GimmeYerGold's [revised] Custom Cards Preview: Lone Monster

[GimmeYerGold]

When the heroes encounter a regular monster than is all by its' onesies (a regular monster that is not in the same room or corridor as another monster, and cannot "see" another monster) instead of attacking the monster, they can "parley" with the monster, and draw a card from the lone monster deck.

It functions like a treasure deck, however, in addition to a chance to find loot, there are some other goodies too.

Notes:

1) Wanted to keep all the specific item cards in the treasure deck, so cards in the lone monster deck that reference a treasure will request the hero to pick cards from the treasure deck.
2) The deck has a slightly more challenging ratio of "bad" cards to "good" with a 54% chance of drawing a good card right away.
3) The deck allows heroes a choice, and an alternative to killing the monster, and the next to last hero before a monster would normally be killed now has a chance to essentially search for treasure, with a similar chance for hazards. In my experience, more opportunities to draw cards during a quest, means more opportunities for wandering monster and hazards to occur, effectively creating more challenge for the heroes.
4) "good" cards are not returned to the deck, so the odds of drawing a dangerous card increase in the same way the treasure deck.

More card sets I'm working on:
[revised] Encounter Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2828
[revised] Artifact Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2826
[revised] Combat Skill Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2823
[revised] Chaos Spell Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2822
[revised] Hero Spell Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2821
[revised] Monster Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2820
[revised] Equipment Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2818
[revised] Settlement Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2813
[revised] Treasure Cards here: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2812

[Count Mohawk]

This is definitely an interesting idea. I support keeping the size of this deck small, though, so the difficulty increases faster the more times the Heroes try to parley.

Gargoyles had better not count as "regular" monsters, though! Especially in earlier Quests, if the Heroes have about a 50-50 shot of banishing a lone Gargoyle, they might use this deck as a way to cheat their way out of a challenging fight. There are probably other kinds of Monsters you shouldn't be allowed to parley with for flavor reasons as well, such as the Undead, although for simplicity's sake, you may want to leave such restrictions out of the rules.

[GimmeYerGold]

This is definitely an interesting idea. I support keeping the size of this deck small, though, so the difficulty increases faster the more times the Heroes try to parley.

Yeah, that's a good idea. With the current duplicates of "good" cards, I could see reducing this deck down to 18 cards, and there are only 7-8 "good" cards, so the odds of getting something good first draw are only 38% to 44%. (The "junk" card is ultimately "good" because the monster leaves, it just doesn't leave a parting gift!)

Gargoyles had better not count as "regular" monsters, though! Especially in earlier Quests, if the Heroes have about a 50-50 shot of banishing a lone Gargoyle, they might use this deck as a way to cheat their way out of a challenging fight. There are probably other kinds of Monsters you shouldn't be allowed to parley with for flavor reasons as well, such as the Undead, although for simplicity's sake, you may want to leave such restrictions out of the rules.

That's the tricky part-I want to err on the side of simplicity, but don't want it to make things too easy for the Heroes. Technically, default Gargoyles would be "regular," that is, if they are exactly as depicted on the monster card. There are also other big regular monsters to consider like Ogres, Trolls, and Chaos Warriors, who flavor-wise, would not be in the mood to be parleyed with! In most cases I could make any important-you-have-to-fight-this-fight-to-the-death monster a special named monster, so the deck could not be used on them.

I feel like if I added a stipulation like, "a regular monster with 1 body point," to include injured big baddies not at full health to be parleyed with, it could address that problem, but it might defeat the point of the deck, because with only 1 body point to go, would the heroes risk using the deck at all?

Going back to the reduced deck idea above, maybe making the deck overall even more dangerous could put the odds in the monster's favor more, so that parleying with a lone gargoyle or ogre or whatever is a tuff gamble, and not an exploit.

HMMM thanks for the food for thought, Count Mohawk!

