Clues, Challenge, and Chaos

[Kakita Shiro 992]

 

App is still the best way to go.

yeah, sure best way to go.. whatever. because sticking your hand into a bag takes more effort.

 

there's another thread where i explain how to pull tokens out of a bag, if anyone is having issues wondering how it works, you should check it out. it's pretty easy. good luck.

Bags are not hard. It's just that apps are better.

[iGniGhted 113]

 

 

App is still the best way to go.

yeah, sure best way to go.. whatever. because sticking your hand into a bag takes more effort.

 

there's another thread where i explain how to pull tokens out of a bag, if anyone is having issues wondering how it works, you should check it out. it's pretty easy. good luck.

Bags are not hard. It's just that apps are better.

 

i bet you wear velcro sneakers too..

[Kakita Shiro 992]

 

 

 

App is still the best way to go.

yeah, sure best way to go.. whatever. because sticking your hand into a bag takes more effort.

 

there's another thread where i explain how to pull tokens out of a bag, if anyone is having issues wondering how it works, you should check it out. it's pretty easy. good luck.

Bags are not hard. It's just that apps are better.

 

i bet you wear velcro sneakers too..

 

WTF does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Stick to your talking points.

[Supertoe 662]

 

 

I feel like I'd rather have a chaos die (or dice) than some bag of counters. This article actually makes me hesitate on whether or not to purchase the game. Maybe I'll feel better after a few more articles.

But they even said that the compostion of the bag changes over time. Imagine trying to do that with dice!

 

 

By adding another die or replacing it with another one? Like how they added the blessing/curse die to Elder Sign?

 

You can't possibly have a bunch of dice in the packs now can you? That just restricts design space, and raises the cost. This way is better. Just put 30 tokens in the core, and voila! Solution. App I'm fine with, but I'm going to lose it if I see another post asking for dice.

[Robin Graves 6,054]

 

You can't possibly have a bunch of dice in the packs now can you? That just restricts design space, and raises the cost. This way is better. Just put 30 tokens in the core, and voila! Solution. App I'm fine with, but I'm going to lose it if I see another post asking for dice.

 

DICE?

 

Ok ok, and besides it's FFG, they love making games with lot's of tokens. I don't mind the sack of horrors, errr the bag of chaos.

[Kubernes 736]

 

 

 

I feel like I'd rather have a chaos die (or dice) than some bag of counters. This article actually makes me hesitate on whether or not to purchase the game. Maybe I'll feel better after a few more articles.

But they even said that the compostion of the bag changes over time. Imagine trying to do that with dice!

 

 

By adding another die or replacing it with another one? Like how they added the blessing/curse die to Elder Sign?

 

You can't possibly have a bunch of dice in the packs now can you? That just restricts design space, and raises the cost. This way is better. Just put 30 tokens in the core, and voila! Solution. App I'm fine with, but I'm going to lose it if I see another post asking for dice.

 

 

Having 2~8 dice isn't going to change it that much, if at all. Remember that a d6 die can potentially replace six counters. Having to remember six sides and a single die rather than whatever number of counters is a bit easier for players too. A single card like ​The Gathering could easily adjust counters or dice.

[Buhallin 4,563]

Given that the system looks for only a single result, changing out the tokens is more like changing the faces of the dice rather than adding/removing dice themselves.  With the tokens, you could easily increase the odds of a given result in (relative) isolation.  Adding dice is tougher and far more fiddly to get to that level of control, and the system would have to account for multiple dice giving multiple results.  It also allows far more extreme deviations from a norm than you could get with dice.

 

The only way to really get the same system would be to include a specialized die with every scenario - or 4, to account for difficulty.  Even then it would constrain the system, since they probably wouldn't want to ship a 17-sided die.

 

I think it's more annoying than rolling dice too, but from a game design standpoint it's a much better choice.

[Bullroarer Took 996]

I like the bag.

[Nushura 7]

I would personally prefer a die....but if we are going to add/remove tokens often then tokens is the cheap way to implement it.

 

In any case, I hope next preview talks about scenarios. And hopefully there is a way to "pause" an adventure (i.e., use the cards for another campaing) so we can have several games in parallel

Edited August 27, 2016 by Nushura

[iGniGhted 113]

Given that the system looks for only a single result, changing out the tokens is more like changing the faces of the dice rather than adding/removing dice themselves.  With the tokens, you could easily increase the odds of a given result in (relative) isolation.  Adding dice is tougher and far more fiddly to get to that level of control, and the system would have to account for multiple dice giving multiple results.  It also allows far more extreme deviations from a norm than you could get with dice.

 

The only way to really get the same system would be to include a specialized die with every scenario - or 4, to account for difficulty.  Even then it would constrain the system, since they probably wouldn't want to ship a 17-sided die.

 

I think it's more annoying than rolling dice too, but from a game design standpoint it's a much better choice.

 

 

save your breath, trying to explain that to some of the people who are complaining about it the most is like trying to explain quantum molecular theory to a 2 year old. you say something like "changing out the tokens is more like changing the faces of the dice rather than adding/removing dice themselves", and they will say "Well, Great! We can just have 800 dice for every possible situation!".

 

but it's easier.

[Nushura 7]

Yes, the four difficulty settings, at least in the rulebook at GenCon, are:

 

 

• Easy (I want to experience the story)
• Standard (I want a challenge)
• Hard (I want a true nightmare)
• Expert (I want Arkham Horror)

I took a picture of this (and some other parts of the rule book), but I'm not sure how to post it to the forum.

 

 

Via PM I got a hold of his pics. I hosted them in the following link http://imgur.com/a/SnE4w

[Trialus 118]

Thanks for posting the pics! Great to get a look at the instructions...some pretty interesting sounding cards in those starter deck lists.

[ricedwlit 209]

Setting aside the special chaos tokens (which look to be the same across all difficulty levels) we can compute the expected test adjustment via the Chaos bag for each difficulty level:

• Easy: Ranges from +1 to -2, with expected value of -5/10 = -0.5
• Standard: Ranges from +1 to -4, with expected value of  -13/10 = -1.3
• Hard: Ranges from 0 to -5, with expected value of  -21/11 = -1.9
• Expert: Ranges from 0 to -8, with expected value of -39/12 = -3.25

That's quite a range of variability!  I like the increase in the range of value - for easy you could pretty much (aside from special value) just overcommit resources and ensure you will surpass the -2.  But trying to guarantee that you'll surpass a -8 on hard would take a lot more work.

[Julia 2,809]

Setting aside the special chaos tokens (which look to be the same across all difficulty levels) we can compute the expected test adjustment via the Chaos bag for each difficulty level:

• Easy: Ranges from +1 to -2, with expected value of -5/10 = -0.5
• Standard: Ranges from +1 to -4, with expected value of  -13/10 = -1.3
• Hard: Ranges from 0 to -5, with expected value of  -21/11 = -1.9
• Expert: Ranges from 0 to -8, with expected value of -39/12 = -3.25

That's quite a range of variability!  I like the increase in the range of value - for easy you could pretty much (aside from special value) just overcommit resources and ensure you will surpass the -2.  But trying to guarantee that you'll surpass a -8 on hard would take a lot more work.

 

This could also possibly mean there won't be nightmare decks coming for this game: changing the token pool composition should be enough to move from one side to the other side of the spectrum without the need for extra cards