Mega Postcards and References

16 Pages??

So you may have noticed that the print and play has become much larger with this update.  Let me explain.

I often get into the mindset of making the game as compact as possible.  I had a fantasy of this game fitting within a mint tin, and failing that a poker deck box.  I really like compact games, if I can fit it in my pocket I'm more likely to bring it with me for spontaneous play.  If I have to carry it with both arms I'm probably only going to bring it to a dedicated game night, and that's fine.  But I like having comfort games in my purse.

But I think I sometimes get a little too over zealous with this ambition.  Something I've been trying to learn recently is that it is valuable and worth it to splurge a little on components if it improves the quality of life of the players.  If players are forced to use tiny difficult to parse reference cards, they'll make assumptions instead or get frustrated looking up the rulebook.  If the setup card instructions are cryptic they'll wait for others to hand hold them.

So I finally acquiesced and added full sized reference cards.  For the eventual Game Crafter release, I needed 20 full sized cards, and funnily it would be cheaper to do 20 tarot cards instead of 36 poker sized cards, so I decided to go that route.  Someone had joked about making the postcards the size of real postcards and I'm going to do that.

With the larger reference card, I feel like the mini cards no longer needed to share the reference burden.  I also felt like it was adding to some of the cognitive load as players felt the need to scan all of them, even though they were identical.  The setup on the back of the postcards are now way more verbose so all players can follow along for their specific setup steps.  I'm hoping this helps make the play experience smoother.

Other Updates

As a consequence of this component change the game is able to support 6 players again.  I've also decided to aesthetically reframe the way the NPCs show up in the rulebook and even on the setup card.

Lastly, the harbinger mechanics have been removed. It was incorporated back before I added the displace action for unrest 🔥, and I saw it as a necessary balancing factor for who received what events.  But displace acts as a balancing mechanic all on its own, with the threat and power it imposes.  So I've gone back to the active player distributing the unrest 🔥, no matter what.  I'm happy to cut that fiddly mechanic.

That's it, not a lot of mechanical changes despite all the extra paper.  Just an attempt to make the experience a little friendlier and kinder to the players.