Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Alter Ego - idea

I just had a thought about Alter Ego, and so I'm chronicling it here lest I forget...

I've already considered that the Henchmen cards could have some penalty if you don't defeat them (or at least do "enough damage") in one turn - that penalty would likely be "lose a bond in such-and-such aspect (where "such-and-such means Hero, Community, Job or Family). One of the Alter Ego aspects could have the benefit of protecting AE aspects from that damage.

Let's say this is the Community slot that has this effect. That means if your Community aspect is at full strength (3 bonds), then your Community, Job, and Family aspects are all protected from that damage. You could incur such damage and be safe from ill effects. Your Hero aspect would still be vulnerable though. If you neglect the Community aspect, then each bond you lose makes one of your AE aspects vulnerable - probably Community first, then Job, then Family 9though the order is debatable and maybe random would be interesting.

This could help drive decisions about which Henchmen to fight based on whether you may incur a penalty or not, and which aspect will be penalized. A player could purposely neglect this aspect, making fights more dangerous (or more costly anyway), in order to preserve the power of their Job and Family aspects.

In other news, I don't know if I'd mentioned this before, but there should probably be a way to ADD bonds to the game. Like you spend your entire turn strengthening your Family aspect rather than fighting crime. You shouldn't be able to do this too often though, or people might just make sure their aspects are full before fighting crime. So how to limit it? Maybe just say you can't do it 2x in a row? or you can do it max 3 times per game? Or only if you have a new AE token to place (and certain Henchmen give you one when you kill them)... something like that perhaps.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

For the 'Adding an Aspect' part, I like your idea of 'only if you have a new AE token to place'. This mimics you gaining for experience in a sense. Character growth if you will.
I need to read more on AE to comment more intelligently though.

Seth Jaffee said...

@tomg: Yeah, that could be a good limiter. Maybe defeating certain Henchmen (or some other condition) occasionally gives you a Bond token, and either at that time, or perhaps you have to skip a turn later, you can add that bond to one of your AE Aspects.