It's been quite a while since I posted here! Before I get to what's new, I'd like to explain why updates have been absent.
I ran up against some walls in the design process:
Too much complexity. Too many decks of cards, too many tokens to move around, too many dice rolls.
Not enough strategy. I wanted a game with a lot of choices and a feel of exploration and narrative, but forcing the players to scrounge for loot by drawing random cards with random outcomes made it feel like you were just rolling dice until you either won or lost.
The rulebook. I've never written a rulebook before. In my head it seems so simple - just lay out the rules and expand in the sidebar when necessary - but as I wrote I started second-guessing the order of presentation. It didn't help that there were too many components and fiddly bits.
The ending. I wasn't sure how to end the game. I wanted a final confrontation where the players team up, but getting everyone in place at the north end of the board was a nightmare.
I have some new ideas that might help. I don't know how much time I'll have to work on the game with all the other projects I have going on, but I figured I should at least write down the ideas.
Change the board from randomized hex tiles to path cards. There will be less randomness in the map, but instead, there will be more focus, more room for art, and less wasted horizontal space - when the point is to go north, it's weird to have so much east-west room. Instead of a card with seven hexes, a map section will have a northward path with predetermined spaces and landmarks, but will still connect to paths on either side - probably three per zone. This way you'll choose which path to take, and have the ability to change to another path at certain points, rather than being free to move in any direction but probably still just going north.
I'm also thinking this will allow me to give each zone a hub, so instead of dying and going back to the green zone at the very bottom of the map, you can reset to the start of the zone. That means death doesn't feel as horrible a setback.
Combine card decks. I don't need three decks per zone. I can just put them all in one deck and tell the player to just keep drawing cards until they get a relevant one. Much easier. I also want to write some encounter cards that feel more like Dead of Winter's crossroads cards - give the player a stronger story choice to make, rather than just telling them to roll some dice or choose which dice to roll.
Change or eliminate monster movement. I had the idea to take monsters off the board entirely and simply make them encounter cards, but now that I think about it a bit more, having set paths means I could keep the monsters on the board without having to roll for their movement - they can just move a space south each turn. On the other hand, it makes them harder to avoid when you can't skirt around monsters. I'll have to think about that.
Maybe I can do a big final battle after all. With checkpoints in every zone, it's much easier to get players together at the north end of the map, and that'll encourage teamwork - sharing items and escorting. Which makes me think I should have a system for players moving together and helping each other with encounters, but which increases their risk of negative encounters - can't just have the whole table group up and easily accomplish everything.
So that's what I'm thinking right now. Maybe I'll even put some work into it sometime soon. We'll see.
