buried" or otherwise difficult to get to.
- To counter the above, remove the "plunder" feat and add the following tweak on Longshot11's suggestion: On your turn, instead of exploring you may reveal all cards from the location deck. Add one to your hand. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the deck and bury the top 1d4 cards. This would give a way to find a specific card, but at a cost.
Thoughts?
The first point still leads to the same problem by just giving it a variety of blessings and allies, and I do think being able to spend the first turn there and just chain-exploring through the deck (then later healing the re-acquired allies/blessings) is still exploitable. It basically is almost the equivalent of giving a bunch of Ally/Blessing card feats to players. Somehow restricting the types or quantity of boons could work, even thematically (you're burying treasure and loot... not people and immaterial 'blessings'), but they make it far less useful as an actual "Stash of boons".
Limiting the exploration would certainly work to remove the exploit, but instead has a new problem of the stash no longer being reasonably easy to access, especially for large parties. A 6 player party has to be very exploration-heavy to beat the 30 turn clock with 8 locations to close, and requiring another 9-11 individual turns to guarantee finding a specific item from the stash isn't just difficult - it's outright impossible. "I want to get this anti-fire ring to deal with this villain" might literally lead to 11 cards from the blessing deck gone by the time you get it.
Also, it just doesn't feel like elegant design. Though, the followup tweak on Longshot's suggestion does, of course, cover that largely.
I feel almost like removing 'typical' use of these Hideouts as locations with location decks is preferable. Make it so you can only interact with the Grotto or Den by using abilities listed on their cards, such as those that have already been presented, and you can get a much better handle on what they can and can't be used for. As an example; written on Hidden Grotto (hypothetically):
"Hidden Grotto is always closed. You may not explore cards in Hidden Grotto's location deck. You may not display cards next to Hidden Grotto." (Note; it might be easiest to just make all of these rules standard for Hideouts, and basically clarify that "Hideouts are NOT 'Locations', but they can be moved to by players as if they were", which completely prevents unforeseen consequences like monsters being 'moved to a random location' or a barrier 'display next to a random location' like the storm thing that turns up around AD2 or AD3)
"Instead of your first exploration for a turn, you may examine the top 1d4 [1d6] [1d8] cards of Hidden Grotto's location deck. You may choose one to draw, and return the remaining cards to the top of the location deck in any order of your choice. You may shuffle the location deck."
Note that some character powers may interact with this effect; like Alahazra scouting more cards. That, as far as I'm concerned, may be considered a feature (I mean, I would expect an Oracle to be able to tell me where I last left my keys). This also uses the word "Draw" rather than "Acquire", which can often be preferable because it won't trigger cards or effects as often, like if there is a Scenario that has consequences for acquiring a specific boon (I believe an AD1 or AD2 scenario did have some interference when you tried to acquire allies?).
So, two possible tweaks:Option A - Change the base size to be number of characters plus 3. Increment the feats accordingly. This is mostly a boost for those small party sizes.
Option B - As you suggest, tie it to Adventure Deck number, or more thematically, fleet size. So, location deck size is equal to number of characters + number of ships in the fleet, + 2 (3, 4, 5)
Personally, I feel like early in the game you have a limited need for stashing cards (because how many deck B/C cards will you be coming across that are going to be meaningful in the future or are specifically useful for particular purposes. Later in the game, you may want more 'corner case' items, allies (like anti-aquatic allies) or even blessings ("When you are on a ship, add 2 dice"), many of which show up in later decks.
I do also like the idea that very late-game stashes can be used to put away boons you don't want to keep seeing (Oh man, another Heavy Crossbow?), or even storing cards in case of a character death; so you have the perfect boons for a new character to collect. As a result, I suppose I do like the idea of an aggressively scaling stash size... and tying it to the fleet size is extremely appropriate, I think!
My only suggestion is, perhaps, consider number of characters in the party + ships in the fleet, with any additional flat bonuses to your 'stash size' just being feat-added. Keep in mind that you'll (almost) always have more ship feats than the current AD#, and even half-way through the adventure you'll end up with 5 or more ships in the fleet, which seems a fine number.
Anyway, on to a whole scale revision of Orphan's Den:
- See image above. Remove all text from the front of the card.
