So, my work this past week has been on trying to add strategy and important decision-making to the game. If you haven't played, the following probably won't make a ton of sense—or at least it won't have any context—so you should probably see my first post and then e-mail me for access to the playtest documents! Here are two ways I've come up with.
Skill Cards
My first idea was that before the game, you could choose either three or four cards. I'm imagining they're like special skills or preparations you character has for the upcoming journey. There would be some restrictions on which cards you could choose. For example, a character with fire powers would be able to choose a fire skill card, but other characters wouldn't; or you might be able to choose a skill card that represents preparation for the shadow caves Encounter type—but only if shadow cave Encounters are one of your Encounter deck's Encounter types.
Anyway, as playtesters know, the game is broken up into Stages. You start on Stage 1, face four Encounters, and then move on to Stage 2 with its four counters, and so on. Before each Stage, you choose one of your four skill cards to have active for that Stage. The strategy here is that you have to pick which one you think would be most relevant. The cards would have to be designed so that they are more useful at certain points in the game so that no one card is the best universal choice. I haven't actually tried this mode of play yet, but I'm not sure it actually adds a lot of strategy—probably just more complexity and more stuff to keep track of during the game.
Revamped Events
The other idea I had is to totally revamp the Event deck. Currently, before each Encounter, you draw and resolve a single Event card, adding variety to each Encounter and unpredictability to the outcome of each game. The modified Event deck would consist of cards you could hold in your hand and play at certain times. I actually did design a deck of Event cards of this variety, though they were mostly slight alterations to the original Event cards. At first, I played with a five-card hand, but that felt like too many cards, and I switched to three-card hands in subsequent games.
The way these cards work is that there are bad-for-you cards, and there are good-for-you cards (just as there are in the current Event deck). Each card requires some combination of dice results to be played. When you roll your five d6, check to see if any cards' dice requirements are met by the results. If it is a negative card the requirements of which are met, you must play it. If there are more than one, play one at a time, checking the requirements again after each resolves. (Several cards change dice results, thus changing eligibility of further cards.) Once you've played all the bad cards you can, play any number of beneficial cards you want to in the same way. (You must play negative cards; you choose whether to play beneficial cards.) Unlike combos, dice used to play cards do not become locked by the cards, though cards played this way can put new combos into the current Encounter (usually using the dice required to play them). Whether a die is locked into a combo has no bearing on whether it can be used to play one or more of these cards.
After each reroll, check again. In this way, you will choose to reroll differently based on what cards you want to play or want to avoid playing. Consider this card: "Requires 123 to play. Combo: 123: Escape the Encounter." "Escape" isn't a defined term, but you get the idea [probably]. Before each Encounter, draw up to the normal hand size. At the end of each Encounter, you may discard any number of beneficial cards. At the end of an Encounter, if your hand is all bad cards and you didn't play any that Encounter, you've broken your bad luck: Discard them all and draw a new hand.
I might have missed something here, but it's hard to know what it's like without playing with them. Oh, and I also made a deck-building variant that used these cards. However, my experience with this system was not positive. I felt that while it did add some strategy (choosing how/when to reroll and which cards to play or save), it made the game very sluggish as I recalculated all the options and odds. Also, I was having to check every few seconds which cards required which dice and which results I actually had showing on my dice at the time. The prototypes of these cards I put together were very, very raw, and good graphic design could make checking the cards' eligibility much easier (for example, imagine a graphical sequence of dice in the top-left of the card—also, negative and positive cards could have different-colored frames, making it easy to distinguish which cards had to be played and which could be held); however, I still feel the system was too awkward.
Closing
I plan to make both gameplay variants available to playtesters, although I expect I'll keep the quality of the prototypes—and my expectations—low. I'm going to try out the second variant a few more times since I've already printed everything out and sleeved them up, but I've basically given up at this point. As for the first variant, I'm going to give it its fair shake, but I expect the mechanic will be better served as a single character's special abilities and not as something that every player deals with all the time.
The reasons I took all this time to talk about mechanics I don't think are successful are twofold. First, I want playtesters to have a shot at them. It's possible I missed something and they're actually super-fun and worth pursuing. Second, I want to emphasize that I am trying to find ways to add strategy. The response to the gameplay of Quest has been very positive on average, but the one complaint has been a dearth of meaningful decisions. If I can find a way to add some, I feel that would just make the game better. However, I haven't found anything, and it's making me more and more satisfied with the current iteration. So here's the takeaway:
If you have any specific, mechanical suggestions for how to add strategy, please let me know! I don't want to overhaul the game or slow down gameplay, but if there's a way to make it better, I'm all for it.
~ Andrew
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