I am working on an Eldritch Horror inspired adventure game, and I will need to design soon the cards that will accompany the game. I intend to use cards with multiple sections (to reduce the number of cards) and I am trying to figure out what to keep, discard or how to organize the information.
Now I was thinking about what character do in adventure games and I came up with only 4 categories of action. This apply mostly to games where the players fight against the system:
A- Make the players progress: Do actions that will make the players move closer to winning the game. For example, fulfilling quests, fighting evil, etc
B- Reduce the threat: Do actions that will make the evil regress or be less threatening. For example: Defeating monsters, disturbing plans.
C- Make a character progress: Do actions that will make the characters improve itself. For example: Buy equipment, find artifacts, train in new skills, collect resources, etc.
D- Repair the characters: Do actions that allow the character to recover lost health or get rid of nasty conditions, etc.
From what I have seen so far, everything seems to fit in those 4 categories. Sometimes it could be a nastier format like a quest where you don't know the results until completed. But the results will always fit in one of the categories above.
So my question is: Are there other possible categories?
Else I can only manipulate the various methods within a category. For example: Do you improve your character buy buying new stuff, stealing artifacts, completing a secret project, fulfilling a quest, finding a skill trainer, etc. I'll just have to make a choice from the list.
Yes it's for a cooperative game.
As it was discusses on BGG, I could condense it even more as 2 path of action:
1- Make the players progress or the game regress
2- Improve or repair the character
Since each pair are closely related to each other. It still gives a dilemma between fulfilling objectives or powering up your character.
So far I have not found anything new that could fit as a board game. Creativity and experimentation is nice, but it fits better in a video game.