I was thinking about some things we could see down the road. I wonder if we'll see:

• Expansion packs to make existing quests harder - as more player cards become available, quests that were hard will become less so. Why not have expansion encounter packs that ramp up the difficulty.
• Multi sphere heroes
• Neutral heroes with abilities to make up for the lack of sphere resources
• Multi sphere cost player cards
• Campaign rules for cycles (more substantial than Nightmare mode)
• Epic quests that allow for more than 3 heroes per player and more than 50 threat
• Alternate versions of heroes and allies
• Non humanoid heroes (see the Eagle hero thread)
• Expanded tournament rules
• PvP with someone taking the bad guys' role

Thoughts? What else might we see beyond the obvious development of cards that key off of Gondor, Rangers, Nobles, etc.

i think if the game is to stay fresh they will have to do things like the above, im hoping for something that ties in thematiclly, not sure what i mean by that, maybe an extended 'storyline' sort of like the campaign you said. im hoping to see some epic locations as well - minas morgul, blacks gates, minas tirith, and it will be interesting to see what abilities these extremely influencial location cards will have

I hope we don't see a PvP, as I like the coop aspect, though maybe it could somehow be temporarily during a part of a quest. (not sure how that would work.). Do you think we will ever see saruman in an encounter deck, and would he be an objective? Might he be some type of character where he helps oth sides at this point?

Both, not oth!

I expect we'll see one or more manifestations of Saruman. In the time period the game covers he could be friend or foe. I could see him as one card doing both - maybe he is a stud ally but when he exhausts you have to draw an enounter card or raise threat by 3 etc.

Woz said:

Something like that's would make sense. But I think he would probably be an objective card ally from the encounter deck. Or maybe to keep him in from the encounter deck you would have to pay a resource or 2 each round.

I really do think that we will see some quests that allow for more than 50 threat total, why else would they bother making the wheels go past 50? I know the right wheel has to go to 9, but the left could simply end at 5... So take that as a hint. Also, I think we will see some heroes who are perhaps already in the game as ally cards. Faramir, for example, would make a good hero. It would get confusing though as to how to incorporate him, would the ally card be playable after the hero has died....

Yeah, the rulebook mentions some "epic" quests or something that involve the threat going past 50 or somesuch.

I would love to see a Saruman ally that also conspires against you! That sounds great!

I was wondering whether the quest involving the Balrog would have a higher end threat.

yeah, if your threat reaches 60 then the balrog engages you i.e. you die rather swiftly

In a previous topic someone had asked about Quests with alternative endings like the 1st 'Passage Through Mirkwood'. Once you know the Quests, you know when and where the main action will be and can plan towards that. Once there is an unknown 'split', you have to plan for either. In effect, at a cost of 1 extra card per Quest, you virtually double the number of Quests. The labyrinthine tunnels in the mines are perfect for this. I remember in the film there was a point at which the Fellowship could have taken 1 of 3 routes. How different would their journey through have been if they had taken either of the other 2 routes? Even that 1st Core Set Quest - although relatively easy now - is very different depending on the path chosen. I would certainly like to see more of this in the future. Cheers!

Rashley . Great post! More quests that have a random path like Passage through Mirkwood would be very welcome. In thinking about it, I'd go as far as saying that they could retrofit some of the existing quests with alternate paths relatively easily if they had expansions that modified existing quests (one of the thoughts I mentioned in the OP)

There is so much they can do with the rule system that is already in place... I would like to see "side quests" like pulling a quest card out of the encounter deck, and then having a choice to split your part to go and try and solve it.. a nice reward at the back of that quest like finding a cool item or something. Or w/e.. what I mean is there are some drastically different and awesome things they could be doing. Treachery cards for example completely stop play until they are instantly resolved. This could be used to do much more than a bad affect. It could be used as a random story element to be introduced into the quest for example something that is neither good or bad but extended the depth of the quest itself. What the game really needed was a "mythos" card like in the arkham games.. a card that can be placed out of play but adds a global effect to the entire game until it is discarded then the sky would be the limit.

Woz said:

I have been working on a camping rule variant at BBG www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/734879/advanced-quest-rules-v1-open-for-discussion

Also I think it is only a matter of time b4 a duel variant is made... and there is a thread on FFG about torny rules you could get involved, there are some really good ideas back about that in there. I think you will be waiting a LONG time to see this stuff from FFG. It is up to us to make these variants.

while these are great ideas, i really hope they dont lose focus on the theme of the game, and it end up being some tournament driven, win win win game without any thought to tolkiens lore

TragicTheBlathering said:

Hey Tragic. Thanks for the link. I recall reading it over at BGG. I need to get my id set up so that I can post there. I think it will be while before FFG explores some of the variants - right now they can release 'the basics' to keep it fresh. No need to go down other paths yet from a business perspective I'm guessing.

