3.3, The Definitive Version

Hey all,

I am very pleased to release v3.3 of Crawl which I am willing to mark as the final version. I feel I have taken this as far as I could, I am very happy with the layout of the rules, I've covered a lot of bases (I'm sure I'm missing some edge cases but I'm willing to accept that imperfection at this stage) and this game feels ready for making into a commercial version. I have been advised by many people to pursue a commercial version of Crawl with custom cards and such and it's something I really would like to do but before I can, I feel must be sure I can move forward with those plans only after I can be sure I can do right by certain people. Anyways, onwards with the update details...

Changes

• Description reworded
  
  • "dark and dangerous dungeon" felt more catchy  and clean than "dungeon full of darkness"
  • Also implies upfront that your torch burning out isn't the only danger
• Card references have been italicized for consistency
  • Used to be bold when establishing what cards were but since every other reference was in italics the inconsistency seemed unnecessary
  • This is further supported by the way references to mechanics like the shadow pile and Torchbearer were consistently in bold
• Starting hands are now 5 regardless of how many players are playing
  • Simpler, easier to remember, doesn't appear to throw off balance too much in my personal opinion
  • Also wanted to clarify there was no hand limit here where it made sense to
  • Plus I moved the cutting the deck bit to here because it feels more natural thinking to do that right after dishing out cards rather than waiting until after deciding who goes first
• Dungeon Entrance reworded to Finding A Torch
  • This adds some consistency with "Finding A Dungeon" and sounded less abstract
  • In my head the players are still basically looking for a good way into the dungeon at this point but their ultimate task here was starting a torch and finding a Torchbearer so the name change reflects that better
• Torchbearer piece moved to Play A Round section and expanded on
  • Instead of an explanation of what the Torchbearer was, I opted to cover what happens when they leave/die mid-crawl
  • Made more sense in the playing a round section anyway
• Taking actions section condensed and moved to Play A Round section
  • Fits very neatly into this section and happens to save a bunch of page space as a info piece rather than it's own section
  • Also changed to be two actions regardless of how many players like the hand size
• Winning the game section moved to first page for clarity
  • Honestly felt dumb when it was brought to my attention that the how to win bit wasn't in plain view like it should be
  • Also came up with much more concise wording that describes that the ultimate goal is to collaborate and win as a party but there's room for competition
• Monster draws emboldened for clarity
  • Since the idea that monsters in your hand takes immediate priority I made it bold to emphasise that
• Reveal step reworded
  • Used the concept of showing your cards added to the Search and Fight actions in previous updates to cover all bases better than needlessly putting stuff into the torch queue
  • As a result I split off what happens to kindling into its own line
  • Also took the chance to clean up what happens with darkness cards in relation to skipping the Burn step which ended up saving some more page space
• End game options
  • Replaced "Rest" with "Stash" and "Leave" with "Score"
  • Again this makes things a little less abstract and more focused on how treasure is handled
  • Also needed to reflect how scoring has changed, more on that below
• The Gauntlet section reworded
  • As a result of the scoring changes below, I had to change the wording here
  • Took the opportunity to focus on the fun part about playing the Gauntlet i.e. More treasure AND monsters
• Treasure section moved to right side of the second page
  • This was needed due to how the layout of page one was coming together
  • I do think it worked out very nicely now that all the stuff to reference throughout the whole pdf is on the right-hand side of each page
• Scoring simplified, gold removed
  • Made scoring so much easier to remember via point scoring with a limited range of 1-6 divided up by face card and colour
  • This makes the black cards the lower of two values for each face card which feels right considering the whole black bad, red good thing you get from darkness and kindling cards throughout the game
  • Coffer removed as a result of this change
• Cursed Relic draws added in bold for clarity
  • Like with the monster draws, this helps show the immediate priority of dealing with cursed relics
  • Bonus formatting points for the consistency with said monster draws (YAY!)
• Cursed action added, curses no longer persist outside of the dungeon
  • Helps make the cursed relics actually feel like a curse since most of the curses do have significant upsides
    
  • Keeps the feel of scarcity by affecting the action economy
  • Also gave me a good spot to clarify how curses work
    
• Hunted curse reworded to include concept of looting
  • Helps establish what happens to the Torchbearers cards and gives player the chance to scavenge resources
  • Also implies that the rest of the cards are discarded... at least I hope it does, others may not find it as intuitive as I do and I will admit fault there. I would've elaborated further but I had no more space so this is one flaw I am willing to accept
  • Bonus, the idea of looting your friends is fun

Well, that is all. I'll be very surprised if I end up making any more changes but I won't rule it out as a possibility in case I have to bite the bullet. Either way, expect another devlog if I make any progress on making a commercial version of the game!

Until then, later days and thank you for playing!
- Neal