[Count Mohawk]

Gargoyles had better not count as "regular" monsters, though! Especially in earlier Quests, if the Heroes have about a 50-50 shot of banishing a lone Gargoyle, they might use this deck as a way to cheat their way out of a challenging fight. There are probably other kinds of Monsters you shouldn't be allowed to parley with for flavor reasons as well, such as the Undead, although for simplicity's sake, you may want to leave such restrictions out of the rules.

That's the tricky part-I want to err on the side of simplicity, but don't want it to make things too easy for the Heroes. Technically, default Gargoyles would be "regular," that is, if they are exactly as depicted on the monster card. There are also other big regular monsters to consider like Ogres, Trolls, and Chaos Warriors, who flavor-wise, would not be in the mood to be parleyed with! In most cases I could make any important-you-have-to-fight-this-fight-to-the-death monster a special named monster, so the deck could not be used on them.

I feel like if I added a stipulation like, "a regular monster with 1 body point," to include injured big baddies not at full health to be parleyed with, it could address that problem, but it might defeat the point of the deck, because with only 1 body point to go, would the heroes risk using the deck at all?

Going back to the reduced deck idea above, maybe making the deck overall even more dangerous could put the odds in the monster's favor more, so that parleying with a lone gargoyle or ogre or whatever is a tuff gamble, and not an exploit.

HMMM thanks for the food for thought, Count Mohawk!

If some of the "bad" cards scale with the difficulty of the Monster you're parleying with, that would solve the problem very neatly - that is, if a failed parley with a Chaos Warrior is more dangerous than one with a Goblin. The "Monster Is Enraged!" cards from your first edition kinda-sorta did this, since an attack from a +1 Goblin of course hurts less than one from a +1 Gargoyle.

Alternatively, you could note specific Monster types as being resistant or immune to parley attempts, either on the Monster cards or in the Quest Notes for specific instances. For example, there could be one Quest where the Monsters outright refuse to parley for storyline reasons.

Finally, you should only get to parley against each monster once, a restriction which makes flavor sense if you think about it.

[GimmeYerGold]

Great solutions!

Yeah, the monster-dependent card is a good idea to scale the difficulty, I think I'll re-consider how to include the "monster enraged!" type-cards in place of 2 or all of those "trap" cards, as those are somewhat carbon copies of the hazard cards in the treasure deck, and have a lower limit of only 1 point of damage, while a monster attack can go quite high with a poor defense. (also the enraged card gives the monster a chance to strike out of turn)

I'll definitely consider the idea of including a note on certain monster cards whether or not they can be parleyed with! That could be a tidy fix, sort of like the notes on spell cards that undead monsters can't be put to sleep. If I had to think of the most evil monsters that would never be swayed, it would be the Gargoyle and Chaos Warrior. the bigger, dumber ones like Ogres and Trolls could be fooled perhaps. I could argue that some, if not all undead could be bargained, or "turned" in some way, as this "parley" action is not meant as a literal discussion, rather, a non-combative action. I remember the scene in last unicorn when they convinced the skeleton he was drinking wine, and he told them the secret to the riddle:



And yes, the once per monster limit is a must. Fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me twice, shame on me! I've always played it that way, matching my rules about furniture and rooms only being able to be searched once.

[torilen]

Thinking back on the main quest pack - there are lots of monsters on their onesies.
This could lead to a lot of lone monster cards - monster merchants and monster gamblers and such.
This really adds a bit of 1980's fantasy movie feel to the game...think Labyrinth. I like it.

[GimmeYerGold]

Thinking back on the main quest pack - there are lots of monsters on their onesies.
This could lead to a lot of lone monster cards - monster merchants and monster gamblers and such.
This really adds a bit of 1980's fantasy movie feel to the game...think Labyrinth. I like it.

Haha! Yeah, maybe the desire to kill heroes is just peer pressure from other monsters?

Seems like Link experienced some of this lone monster behavior himself:

[Daedalus]

The parley cards look like fun. Often, a lone monster poses a bland threat. The unknown can change such monters into interesting opportunities. Is there much of an increased treasure amount in your games because of the extra searches offered? With the Treasure Card deck, there are now two decks that start positive.