- Add: On your turn, instead of exploring you may search this deck for the Ally with the highest check to defeat. After shuffling the remaining cards back into the deck, encounter that Ally. Your checks during this encounter are increased by the adventure deck number of the current scenario. If your check succeeds, display the ally next to your character. Choose one trait on the Ally card - for the rest of this scenario, add +1 (2,3) to your checks that invoke this trait. At the end of the scenario, banish the displayed Ally. I need to refine the wording, since right now it is overly long. However, the thematic goal here would be for the character to best an NPC at the Orphan's Den so profoundly that they get a boost for the rest of the scenario. I also played with the idea of making it "If you defeat this check by more than X"... There could also be a cost here to being defeated, such as suffering combat damage equal to the failure...
- Add: Feat box - You may bury (or discard) an ally to add 1d4 to a check by a character at another location. Thematically, this would represent being able to send out allies from the Den to other locations.
Thoughts?
I like this version a lot more in terms of balance. I'd rather a hideout be underpowered than overpowered, because it's a completely optional thing - it's never slowing players down, it's just giving them another option to spend their turns.
Unfortunately, I think benefiting checks that invoke ally traits is going to be too narrow. Some allies have next to no relevant traits on them, especially if you're restricting it to the allies with the largest checks to acquire. Best-case scenario is "Pirate", probably, and even that is still pretty narrow. Furthermore, adding a flat + 1 is such a small benefit for spending an entire turn and passing a difficult check just to get a bonus on a very small selection of checks in the future. At LEAST have it be +1d4.
It has occurred to me that "Basic" and "Elite" are traits, too, so be wary of that. They are certainly not uncommon, but perhaps not desirable to be letting players interact with in a beneficial manner.
Being able to spend allies to support your party members I like quite a lot though; and I like the idea that you can even have a player with a glut of Ally card feats (like Jirelle) hang around here and give help to other characters. Perhaps you could even build around that a bit further?
A hypothetical suggestion (that I haven't spent any time refining/wording correctly), could be something like:
"Orphan's Den is always closed. You may not explore cards in Orphan's Den's location deck. You may not display cards next to Orphan's Den." Again, if these are made default Hideout rules, this wouldn't be necessary.
"Instead of your first exploration on a turn, you may examine the top card of Orphan's Den's location deck [you may reveal any number of allies from your hand to examine that many additional cards]. Encounter one of the examined cards, and shuffle the remaining cards into the location deck. If you encounter an ally in this way, you may banish a plunder card to automatically acquire that ally. If you fail to acquire an ally in this way, take Combat Damage equal to the Adventure Deck number of the ally. [You may then move.]"
That's just another example, of course. The theme here is that you can "explore" it, but your exploration gives you more options if you reveal allies (which you couldn't use for additional explorations here as written anyway). Allies can be 'bribed' into being automatically acquired - effectively letting you trade a 'possible' and unknown end-of-scenario reward for a certain Ally right now - but they can also take offense to your approach (leading to the fistfight and combat damage). Damage based on AD# means that the risk is nonexistent for early game allies (which are 'harmless' or take no offense), but potentially painful if you're lucky enough to see late-game allies show up. This means a player, on examining multiple cards, may choose to go for an 'easy' ally with a low risk of failure so that a better-suited character can go back there and hunt for a precious AD4/5/6 ally that was seen.
Alternatively, you can just make the ally deal damage equal to the difference between the check result and check to defeat, but that can way more often lead to hand blowouts. What if you're a charismatic character but come across a Deck B animal ally that requires 8 Wisdom/Survival? What if you have a 1d12 Charisma but a 1d4 Wisdom? It seems unfair for such luck to lead to a hand blowout in an AD0 or AD1 scenario. Having some consequence for failure seems important, though, because the boon-heavy location potentially just provides low-risk, 'free' bonus boons to players after they've cornered the villain and have blessing deck time to spare. Normally going out of your way to commit to boon-hunting has to be done before you've certainly cornered the villain, or after you've already closed the most boon-heavy locations, or at least has a risk of coming across nasty monsters or barriers.
Finally, the option to let you move after using your first 'exploration' here means you don't give up your whole turn ally-hunting. You can still move to another location and spend blessings or allies (such as the one you may have just acquired wink wink nudge nudge) to get back into the game. You risk spending plunder or damage by hitting a difficult-to-acquire ally (or hitting a Barrier), and you still spend an exploration... but it's still a great opportunity to acquire some extra boons.
And I like the idea of keeping another ability that lets an ally-centric character sit at that location and provide support to other characters. I just wonder if burying/discarding allies for a mere 1d4 isn't large enough. Perhaps 1d4+AD# of the ally?