House Rules

[Hamiltonz]

We've tried "Me and my Shadow" combined with allowing the player to make a deck of 20 cards from both Shtick decks. This is definately not balanced and should only be done when no one cares who wins.

[PallElendro]

That's why "Me and My Shadow" is meant for NPCs to shadow.

[Hamiltonz]

Does anyone else have fun house rules that they want to share?

[PePe QuiCoSE]

Here is the thread were I updated the house rules I have been implementing and some reports:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123617

Here is likely the final version:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/440931/houserules-shortening

Still, got to try the Shortening... haven't played the game in a long time and not sure that buying it will make me play it again.

[Wanderlust]

Aside from starting with all 4 of the red-bordered starting shticks, a minor house rule is that we don't allow Roy to continue his great cleavage bonuses with his bag of tricks. If I recall, the wording doesn't specify the type of shtick required to use Great Cleavage, and so we'd have a player hack through 4 or 5 goblins, come to a dragon or other flying/impervious monster in the stack that would normally halt Roy in his tracks, switch to bag of tricks with the +4 or +5 bonus (or more) accrued from the previous monsters, and continue hacking away.

We have also modified the Shortening a bit, particularly with the wandering Xykon rules. He spends the game building up his minions before entering the dungeon, and the result in 2 games has been that only a few specific cards or a natural 20 can defeat him. While his stats are similar to the normal game, the problem with wandering Xykon is that he has as many hit points as the players, so you need to be able to repeat the process 4 times. We allow that if you hit Xykon, you can continue attacking the stack of monsters as if you had defeated the top monster. This gives the team a chance to thin out the numbers, so the subsequent attempts to hit become more possible.

There is a thread here somewhere in which I had brought up some questions about the challenges we had with the Shortening, and Rich chimed in with some great suggestions and clarifications, as well as house-rule-ish type stuff.

[Wanderlust]

I just wanted to share, my wife and I tested out a variation of play that we both enjoyed. Here's what we did:

1) Lay out the dungeon face down in advance, just like with the Shortening. Stairs are still rolled for as normal.

2) Separate all Screw This! cards out of the battle card deck and set aside.

3) Divide the monster cards into a number of stacks equal to the number of floors (for our game we had 3 floors, which worked well).
- Organize the monsters by diffculty, starting with easier monsters on the first floor stack and working up to the most difficult monsters in the bottom floor stack

4) Everyone is dealt 3 Screw This! cards as their battle hand. This hand doesn't replenish when exhausted, but you drew 1 ST! card from the deck when you rested or returned to the Dungeon entrance. We also played with the idea of being able to buy more cards by spending loot, but didn't really test it out.

Essentially when exploring a new room, rather than the player next to you playing the monster, you drew from the top of the monster deck for that particular floor. I organized the monsters by similar type and power, so for example the first floor contained mainly kobolds, approximately half of the goblinoids, and most of the weaker animal monsters and a smattering of undead (roughly power 8 or lower). The second level had the ogres, stronger undead, tougher goblins and the tougher animal or lizard creatures (monsters power 9-11 or weaker ones with tough abilities). Finally, the bottom floor held the likes of Mr. Demon, Black Dragon, Ultraviolet Dragon, etc. The Linear Guild was also on the bottom floor since they can be tougher, and to simulate their location in the storyline when encountered.

Additionally, I arranged the dungeon cards so that there would be one of the elemental rooms on each floor. When a player found that room, they would have to draw a monster from the next level down so simulate a tougher 'mini-boss' fight. You could also make that room have stairs down if not already found on the floor.

We found that this sped up play for the first level of the dungeon and allowed players to gain a couple of loot and shtick cards to prepare themselves for the tougher monsters on the lower levels. Generally, players have +2 or +3 to their modifier at the beginning of the game, so without assistance they have a 60% or so chance of success or higher.

We of course had to make adjustments on the fly, such as discarding Screw This! cards that are no longer usable if they affect battle hands, and reducing the number of cards Durkon card draw with his shtick from 3 to 1. Also, if you were to combine with the wandering Xykon rules, you'd need to figure out a way to make the monster drawing fair when building his minion stack, since most undead were in the middle dungeon floor stack. Lastly, you'd want to discourage grinding on the first floor to level up too much, so maybe you could say you can only keep monsters for XP on the first floor if you have less than 5 total shticks.

I will continue to do some tweaking and playtesting, but I think this variation/house rule is a great way to play a quicker game and keep things rolling for players with shorter attention spans. I've been trying to introduce the game to friends recently, and it seems like a spot of bad luck with dice or difficult monsters played early can frustrate some players. Keeping monsters more managable on the first floor can help prepare them for the lower dungeons, and if they run into bad luck on lower floors, at least they get the joy of mopping up kobolds and goblins early on!

[Wanderlust]

I'm hosting a 5 player game tonight, I think we'll try some of these ideas. Anyone have any other fun house rules that have worked for them?