Children of Eorl Designer Diary

As an example, a card from early in the game’s run that has led to perhaps more negative play experiences than any other is the infamous Sudden Pitfall. Compare this design to the more modern analogue, Man Overboard!.

All too frequently, you’d reveal Sudden Pitfall on the first round, before you got any questing allies out. A loss of a hero that early in the game is more than most decks can handle, and in such cases it feels like an instant-loss card that is completely out of your control. On the other hand, Man Overboard! features a scaling effect. It’s only punishing if you have more than 8 willpower committed to the quest, which typically means you are committing at least one ally. If it’s the early game and you don’t have any allies out yet, all you need to do to avoid this card is commit 7 willpower or less among your heroes. It feels a lot more fair in the early game, while retaining the difficulty of Sudden Pitfall in late game. Even its shadow effect has better scaling!

In Children of Eorl, you may notice many of these scaling effects. One of the most obvious examples is Cold from the Mountains, which is targeted at ally swarms. The larger your board state, the more painful it becomes. In a similar vein, Exhausting Winds has the potential to deal out a lot of damage if you are well set up but is unlikely to cause an immediate loss. This is what I believe treacheries should be: not cancel-or-lose, but a way to wear you down so that you are more likely to lose to something else.

In addition to the encounter cards, an even bigger key to maintaining difficulty throughout a quest is to bake it directly into the quest’s “gimmick” or “hook”—the mechanic which makes the quest unique. For example, in Ambush at Erelas, the first quest in the deluxe, this can be found in the Plundered Goods objective, which slowly builds up threat in the staging area over the course of the game as you destroy enemies.

In The Battle for the Beacon, the scaling effects are bountiful, with cards like Bald Hill becoming more difficult if you are in control of the beacon. It is also filled with many “or” shadow effects, which force a choice between doing something bad, or damaging the beacon. In the early game, while your board state is still developing, it is quite tempting to choose to damage the beacon when it has many hit points remaining. In late game, however, when the beacon is hanging by a thread, those shadow effects start hitting much harder!

Lastly, in The Horse Lord’s Ire, which was not designed by me but rather lead storyteller John Leo, scaling effects are built into the core of the quest by scaling up the pain as the players recover more of the stolen steeds—and occasionally even by offering you the option of giving up those steeds in order to avoid that pain! See the enemies Saddle-slasher and Rein-ripper for examples of such effects.

When getting feedback from playtesters, one piece of information I value most is how the quest felt on the final turn. Was it tense? Because for me, my lasting impression of a quest is often based on the last few rounds. If the playtesters say that they knew they had already won, and were just going through the motions, it’s a sign that I need to dial up the scaling effects. Once the playtesters start telling me they just managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, I know that I’ve achieved the scaling that I want!