What’s stopping this from being 5 player?

[Taylawlz 10]

Other than the component limitation for the health tracker And special tracker, what limitations are there that stop this from being a 5 player game?

 

my playgroup is going to be 5 for our first run.

[Fnoffen 96]

My guess would be that balance issues are the reason(s) that FFG decided that 4 is max. Like Ron Pearlman said in the intro to the first game: "...Too many humans, not enough space or resources to go around..."

[Mottasem1 2]

6 hours ago, Fnoffen said:

My guess would be that balance issues are the reason(s) that FFG decided that 4 is max. Like Ron Pearlman said in the intro to the first game: "...Too many humans, not enough space or resources to go around..."

My thoughts exactly. 

[kmanweiss 1,502]

Player resources.  They probably only included enough player cards, pips, ect for 4 players.  Including more costs more money and they did a cost/benefit analysis to figure out they wouldn't sell enough extra units at 5 players to make up for the cost, and that the game wasn't going to be able to absorb another buck or two MSRP.

Play testing.  I'd guess the game was play tested at various player numbers and they likely found due to balance factors, the game starts running into problems at 5+ players.  Perhaps the downtime is too big for the limited actions you can take.  Or maybe there are balance issues.  Perhaps 5 people cooperating is just too powerful.  Or maybe with 5, the balance of power can shift too fast between your turns so that your actions don't even get a chance to register.

Wouldn't be hard to create the player aids yourself and give it a go with more than 4 though.

[Juan4aigle 38]

16 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Wouldn't be hard to create the player aids yourself and give it a go with more than 4 though.

To be honest, I can imagine the first expansion for Fallout will include new cards, encounters and enemies and so on, and new heroes and rules for 5-6 players. 

[Taylawlz 10]

2 hours ago, Juan4aigle said:

To be honest, I can imagine the first expansion for Fallout will include new cards, encounters and enemies and so on, and new heroes and rules for 5-6 players. 

That would be nice. Not many playable archetypes left to pick from though that have a semi neutral representation other than maybe a rogue synth?

[Fnoffen 96]

Maybe alternate builds for the hero types that are already there? Such as an Intelligent Super Mutant or a Charismatic Ghoul?

[Juan4aigle 38]

I don´t know, I would say the sky is the limit. You can have a raider, a minuteman, a synth (detective style like Nick Valentine?), a farmer, a brand new vault survivor, a priest from Children of the Atom... 

I guess they can be seen as factions some of them but you can make their backstory independent enough (for example, the game comes with a Brotherhood of Steel guy, just calling him an outcast of the Brotherhood and booom, he is now a character). 

Descent or Mansions of Madness for example keep introducing new characters that can be quite similar in some aspects, I don't see how expansions for Fallout wouldn't come with a couple of new characters each time, plus cards and tiles, seems easy to pull  or maybe it's just wishful thinking... 
 

[Hedgehobbit 419]

You will also need extra Agenda cards for five or six players. As it is now, you have a bunch for a 1-player game plus 4 extra cards for each additional player. The cards are labeled 1+, 2+, 3+ and 4. Because of this, it doesn't look like they designed it for more than four players. If so the 4-player cards would be labeled 4+. 

[spainhower 1]

On 11/28/2017 at 1:38 PM, Juan4aigle said:

I guess they can be seen as factions some of them but you can make their backstory independent enough (for example, the game comes with a Brotherhood of Steel guy, just calling him an outcast of the Brotherhood and booom, he is now a character). 

The Brotherhood Outcasts are from the existing Fallout canon - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Brotherhood_Outcasts  That wasn't contrived for the board game.

[Juan4aigle 38]

I stand corrected then,  I didn't know that. I guess this opens even more the possibilities for new characters. 

[greenduncan 0]

Hi All. I am doing a 5 player for my mates. So I am looking at the issue being a proportion of scale. So im getting a second set and simply dividing the 4ppayer setup into quarters and then adding an additional quarter to everything scaleable to make it a 5 player. this way its the same level of difficulty but all resource and time limits are extented to cater for 5players or even up to 8 players. The only swing will be faction points with an odd number but fallout is all about a random universe!

Comments welcome.

[BenBlacklock 4]

Hey guys, I made a mobile app to simulate a player board, so you aren't limited by the resources in the box:

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=appinventor.ai_ltblacklock.FalloutBoardGameCompanion