Ideas - opnions ?

I didn't put in a quota for Strength or Craft intentionally, so to encourage creativity over pumping of stats.

The alternative to "taking a life" was presented to avoid situations like "Knight Vs Elf".

Kind of unique.

I would like to see a little check card supplement. The reason being is that withholding 5 spells from each character will affect the game too much.

Also with the 3 different trophies, maybe re-word it to be different enemy types.

danjr said:

Why? With 3 expansions there are 90 spell cards and we barely used half in a long game. THough, I didn't think that the Gypsy wouldn't appreciate.

I think taking any spell cards out of circulation is not a proper game mechanic. Especially when certain other cards come up allowing the person to take a spell of their choice from the spell deck.

If you have 4 players with 5 spells each alloted for, that is a significant portion of the spell deck. If you also have average of 2 spells per player playing, then you are at fully 1/3 of the spell deck out of circulation.

I am sure that I would be extremely PO'ed if cards like "Marked for Glory" and the gain stats spells were taken out of circulation for the whole game, among a few other awesome spells.

To mark cast spells, put your cast spells in the discard pile as normal, but take a spell from the bottom of the stack (face-down) to mark that you have cast a spell. This keeps the Gypsy happy and still tracks the number of cast spells.

Reduce the 6 Objects to 4 Objects or anyone needing to win the game will also have to acquire a mule, bag of carrying, or some such. You're over burdening the endgame with too many requirements that require too much accounting in ways that the game can't account for unless you create accounting components.

And indeed, accounting spells will get troublesome, as with 4 players that's 20 spells that get removed from the game. There are many conditional spells that I have seen players get stuck with for prolonged periods. Having to cast the spells is perhaps not the best condition. Acquiring spells is hard enough in some games. Better to have it be 3 spells sacrificed. A spell is laid face down in the players "accounting" pile and thereby it fulfills the requirement; this still doesn't solve removing spells from the game, but it is slightly better for accounting and completing that part of the endgame.

Other conditions of sacrifice in addition to acquisition might be a better way to go. It also forces players to decide when and what to sacrifice. One type of "Deed/Accomplishment" counter could be used for all sacrifices. The only requirement might be that at least one sacrifice has to be from each of the following: Spell [uncast], Follower, Object, Magic Object, Trophy, Gold, Quest [Completed, but no Reward]. And to win, you must have acquired 13 Deed tokens before entering the Crown of Command.

The nice additions hidden within this approach are

• anyone trying to chase you down in going for the CoC has to be able to make the sacrifices before getting there.
• anyone in the lead going for the CoC has to have made or then make sacrifices, making it easier to go after them.
• level the playing field as more characters become reading to go after the win and must finish their sacrifices. More mayhem, more interactive competition, the closer all characters get to fulfilling requirements for the endgame.

Keep at, for what you are creating here is actually a new "scenario" rather than just an AltEnd. Talisman has only one true scenario in its commercial cards... Warlock Quests.

Nice thoughts JC.

I like the idea of counters.

old style bingo chips would be awesome, color coded to each quest set.

I am sure there are some other type of chit/counters on the market that could be easily adapted to the game.

Hell a set of poker chips would be cool to use too!

Hmmm... that brings in a another notion. Along with the AltEnd card, provide a card with labeled boxes for each type of accomplishment to be accounted. This card could be printed for the number of players in a group's typical game. Players pile a penny in the appropriate card box when they fulfill a specific requirement.

Accounting in the original concept does present problems. A Trophy of 8+ or a Life taken from a character are hard to account in a clean fashion. So is the fact that a Magic Object Weapon also counts as an Object for the 6 required. Other cross accounting also exists. There are also things on that list you might have when you start but use up along the way in the game. I wouldn't want to cling to a useful Fate I started out with.

It might be better to have a list of accomplishments rather than account what a character has. For instance, gaining a Magic Object is pretty much dumb luck... unless you complete a Quest in a game where Treasures are being used for completed Quests. Don't care for that, since its a two for one. The quality of an adventurer is in what s/he has done.

Here is an example of a possible accounting card that could be used with this scenario. Note that I just slapped in all sorts of things without regard to any specifics. It is only an example and one for Cynewulf's exact needs should be created. The only things that would really need to be accounted are accomplishments and not what the adventurer has it arrives at the CoC. Right-Click and View/Save to see it at 300ppi.

And yes, I know it has a typo. It's been rushed morning.

My first post in this thread said exactly that, a check card supplement. That is exactly what I imagined, well maybe some text for each category in the box would be deadly awesome.

I know I'd give it a try in that fashion.

Good work yet again JC.

Heck you could even use D6 as counters.

With blank boxes you could also make the endgame scenario random each game. Roll a D6 for each category and that's what you need to complete for that box.

I would love to try a random generated version and see how interesting it gets. You could either do a random roll for the entire group, or a random roll for each player. I think that would be pretty awesome.

danjr said:

Yes, I thought of that as well. But again, there are some things that go above the count of six. Also, putting instructions inside the boxes (in brief) is an excellent notion once those are set in stone. But not all requirements for being the perfect adventure are something that would work on an accounting sheet.

danjr said:

I could get into that as well, perhaps, but it wouldn't appeal to a wide selection of players. Most players need something stable and explicit, or it will turn them off. I think Cynewulf's approach to a set of standards has greater appeal.

Thank you all for the great feedback.

I accounted opinions so far and I came up with the following.

Considerations:

- Now the player has the chance to take another Warlock Quest if he feels that the Magic Weapon is too hard to be found.

- The trophies don't need any book-keeping, because if you change trophies to strength/craft cones these are not valid anymore toward the winning conditions. (there are a lot of 1-power monster trophies that shouldn't make you too unhappy if you keep them rather than exchanging them)

- The "Big Trophy" (which has been added just to avoid a migraine to the Knight character in the case all characters are good) power has been reduced to 7.

- The explanation on how to keep track of cast spells (the only thing that needs actual book-keeping) has been removed. Every group can use whatever method they fancy.

- Removed the 6 objects requirement and added a non-weapon, non-armor magic object requirement.

- I added the Replacing Quest variant as "compulsory" to make life easier.

Here is the higher res version is here

img375.imageshack.us/img375/3073/theperfectadventurer.png

That's looking a bit more manageable. The only other detail not raised are characters who get extra advantages from Followers, lose any advantages for having Followers, or are dependant on using up Followers. But there aren't too many of those.

Much better.

I tried my Random amount of objectives version last night and it worked pretty well. Can't wait to try it with our group and see what they think.

This is probably among my favourite alternate versions endings.