That exploration game - further thoughts on needed revisions

 In my last post I went on about the title of the game (still unsettled at this moment, but I'll stick with something eventually).  Today I want to talk a little bit about other changes that I've been thinking about in the past few days.

All of this was spurred by my discovery of another game that had a successful Kickstarter right around the time that I was putting together my Tabletop Simulator prototype, which is also about fantasy adventurers exploring a random hex map, fighting monsters, finding treasure, buying upgrades, and racing to get a certain number of victory points.  But as I've been watching some of the videos that have come out about that game, I've noticed some differences between what they focus on and what my game focuses on.  So one thing I'm working hard on now is magnifying those differences.

Besides that, I also got feedback from a couple of the Cardboard Edison judges that what they really liked from reading my rulebook was the options for player interaction.  As it currently stands, players who are in the same hex, or adjacent hexes, can choose to give a +1 or -1 modifier to each other's die rolls.  Players can also trade Loot cards, or straight up attack each other.  So that's a good starting point, but in light of the increased competitive pressure, I think I need to amp it up.  I don't have the mechanics nailed down yet but here are the ideas I'm playing with:

• giving each team a starting ability which will give them some kind of bonus when other players are nearby
• adding magic items which will let players help or interfere with each other from a longer range (probably as a single-use item)

One other thing I want to build up is options for planning and strategy.  I already have something called Legends, which are Exploration cards that you get ahead of time (representing rumors and legends you've heard about what might be out there) and which you can play at any time, on your turn or someone else's, instead of drawing a card from the deck like normal.  Depending on what cards you're holding, you can plan around finding something that will be a relatively easy challenge, or that will give you a specific bonus you want if you Negotiate, or if it's something particularly bad you can plan to screw over another player by having them find it.  So one change I definitely want to make is increasing the opportunities to find Legends during the game.  I'm also toying with the idea of adding magic items and/or player abilities that will let you make changes to things that are already on the board, like treating a card as if it was a different type (e.g. "treat all Humanoid cards as if they had the Animal keyword").  As I'm typing that I'm not super confident about how it will affect strategy in the game, but it still seems like it might be fun to have.  Last, there are a few cards that can let you move things that are already on the board, including terrain tiles; I kind of feel like I want to have more of those but I also feel like I need to be able to justify it in the flavor text.