Disruptive Balance
So I've got the Tiles closed - the board itself and the overall rule set is complete!
Now I'm finishing the items and monsters and need a few more play tests.
The goal is for every card in the game to be a Positive Disruption to the game balance. This is a design theory I've been thinking over for some time and will add an articile to the site about sometime in the future. Suffice to say, each card needs to interract with the others and be important, changing the strategy you use if you have it or not.
The monsters are relatively easy since there are only twelve of them. They also do not interrect much with the Item cards so all I have to worry about are the tiles themselves and the Hero players. Below you can see the tile types.
Trapdoor
Allows a Hero to instantly move to any previously discovered Trapdoor Tile at a cost of 1 Action.
Search
A Hero that Explores this tile will get a number of Item cards, the amount specified on the tile itself. Any that they cannot take must be discarded.
Deadly
A Hero who ends their turn on this Tile while there are no Monster in play will be Devoured; becoming a monster on their subsequent turn.
Lectern
A Hero with the Golden Key can spend 1 Action on this Tile to win the game.
Blind
A Hero who enters this Tile has their turn immediately ended, no matter how many Actions they have remaining. A Hero who starts here can move off this Tile without penalty.
Fleet
A Hero who starts their Turn here has +1 Action to use, for that turn.
Indomitable Monsters
As you can see, the Monsters are unaffected by the Tiles themselves; but since their entire goal is to Devour a Hero and return themselves to Hero status, where the Heros can and can't go, as defined by the Tile types, affects where a Monster player is going to move.
Long story short, there are twelve monseters, all with movement variations and some that DO interact with the Tiles above. The Ghoul Horde for example is able to use the Trapdoor Tiles in the same manner as a Hero.
Item Balance
These are all the items in the game, 24 of them. They're much trickier to balance than the monsters because they interract with everything;
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Other Items
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Monsters
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Carrying Hero
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Other Heros
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Tiles
And none has the exact same rules as the other - this is part of the concept of disruption. In order for something to be truly valuable and game changing, it must be unique; not a buffer version of another feature.
I think I've got them down now though - I've plugged so many holes in the rules and switched them around so much I'm reasonbly confident that they will pass the next round of playtesting no problem. Yes, that's not what's going to happen, but I may as well be optimistic :)
Curse Items
Oh, some extra space. I could delete the last few cards, or use it to blather on a bit more.
Ok!
One of the more evil features are negative item cards, called Curse cards. If a player finds one of these then they have no choice but to take it. Each one has the drawback of occupying one of your carry slots - the normal maximum items you can carry is three.
Each also has some unique special rules attached, that are usually bad for the player that carries them - although not always.
My favourite is the Pork Pie - your character carries it as a snack for later. But, it's so enticing that any Monster that starts its Turn in sight of you has +1 Action for that turn.
A simple change, but one with lots of potential. I've seen playtesters do reverse kiting on a hero player holding the pork pie and use it to devour another hero, in a completely different direction.
