by kingalces
Intro
This might be useful for anyone considering getting this game but worried about maintaining a consistent play group.
Though I play board games frequently with a wider array of friends, there's a core of 3-4 of us that can
really commit to a game like this.
We loved how
Risk Legacy worked quite well no matter how many people were playing at the time and didn't need too much consistency in players from game to game, but that's not really the case with
Seafall.
Our Situation
Out of the 4 of us, one person is interested but probably rarely going to make it to the table (work schedule craziness). We want to include him when we can, but really there's a 3 player core.
However, despite our best efforts, there are going to be days when only 2 players can show up.
Handling Varied Player Attendance
- Of the 5 provinces, there are two divisions: 3 are "core" and 2 are "guest".
- Each of the 3 core players gets a core province to themselves. No one else can play that province. The guest provinces are a shared responsibility.
- All 5 provinces received one of the start-of-game bonus options that arise at the beginning of the first non-prologue game.
- On days with 3 players, all core, we play our core provinces.
- On days when only 2 of us can show up, we play a round using only the guest provinces.
- On days when all 4 of us can show, the non-core fourth player will play a guest province of his choosing.
- On days when there are 3 but the non-core player is one of them, the core player with the least glory will play their core province and the other two players will play as guests. If the two core players are tied in glory, both play with their core provinces.
- We assign ranks to the provinces at the end of each round, game-to-game, as if we had a 5-player group.
- We follow the recommended rules for handling missed games. Since we're flipping between core and guest, everyone is going to miss
some games. Every missed game means a ship stat point increase, and at every third missed game, the province gets one of the winner-category upgrades.
- When we eventually finish the game, the "real" winner will be the highest glory from the core division (which is likely to play more games anyway).
Results So Far
It's worked fairly well, though we're of course only 4 games in (including the Prologue). It helps that we're treating this as a sort of an episodic TV show. Some episodes have to do with the core storyline, and some are about side characters, but ultimately they all move the season forward.
It takes a little bit of planning to make this sort of setup work, and it helps to have everyone on board.