I really like Ironsworn's quest progress tracks as a pacing mechanism: every successful scene fills the track (amount depends on quest's difficulty) and at any moment players might decide they're done with the quest, roll against filled segments and see if they fulfilled the goal.
Really want to see how it works with a party that's too much into preparation. Like, okay, fill the whole track with gathering info and setting stuff up, and then we'll resolve success or failure narratively. No idea if that will satisfying, would love to know =)
There are ways to stack decks that allow for mixing a desired amount of unpredictability into the mix, which is something card-driven board games often do. Some of the methods I've seen used include:
* Special cards (e.g. aces or jokers in a normal deck) represent "ticks" towards doom and when the last one appears, boom!
* Split the deck into N parts (half, thirds, fourths, etc..) and distribute those special cards into them, and when they appear Bad Things happen .. this creates pacing ("sometime in the first half of the deck.." e.g.) without spoiling the surprise or removing predictability entirely.
* Split off the bottom N cards and shuffle the Doom Card into there.
* When the Doom Card appears, players can spend to delay it, reshuffle it into the deck, or otherwise skip it (in the case of multiple Doom Cards). What is spent and how depends on the game.
* When the Doom Card of a given card series (e.g. a suit in a regular deck) comes up, that suit is "dead" and no longer contributes to the story.
I'm sure there are many more. So, yes, while card decks as Doom Clocks are not perfect (and can't be: randomness and timing are inherently at odds with each other, and trying to build towards an unpredictable ending is always going to have some messiness), there are ways to make them better through stacking/salting the deck.
Excellent list. I was coming here just to add that it is common in card games to strip a random number of cards from the deck so that you know about when it will end but not exactly, and you also know about what the distribution is but not exactly.
I really like Ironsworn's quest progress tracks as a pacing mechanism: every successful scene fills the track (amount depends on quest's difficulty) and at any moment players might decide they're done with the quest, roll against filled segments and see if they fulfilled the goal.
Really want to see how it works with a party that's too much into preparation. Like, okay, fill the whole track with gathering info and setting stuff up, and then we'll resolve success or failure narratively. No idea if that will satisfying, would love to know =)
There are ways to stack decks that allow for mixing a desired amount of unpredictability into the mix, which is something card-driven board games often do. Some of the methods I've seen used include:
* Special cards (e.g. aces or jokers in a normal deck) represent "ticks" towards doom and when the last one appears, boom!
* Split the deck into N parts (half, thirds, fourths, etc..) and distribute those special cards into them, and when they appear Bad Things happen .. this creates pacing ("sometime in the first half of the deck.." e.g.) without spoiling the surprise or removing predictability entirely.
* Split off the bottom N cards and shuffle the Doom Card into there.
* When the Doom Card appears, players can spend to delay it, reshuffle it into the deck, or otherwise skip it (in the case of multiple Doom Cards). What is spent and how depends on the game.
* When the Doom Card of a given card series (e.g. a suit in a regular deck) comes up, that suit is "dead" and no longer contributes to the story.
I'm sure there are many more. So, yes, while card decks as Doom Clocks are not perfect (and can't be: randomness and timing are inherently at odds with each other, and trying to build towards an unpredictable ending is always going to have some messiness), there are ways to make them better through stacking/salting the deck.
This is pretty much the Quiet Year Approach. Particularly with the final card.
Excellent list. I was coming here just to add that it is common in card games to strip a random number of cards from the deck so that you know about when it will end but not exactly, and you also know about what the distribution is but not exactly.
I am looking forward to your game. I also just received Apocalypse Keys. Can't wait to dive in!