Screw the house rules, I have curses.

Hey all, big big update this time. These are significant changes that could feel jarring but they are built on top of the solid foundation from before and, in testing, appears to improve on the overall experience, tying it all together into what I would personally be proud to call complete. So let's dive into all the changes and additions one by one...

Changes

• Reworded the "What is Crawl?" section for a couple of reasons
  • Partially to include new wording
  • Partially to help shorten the paragraph to save space
• Gems have been replaced by "Treasure"
  • This is to offer a more interesting variety of loot to search for, including gems
• Jokers are now referred to as "Monsters" for the sake of consistency
• Setup section has been totally revamped
  • Now more of a collection of useful info in order instead of a step by step thing
  • Starting hands for different scenarios are covered here now instead of a separate section
  • Starting the game is now more of a group effort as if your party are searching for the safest way into the dungeon
  • Treasure is now rewarded by chance instead of being discarded because that shit was demoralizing after dozens of solo playtests
• Introduction of a new "Leader" role
  • This helps make it easier to keep track of who gets affected by a reveal
  • Also happens to help with simpler wording and saving document space
  • Bonus: It implies which player is currently holding the torch which I think adds an extra level of immersion 
• New "Taking Actions" section to replace the old "Playing Solo/Duo" section
  • Felt more appropriate given the hand sizes now being covered in the Setup section
• Peeking mechanic has been tweaked to be turn-based peeking at the top card instead of keeping it face up and it has been moved to the top of the "Playing A Round" section
  • This helps keep things tense while leaving room for hijinx
• You can now donate kindling to the party while escaping (you can still discard if you prefer)
  • Enjoy the charity or betrayal
• Players who kindle become Leader
  • Thematically this just made sense
  • Again, makes it easier to keep track of who gets free loot (or death) from the reveal
• The Sacrifice action has be reworded to save space
• Starting a new round is now specified to be carried out by the Leader
  • That way if treasure is revealed it's already in the recipient's hand
  • Also I was just tired of being the only one to do it during playtests
• Spread step has been reworded to hopefully be more specific to how it's meant to be done
  • i.e. you are meant to take the top cut of the deck, put it on top of the shadow pile and then put the lot back onto the bottom cut so that the shadow pile is roughly in the middle of the deck
• Reveal step has been reworded and formatted to be a little bit more readable
• New "Treasure" section with new loot table that reflects the new scoring system and a plethora of treasures
• New mechanic: House Rules are now implemented as "Curses" making kings more of a high risk high reward thing
• New scoring system: Gold value instead of points
  • Hoping this makes Crawl more compatible with Shadowdark RPG for GMs looking for an easy game night/one-shot
• Aces "curse" has been simplified to be more effective and useful
• No more set bonuses
• Completion bonus is now called "Coffer" and is worth 10,000 gold to be split among surviving party members
• "Ending The Game" now is a proper section consistent with the rest of the document
• "The Gauntlet" section has been reworded
• Shadowdarker "curse" is now explicitly for the Gauntlet
• Added a "Crawl In Shadowdark RPG" section as a reminder that Crawl is a nice little downtime activity and that I really recommend using the stakes tables from the core book
• Creative Commons statement is now a footer on both pages