Hi everybody,

my name's DrDjones7 and I'm a french player. French regionals were played last sunday and we, players, discussed a lot about stories and the fact that nobody triggers their effects. We realize that this central part of the game is nothing else than an area of the gaming board, used to stack tokens. It's a pity to see that the Ancient Relics story pack, which is such a brillant gaming and graphic success, only serve to mark playing area.

So, on the french forum, cenacle-hd.bb-fr.com/t2409-secret-stories#29212 , we're debating on the option to consider stories effects as Forced responses.

1 - This rule could offer many changes in the way we deckbuild and play. Nowadays, some games are locked or doomed turn 2. Nobody resolves stories so there's only a few chance to unlock the board even with a good deck 'cause everybody plays quite the same cards or the same effects (kill, bounce, control)

2 - Commit and choose resolutions's order could be an even more important part of the game

3 - It could also offer a second life to Conspiracies which are not, or oddly, played in France and Europe. Conspiracies could become an alternative way of winning with positive resolution effects

4 - Winning but loosing is a part of the spirit of Lovecraft's mastercraft and legacy. No hope, a way or another Cthulhu and Great Old Ones will be back. No pain, no gain.

We don't know if FFG's game designers would be ok with this idea but we think it could be tested. What do you think about it ?

I agree with this and I hope story phase would offer more tactical choice. Now it matters too little to what stories you commit.

We play a variant at our game store wherein the stories are required to be triggered. It is fun. We also play a different variant wherein the stories are facedown, and also must be triggered - this adds a very silly degree of chaos to the process, which I enjoy greatly!

We have played variants were the story cards are upside down and thus unknown, variants were the story card effects are mandatory. or a mix of the two.

While fun, I would really hate to see them become a rule for two reasons.

Many of the story effects would not function well as mandatory or forced responses.

Doing so would really change the fundamental dynamic of the game.

While I agree that many story cards do not get resolved, doing so should not be mandatory. The choice to not resolve stories depends on where one is in the game and to what benefit they can gain or detriment they can force upon the opponent.

Making such mandatory, while a very fun variant diversion, removes a bit of the strategy from the game.

The lack of story card efficacy reflects back on the design of the cards, not the cards themselves. A subtle yet important distinction.

I think there are enough times the stories get triggered and I wouldn't like them to become Forced Responses. Maybe if the person who wins the stories could choose between two effects one favouring humans one favouring the Mythos factions.

If a rush deck ever came up against a story card that said, I dunno, "Each player must sacrifice each character with printed skill lower than 3." then they would be hosed at that particular story and makes it unfun for said deck type. Similarly, a large stompy deck would never commit to something on the flipside.

My wife and I currently play with all 30 released stories to provide wider variation in our games. Those stories exist, and definitely change the game for each of us, depending on which decks we're using. I would loathe seeing them be Forced Responses.

I would say that storie effects should not automatically be triggered. The trouble I think is that the effects of the current stories just don't offer a lot of choices. The story that says "Each player sacrifices all characters commited to this story" almost never makes sense to trigger, while the story that says "Choose a story from the unused stories and trigger it's effect" almost always has something beneficial to offer.

I'd say we need different stories with effects that are more favorable to the winner of the story, but that still benefit the looser some. For example: "After this stoy is replaced, the winner of this story places one success tokens at a story. Then, all other players draw two cards."

There are times where a particular story favors one player strongly and it's important to win it just to prevent them from triggering the effect. Making the story effect mandatory would remove this. Overall, I don't like it because the existing stories don't seem to have been designed with that in mind so it would upset parts of the game.

However, I am open to future story cards that must be triggered - which have been designed to work like that. I also would like to see story cards which are mandatory but give you two effects to choose from, and story cards that can destroy other story cards (which would be replaced with a new one). There's plenty of room for interesting things to happen here and I agree stories aren't taking advantage of all possibilities yet.