I play what you describe as Cycle regularly. In fact I had a short thread going on it here about a month ago.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/734879/advanced-quest-rules-v1-open-for-discussion

As I mention, the differences in 'my variant' is that I don't keep score during the games (just track Ws and Ls) and I play the full cycle regardless of the number of losses. I just play a quest until I win, adding one to my cycle score for each attempt. The lower the better, with a perfect SoM cycle giving me a score of 6.

I also play a fair amount of one offs - especially when I'm fooling around with a new deck and want to see how it does against certain quest types.

To be honest, I'm really not interested in tournament rules for this game. I threw it out as I know it is something others are interested in seeing evolve (queue Glaurung's post in 3-2-1...) I'm torn a little on pvp. I think it could be interesting, but I think if they start down that path it will lose some of the current charm.

Keep up the good work on the brainstorming !

Woz said:

agreed, not only that but i think they will lose alot of brownie points with the non competative players

there will NEVER be a duel variant from FFG, that will only come from fans.

I knew this thread was here somewhere - a pretty epic quest in itself just finding it! Thirteen pages of forum this year so far. But that's another story.

So in the light of Khazad-dum I wanted to bump this up, now that most of us (if not all) have managed to have a look around to some degree or other. What do we all think? Multiple-choice quests seem to have had a bit of a twist, but have made an appearance after a fashion. One or two classic locations, if not epic ones, at least. What would you like to see to continue the good work? After all the attack-boosting cards for dwarves, I'd like a defense-booster for them, as well. We've seen Ring Mail coming in The Long Dark, but what about more event cards, in the spirit of Khazad! Khazad! ?

Looking further ahead - I don't know why, though, but I really hope one day we'll see Southrons on their Oliphaunts

spalanzani said:

Im pertty sure we will see lot of Tolkien worlds aspects. And i like the idea didn follow Fellowship story as well. Cose previous Lotr (decipher)card game does it. So i think is quite cool to have some other story like a Hunt for Gollum or Arwen escort ans so on. Maybe we even can see some wars of Angmar story. Karn-Dum siege or some????? Maybe some story about blue mages about they south and east traveling. What about some story from second age???

Glaurung said:

i agree....a different story to the path of the fellowship is good, however your suggestions are all out of timeline......i mean isnt this between hobbit and FOTR? or have they aquired an expanded license that i dont know about? now THAT would be cool, if not however then-

- angamr wars and carn dum was way before....no matter what lord of the rings online would have people believe..

-blue wizards went east and were forgotten about a long time before events of the hobbit- though saying that, there is so much ambiguity about them that i may just be possible, for instance if we ever journey to the far east

-second age is second age, i dont think this will happen

looking at the time frame it doesnt change locations. we can travel to anywhere existant in the third age....for instance we could go to angmar and see the ruins of carn dum, perhaps it could be infested with evil spirits- a memory, like the barrow wights for instance. or we can go to minas tirith, or the shire, or just about anywhere. so i think we're all good on the location side of things.

i think its the events side that will be tricky. between bilbo returning to the shire and his farewell feast the appendices events are mostly around sauron regaining strength and saruman using the palantir and becoming ever insnared- two jumping off points there...so perhaps we'll travel to minas tirith, then through the morgul vale and into mordor as spys??? or we could aid the rangers of ithilian....anyways im just speculating as im not sure on their license....i know that the tolkien estate can be very limiting on the rights etc

i posted a similar post to this on another thread and someone asked if the timeline even mattered anymore given that we can pretty much take the storyline and smash it to pieces by having frodo go into moria etc....while i agree the game wouldnt be fun or even exist if there wasnt a considerable degree of customisation, i think there are still limits on what the devs can/should do

richsabre said:

dosn't matter to me in the least.. I say use as much as possible.. the game dosn't need to be in any kind of "order" or w/e.. I say just theme it in lotr.. trying ot make it "correct" is a fail... as you said it is already compleatly broken for the purist. So what dose it matter...

booored said:

well no ones more close-minded-purist than me, ill be the first to admit it, and i dont consider it broken- i enjoy the chance to play out different scenarios, but i dont consider them crossing any boundaries....if we start seeing 1st and 2nd age characters who are long dead crop up in 3rd age events, that just will start to take the p*ss..if however we see a 2nd age deluxe expansion set in the 2nd age, then great, i want all the material we can get

I have to hold my hands up at this point and admit that I only know LotR through the Jackson movies, though I did read the book around the release of the first film. A second-age deluxe expansion sounds very intriguing - though I suppose as the game was announced as taking place in the time it does, I can't see them deviating from that. But looking at how much material they've managed to produce, sometimes from throwaway single lines/sentences, I would imagine there is still plenty of life in the old bird yet...

spalanzani said:

even if the game never went away from the 3rd age, and pretty much followed the unfinished tales/trilogy materials we would still have many years of material, so do not fear!