From: jeff@maggot.gg.caltech.edu (Jeff Goldsmith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Wizards
Date: 19 Nov 1992 21:26:23 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Distribution: all
NNTP-Posting-Host: maggot.gg.caltech.edu


>Anyway, under our rules, we usually win, but we usually lose quite a few
>lands along the way.

Under the original rules, we found that the only challenge was to win before
any elf islands dropped.  We got good enough at that that we'd "win" most of 
the time.

>| The major changes we added are:
>| 	1) Demons can stack.  You can use a spell against only the
>| 	   first demon in a stack; after that you roll dice.

>Wow.  And you later describe "demon surfing" in the Dragon's Lair.  I see
>how that can happen.  But since each time you lose you generate another
>demon marker, don't you sometimes reach a state where a single turn can
>result in demons accumulating faster than they can be killed?

Yes.  Demons often take over the Dragon's Lair.  Sometimes we even run
out of demon counters.  Therefore, players try to stay away from the 
Lair.

>| 	2) After the second fortnight, fortnights are only 9 days
>| 	   long.  This doesn't affect the Lair Time, though.  The
>| 	   9th day is usually run by the bad guys, of course.

>We've gone further than that:  After the second fortnight, islands sink every
>SEVEN days.  But the bad guys don't "steal a day" from the players; evil
>strikes at midnight between one day and the next.  (That way you don't get
>screwed when, for example, you find a Unicorn on day 13 (which only stays
>around for one day, thus isn't around except on the day when you wouldn't get
>to do anything with it).)

We prefer to have the possibility that you lose your unicorn, etc.  Adds a
little spice to watching the clock.  

>With islands sinking every seven days, it was definitely hard for the players
>to win, even though we've added a few things to make low-rank characters more
>capable of getting things done.  We ended up saying that when evil is thwarted
>it staves off evil for a fortnight, not just a week.

Without stacked demons, given full 7 day fortnights, I'd guess that you ought
to win 85+% of the time, depending on how cooperative the players are.  We are
willing to cooperate only a) when evil seems to be doing too well, or b) when
a player is truly stuck. (With the 3 tasks/player rule, we need all the players
working.)

>| 	3) The number of completed tasks needed for a thwart is
>| 	   3 times the number of players.

>We've considered tweaking this too, but since we don't mind if we always
>succeed in the end we're content to leave it at 10.  The two-player game is
>pretty challenging, but we can USUALLY win in the end!

The reason for this is to try to balance the 2,3,4, and 5 player games so
that we don't have to tinker with other rules to achieve the same amount of
pressure.

>| 	4) Druids can walk onto the sacred circle.  They still have
>| 	   to roll for Ruktal, but they don't have to get onto the
>| 	   circle.  Before this rule, no one ever played a druid
>| 	   without complaining.

>Yep, we added a rule like this too.  At 1st rank (and thereafter), Druids
>get a spell that lets them transport from anywhere on the Sacred Circle
>tile into a random stone of the circle.  So they're 5/6 instead of 1/6-1/3
>to make it into a stone.  But the random element means they don't have a
>trivial time of it when trying to get into a specific stone (or trying to
>avoid encountering a demon in a stone on their way in).

I like ours better because I think the ability to teleport out of the 
Dragon's Lair, for example, or to get near your mentor from anywhere is
a very powerful spell (about third level, I'd say.)  As to the risks of
landing on a demon, at 2nd level, druids get demon dispelling, so it doesn't
really matter much after that, and at 1st level, why handicap them further?

A few sleaze-guards that I remember:

1) You get a pegasus for n movement periods (turns,) not days.  Flying
to Starcrest and getting a bunch of turns spent flying all over the board
doesn't work.  

2) At 4th level, you must encounter any High Wizard in your hex and do
the gem thing with him.  If he's the false wizard, you'd better roll a 5.

3) No one can tell anyone else who the false wizard is, though they can
make it obvious by play.  

4) If you try to teleport, that's your movement.  You can still get 
encounters that turn, either where you started (if TP failed) or where
you ended up (if it succeeded.)

[ I know that if you don't use the gems, then this is irrelevant.]