Patrick
2008-04-08, 10:04 PM
I've noticed that, for a lot of people, the problem with the OotS game is the amount of time that needs to be invested into it, so I thought I'd start a thread for ideas on how other people have been shortening the experience, in ways that don't involve buying The Shortening Expansion (not that we won't buy it when it comes out, naturally).
One of the reasons it takes so long is that first couple of times you play, people are looking at the cards. They're laughing. They're having damn good time and they're slowing the whole DAMN THING DOWN - so, I cut all the pictures out of the cards and sharpied anything in the text that could be construed as "hilarious."
Another reason is the battles - they do get a tedious after a bit, and there are so many of them! They're really only there as a utility - an oppurtunity for opponents to screw with other players, by playing nasty monsters into play, or by the players triggering the battles to simply breeze through them just to gain more schticks/loot. There are a lot of other ways in which randomness seeps into the game, so I figured, why not the battles?
I came up with two ideas that help this. One, instead of automatically starting a battle every time you enter a new room, just flip a coin - that way, you only trigger a new battle half of the time that you enter an empty room.
The second idea is a "Get Out of a Battle Free" card. Each player gets one oppurtunity - just one, that can't be traded - to escape any non-PvP battle that they trigger. As games, even with these rules, can still feature dozens of battles, players have to think carefully on when to use them.
I've also been dabbling with altering the endgame - I mean, the combined "separate deck and encounters" for Xykon's lair, special rules for that floor, as well as the dungeon's collapse, take up a hell of a lot of space in the rule-book for something that only takes up the last ten percent of the game, maybe. I just wish that part could be simplified (which I hear is something that The Shortening has been doing, so that's cool)
Anyways, does anyone else have any such tips?
One of the reasons it takes so long is that first couple of times you play, people are looking at the cards. They're laughing. They're having damn good time and they're slowing the whole DAMN THING DOWN - so, I cut all the pictures out of the cards and sharpied anything in the text that could be construed as "hilarious."
Another reason is the battles - they do get a tedious after a bit, and there are so many of them! They're really only there as a utility - an oppurtunity for opponents to screw with other players, by playing nasty monsters into play, or by the players triggering the battles to simply breeze through them just to gain more schticks/loot. There are a lot of other ways in which randomness seeps into the game, so I figured, why not the battles?
I came up with two ideas that help this. One, instead of automatically starting a battle every time you enter a new room, just flip a coin - that way, you only trigger a new battle half of the time that you enter an empty room.
The second idea is a "Get Out of a Battle Free" card. Each player gets one oppurtunity - just one, that can't be traded - to escape any non-PvP battle that they trigger. As games, even with these rules, can still feature dozens of battles, players have to think carefully on when to use them.
I've also been dabbling with altering the endgame - I mean, the combined "separate deck and encounters" for Xykon's lair, special rules for that floor, as well as the dungeon's collapse, take up a hell of a lot of space in the rule-book for something that only takes up the last ten percent of the game, maybe. I just wish that part could be simplified (which I hear is something that The Shortening has been doing, so that's cool)
Anyways, does anyone else have any such tips?