Got my set of Living Card Decks today – Huzzah! The content is great, and I hope the Hexplore IT team consider adding more living card decks to the volumes over time.
What’s not great is the instructions for playing them. I am experimenting with the following changes.
Peril Cards
Love these. But making them an optional draw on a hex roll for Circumstance is bad in the same way that asking players to increase their own difficulty level is bad.
So I have a few prompts to push Perils into the Circumstance deck. When a Peril is drawn from the Circumstance deck it is laid face down on the open circumstance row, and is considered unavoidable and immune to discard effects.
Anytime HEX is rolled the party has an option to choose a Peril or a Circumstance. If they do not choose the Peril, shuffle the top Peril card into the main Circumstance deck.
Anytime the party manipulates the open Circumstances, for example with a luck stone, shuffle a Peril into the Circumstance deck.
I have considered a few others but trying to gauge the overall difficulty with the above two approaches. You could for example add a Peril to the deck when a city falls or when discarding a circumstance roll a d6 and add a peril if you roll a hex, and so on.
Curse Cards (Alternative)
An alternative play style is to isolate the Dead King Curses and randomly choose one each time a city falls. If the party reclaims a fallen city then they can choose an active curse to permanently remove. A curse can only be applied once, so even if the city is recaptured the party has one less curse in the end game.
What was that cards?
Shuffle the lot into the main Circumstance deck; removing the QR code related card.
Bezzelquark’s Special Favour
Set aside the Bezzelquark quests. Place the stack of Favours into the first quest track turned in at the Black Market. Then every time you turn in a Black Market quest reveal the next Favour in the stack.
Shrine of the Seasons
Stack them in numeric order and place them in a single questline during set up. Otherwise don’t include them in the game.