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Encounter Deck With Critical Win Condition Encounters

3 replies [Last post]
Fri, 08/01/2014 - 00:03
dnddmdb
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I've been working on a scenario-based game (a la Claustrophobia, etc.) in which one team attempts to uncover hidden ancient relics, while the other seeks to thwart these attempts or destroy said relics.

There was going to be an Encounter deck and as an action, a player can draw a card and resolve the effect. The Encounter deck would differ based on the type of scenario, and certain cards would be Excavations that are kept face down in front of the player and are furthered with tokens each turn.

Anyway, the idea is that certain Encounter Excavations are critical to the game. Completing the Excavation or Thwarting it is a win condition for either player. I was wondering how these critical Encounters should be placed in the deck. Something like Claustrophobia where it's put into the last few cards of the deck or something? Any ideas? Input is much appreciated.

Sincerely,
DnDDmDb

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Fri, 08/01/2014 - 08:59
#1
Dralius
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It would depend on how many

It would depend on how many there are but in general I like a bit of uncertainty when it comes to these sorts of things. What you could do is make three piles two that are almost half the deck and then one that is only a few cards maybe 6 or 8. Shuffle half into the first part of the deck, half -1 into the second and the last into the short deck. This way you’re going to have to play through most of the deck to win yet still not know when the key cards will come up.

I’m currently working on a game with three event decks.

Deck 1; Easy events but less than one third of them score you points.

Deck 2; Medium hard but nearly half of the cards score you points.

Deck 3; Very hard but nearly all cards score you points.

Players bring new events into play each turn and can decide which to draw deck to draw from. If you fail to successfully complete events they count against you. This gives the players the ability to regulate the risk.

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Fri, 08/01/2014 - 09:47
#2
Toa Lewa
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You could do something like

You could do something like in Pandemic. At the start of the game, the player deck is shuffled and broken down into x sections (x is the difficulty level of the game). One epidemic card is placed on top of one of these sections, and each section is shuffled individually. The sections are then stacked on top of each other to form the deck. The advantage of this system is that epidemic cards are randomized but still will popup around certain times. You could do something like this for your excavation cards.

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Fri, 08/01/2014 - 20:19
#3
kos
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Joined: 01/17/2011
Event cards in phases

The suggestions above are good.

Another technique that some games use is to divide the event cards into different decks (A, B, C) with the letter printed on the back of the cards. This gives you control over the distribution of the cards in each deck, and appropriate descriptive text can be used to strengthen the theme and sense of progression. Players draw from deck A until it runs out, then B, then C.

To mix things up a bit, you could design other triggers for switching decks, such as:
- Draw from deck A until event X occurs, then shuffle deck B into the remainder of deck A.
- Draw from deck A until event X occurs, then discard the remainder and draw from deck B.
- Draw from deck A until event X occurs, then you can choose to draw from A or B.
- etc.

Regards,
kos

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