Searching mechanic

OK I really don't have good idea of how I want this to work. However I do think we need to think heavily about a few things:

1) How do we prevent someone from sitting in a single cave and continuously searching until the entire deck has been depleted? One method I can think of is that the first time you search, it costs 1 AP, the second time 2 APs, the 3rd time, 4APs, etc. Another method might be a player can only search a room once.. Period...

2) I really think cards should be drawn for searching. With cards, any treasures (or portable discoveries? =D ) can be laid face down in front of the player... I think with this mechanism we can give an unknown factor to the game. For instance, say I am clearly ahead on points, and I find the exit. However, I look over and see that scurra has 10 cards face down in front of him. Those could be worth a lot of points, so I have to decide whether or not I need to go around and try to score more points or whether I should rely on the points I have already scored. Another interesting thing is that in the decks there could be 'nothing' cards (like 'empty' cavern or 'worthless potsherds') that could be kept face down in front of the player as bluffing cards.... Any thoughts?

3) Do we want to implement event cards like Scurra suggests? Things like swarmed by angry bats, or fell in a crevase, etc. Also, would these all be negative? I assume with most it would just be a matter of paying an AP penalty, but we could do other things like make a player lose a discovery, lose a piece of equipment, loose a treasure, etc. We could also do global events like earthquakes, floods, volcanos, etc. I personally would love this, but I think it would shift the game even more towards a beer & pretzels style game.. Again, I have no problem with this but If we're going to have a B&P game, shouldn't we make it more B&P rather than sitting on the fence between that and a Strategy game? I guess what I'm saying is we should pick a mood for the game and stick to it. Also would we want to implement a 'staged' deck for searching as I suggested in a previous post? I think it would be great because we could put the easier events and less valuable treasures near the front stages, and then have things get progressively harder / more valuable. Any thoughts on this?

4) As for searching itself, I'm not so sure about draw X and keep 1 or whatever.. Shouldn't players 'get what they get'? I mean otherwise, won't you have all of the good cards taken and then just have a deck weighted heavily with crappy cards at the bottom?

All for now.
-Darke

I think this is a valid idea too, but a concern has been voiced that there is going to be WAY too many chits laying around everywhere. Can anyone think of a good way to clean up the chits? Or some sort of mechanic to make them take up less space?

I think the "staged" event deck would be the best way to handle things too - the finds may escalate in value but so would the risks.

Yes I agree the discoveries should be worth more because they are fewer in number. Regarding the staged deck, would it encourage people to only search during the beginning of the game when the rewards are more easily found? Conversely would a person be more likely to sit back and let the other players search through the first stages, and the wait until the later stages to search for the more 'meaty' things.

Perhaps we could combine the progressive difficulty mechanic with the staged deck mechanic. I.E. The first time you searched, you would pay 1 AP and would take a card from the stage 1 deck, the next time you would pay 2 AP and draw from the stage 2 deck, etc. Also we could decide that you couldn't perform a stage 2 search, before a stage 1 search had been done. I.E. Before you perform a thorough search, you must perform a preliminary search, then a standard search. Any thoughts?

Another option would be to have a time mechanism. I.E. We could have a turn counter... All searches performed during the first X turns would draw from the stage 1 deck, all performed during the next X turns would draw from the stage 2 deck. This mechanic might promote a sense of urgency as the game wore on. Also if we used the exit card mechanic as I described before, the timing mechanism would prevent the game from ending too soon.

All for now.
-Darke

That's not what I was going for in the beginning. If I ever said anything like that it might have been in passing as a suggestion of how to differentiate seraches when we started talking about Action Points. I don't particularly like that idea at all.
- Seth

Yes you're right, I misquoted you (about the different decks). I apologize... As for the completion status, I think that's going the way of the dinosaurs. =(

I looked back through a few posts... I had assumed this was a given but now maybe it's something that Scurra and I had discussed in a chat one night and then my brain told me that it was a 'done deal' when actually it wasn't. The reason I like this method is because I think discoveries (or cave features or non portable treasures, whatever) and obstacles would be impossible to miss. I.E. You need not search for them, they are just there. Imagine entering a cavern and having to look for the underground pool that takes up 3/4 of the floor. That's ludicrous. Also for obstacles, how can you search for something that prevents you from crossing the cavern? Imagine crossing a cavern, hitting a dead tunnel, then going back to the cavern. You decide to search it and find a Cave In. Darn! That wasn't there before. Dang it! Now I'm trapped. See my point? I think once you enter a cavern you should draw chits for features and obstacles and place them immediately.

-Darke

Let's say there are 3 players in an incomplete cavern. You complete the cavern by adding the last tile. Theme/game-wise this means every little part of that cavern has been "mapped" or seen or searched! Everyone who is currently inside that completed cavern draw one card. They can get "nothing" card, artifact/items or equipement(?).

It's simple and straightfoward. I think it adds to player interaction. It encourage cooperative effort to finish a part instead of that dreadful "second-last tile" that will give the advantage to the next player.

Opinions?

I reiterate my reply from chat...

:(

I think searching should be something that is done manually using APs on one tile. I'm not sure that the all the explorers in a cavern mechanic would work because as it was said, how often will this occur?

-Darke