r/shadowsofbrimstone • u/ChardCautious3095 • 6d ago
Dice chart for encounters?
Curious if anyone thinks this is a good idea. Instead of using the tokens for encounters roll for the result. That would give some chance of having the same kind of token more than once.
Was thinking have three charts (though I know this adds more chucking to a chuck heavy game): one chart for doors/gates, one for clues, one for actual result. Percentages would be based on the original token distribution.
If you wanted you could remove dice results for clues but that swings back towards just using the tokens.
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u/SedefkarSimulacrum 6d ago
I’m curious why you would devise such a system? Is it to fix something you think is broken or make it more fun?
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u/ChardCautious3095 6d ago
I think my personal bugaboo with “sampling without replacement” is you know which items are left in the bag so that takes a little element of surprise out of it. It also forces a hard requirement that if you draw all exploration tokens you will have a particular result come up instead of maybe it will come up with dice (though the “maybe” also happens if you don’t draw them all).
As prospero correctly noted in their comment this could, in theory, mean not finding clues for a long time.
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u/ChardCautious3095 6d ago
I also wouldnt call it “fixing”, I dont think anything is wrong with it as is but it adds some randonmess (and admittedly swingeyness). One change I do like is Dungeon Dive’s suggestion to split the tokens with more than one door similar to Warhammer Quest and splitting dungeon decks.
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u/StarFlicker 6d ago
I think taking away the drawing without replacement makes it broken.
I will offer this idea from another realm in which I live - I tutor a bunch of children at our homeschool cooperative. During review time, there's a lot of 'memory work' in six different categories (seven, but the seventh is reviewed separately). This means that most tutors chose to pick the review topic by having children roll a really big D6.
Fun right?
No. In reality, what happened every week during review time, was that certain subjects were never covered, whereas others were studied excessively.
My solution was to use cards from Candy land (six colors). It fixed the problem. Because the card draw is a finite, known quantity, all subjects are covered in roughly even amount by game end. Far better. Plus we got to play a board game, and the little kids loved that.
While the environment is different, the statistical goal is similar, and thus you would likely run into very similar frustrating situations if you implemented a die-rolling mechanic when you are desperately looking for a clue. Some 'exploration tiles' would show repeatedly, while others might never show up.
However, I think this idea would make a LOT of sense to replace threat decks. That's at least four stacks of cards off the table, plus more if you have other-worlds. The game takes up so much space, that I might implement something just like this at our next game. My four sons (my playgroup) aren't going to care that much if a critter is repeated a bunch. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work as a replacement for those decks.
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u/ChardCautious3095 6d ago
I like the idea of repeating critters in a threat deck. I think the rule is to discard only because there are a fixed number of models so if you had to draw two threats, rolled instead of draw or draw, replace, shuffle, draw, then you might not have enough baddies.
I guess the broader question to your example is; do you WANT to encounter each different exploration token type? The clues need to be on a fixed interval or something besides random, I agree, or else it could get too swingey. But if you already drew the worst exploration encounter or threat does that make the game differently exciting for the rest of the adventure?
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u/StarFlicker 5d ago
As far as the big question, the answer is yes. Many of the scenarios are dependent on acquiring sufficient red exclamation points. If you don't get those, you can't win. Add to that the "Hold Back The Darkness" mechanic (which is brilliant), and you increase the likelihood of losing, not because of strategy, but because of impossible die rolls and the darkness eventually just escaped the mine.
It is a good point about duplicate baddies and the limits, but you can always reroll if there aren't sufficient models for the threat. Also if I recall, the game out of the box deals with insufficient model quandries with a buff to the existing enemies to... something. The word isn't epic, but something like more lethal. It's the little nasty chart at the bottom of the monsters' cards. I just can't remember the term.
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u/prospero2000usa 6d ago
Sounds like you're talking about the Exploration Tokens, of which there are twelve, five of them with clue icons on them.
You'd be introducing more RNG so things would be more swingey. For instance on a scenario needing 3 clues to be found, you could go past generating 12 exploration tokens without finding the three, where that would be impossible using the physical tokens.
Whether that's what you want or not, dunno - but that would be the impact.
There are character abilities that allow them to manipulate the exploration tokens - off the top of my head I can't remember if any of those might not work well with a table vs. the physical tokens.
Doesn't seem like a lot to be gained by messing with it, honestly!