Message:Many games need nothing but to be played. It's the pretty games that don't work that I often mod. I want to recover the pretty into the functioning. It's a chance to change and see a complicated game that seems to always end the same that I mod.
Take HotW, which I wrote several mods. The worst feature of the game are the barbarian. No one wants them, they should be card plays (extra carnage no one scores), not someone's actual turn. To change that I added Giant Step migration to more them right to civs across empty spots and cross the impassable to send them places they can flourish and later score in alter eras. I also added an Era Eight because the Germans an American are just anti-climatic. Noet, all my mods have never been played. They were theories.
Wiz War is actually dull and long. People get trapped or far afield too easily. Two player, just call it over, you won. Six player, someone is left watching -- dull. The decision to create three decks of separate cards: Attacks, Numbers and the Rest, blunted the dull tangents. It also allows more combo fun to occur. But too many Idiots to appear.
Not all are a fan of modding the rules. But last case in point, Cosmic Encounters was perfect with mods to the original made my players in a certain tight group. Cosmic Encounters with designer Expansions becomes sad and stupid. The scholarly, well-tread in gaming can see the difference.
A few more monsters leads to ones you will PASS. A few more monsters leads to holy moley combo, fun. But lucre and other odd things that inevitably just add a weird ah-shucks, didn't see that...seems to focus the theme on dumb luck. My amp goes to eleven pointlessness.
How about this? Play Chess and when you get to checkmate, you roll two D6 and high die gets Win-Win or changes his Loss to a Draw. Did it really do anything to the actual activity?
It's childish to save face (in recreation). Sorry your game was bufoo, but maybe one of them learned that less is more (in some cases).
Yours,
IronRed
11-Dec-2025