Valley of the Five Fires Microgame Update: Encounter Table

Welbo and I spent a good hour last night thinking and re-thinking the encounter table. We've been re-thinking it off-an-on for a few months now. The encounter table is critical. It drives the rhythm of the game. What works in theory (based on percentages and law-of-averages) doesn't always work in practice. There's a subtle shift that comes into play when you look at the dice combinations that will yield certain results. Theoretically, that shouldn't matter... but it does (or at least it seemed like it did). I think what was really happening was that even a few percent difference in one result coming up over an another made a huge difference on the game flow. So, after an hour, I think we landed on a table that felt like it yielded the results we wanted it to. Now we just have to get through the big hurdle of how encounters with Special NPCs play out and we should be in the home stretch toward the beta round of playtesting.