Looting for treasure and the merits of deck stacking.

[cynthialee]

[This topic was moved from the Saturday Night DUNGEON! room o. 5/3/16.]
Last few games of HQ played around these parts I forgot to stack the treasure deck and just shuffled to get things moving.
Well as this was a new group to HQ I seem to have made a big mistake in not taking time to 'fix the deck'.
After a game where every wandering monster was pulled in a matter of a handful of turn sequences, they now have a group standing order of 'don't search for treasure'. They are after the quest objective and that alone now. They see the treasure deck as a suckers play and think it is better to avoid the thing altogether.
They are in the dungeon to find the end fight and not dilly dally with the minions.

Now this can be a problem, as many rooms in the game specifically state things to the effect of 'the first to search for treasure finds X'.


Edit to add: and this is with a treasure deck that is expanded with extra goodies and only has about 1 bad card for every 4 good cards. Their odds of pulling all the wandering monsters was lower than normal.

[IvenBach]

Add in an extra room or two where they have to pull a lever to open a barred door. Something to that effect where you 'force' them ever so gently to search. Stack the deck in their favor initially so when they search it's full of unicorn blasting rainbows out their backsides. That way they get smeared with rainbow filled skittles goodness and are happy about it. I had the same thing happen when playing with my group. Nearly every card pulled was a Pit trap (I allow searching inside of pits - IE more searching), Wandering Monsters and every negative thing first. Their only response was 'We'll exhaust the bad stuff and have only good things waiting for us'.

[Count Mohawk]

Don't the Wandering Monsters and such say "Shuffle this card back into the Treasure Deck"? If that rule was played literally, you could 'shuffle' behind your screen after they pull three or more bad cards in a row and do a quick stacking on the spot.

[Lemmeron]

A couple of things I do with the treasure deck.
In my games I only allow 1 search per room or corridor for treasure. I also allow 1 treasure and trap search per piece of furniture or chest. Thus a specific search is required on each chest or other furniture in a room and must be done standing adjacent to it.

I have also made custom trap and treasure search tokens (which I will post when I am back at home) that get placed in the room or corridor (or on top/under the furniture) when a search is done. This allows us to easily track what has been searched or not and can be useful for players who get stuck finding hidden doors...

1. I reshuffle all the traps and monsters and "nothing" back in so the deck over the course of a quest gets more dangerous.
2. When players draw a potion card on a treasure search they keep the card thus removing it from the deck until they use it. Which serves to limit the amount of healing potions in my games. Of course this only works if you play with the same group and they are not dying too often.

This one may help you Cynthia...
3. If a room has been searched for traps by a player and a trap card is then pulled by another playing searching the same room for treasure in the same round I will draw another card until it is not a trap and they get that one.

4. If a player searches an alchemists bench they will be given the next available potion in the treasure deck unless the first
card drawn is a trap or a monster.

I am in the process of making a seperate alchemist bench, bookcase, and tomb set of treasure cards unique to those pieces. That make encountering those objects in a quest more exciting for heroes.

[cynthialee]

Good ideas.
One thing I have done with the alchemists bench is have a few unfinished potions on it and if the Wizard or the Elf rolls Mind in Combat Dice and if they net a Black Skull they are able to finish the potions. If there are multiple potion types that may be concocted each must be rolled for.

[Lemmeron]

Cynthia. Have you made up these Uncompleted potions as cards ? I would like to see how you have formatted them if you have. I would like to add that idea to my alchemist deck when I finally put it together. As well I will be adding unknown potions with beneficial and some with nasty effects. I also am adding an alchemist hero to my game so the alchemist bench will have an added bonus if he finds it in the dungeon.

[cynthialee]

Cynthia. Have you made up these Uncompleted potions as cards ? I would like to see how you have formatted them if you have. I would like to add that idea to my alchemist deck when I finally put it together. As well I will be adding unknown potions with beneficial and some with nasty effects. I also am adding an alchemist hero to my game so the alchemist bench will have an added bonus if he finds it in the dungeon.

good idea, but no
Just as quest notes.
As for unidentified potions one could require the Spell Caster to make it to an alchemists bench and then try and identify the potions. Say a Mind roll in combat dice looking for a Black Shield, for difficult potions they need 2 or more Black Shields. If they get to town they could pay like 10 gold for an alchemist to figure it out for them.

[Anderas]

One thought about shuffling.
If you shuffle one time, the top card tends to be at the bottom.
If you shuffle two times, the top card reappears on the top.

Worst case, the same wandering monster card appears each search.

So maybe if you play with shuffling, don't shuffle an even amount of times. Prefer an uneven amount of times. (If you do it right, this won't be a problem, but we tend not to be too concentrated when we shuffle)

I don't like the shuffling rules. When i come around to finally do my own deck, there will be a card more or less like "shuffle the deck and draw another card. Then take the top five cards, place this card on the pile, place back the top five cards"

Or maybe six or seven - to be tested. Reason is not to shuffle unnecessary often - it destroys the cards - but to have it shuffled once in a while.

[cornixt]

One thought about shuffling.
If you shuffle one time, the top card tends to be at the bottom.
If you shuffle two times, the top card reappears on the top.

You need to find a better shuffling method, i.e. one that actually shuffles.

[GimmeYerGold]

I have a custom treasure item that can remedy excessive Wandering Monsters: