Quote Originally Posted by Madame_Zelia
...Would allowing 2 loots instead of one per room get us farther down the line? A thought.

One of our party members suggested that the loot rules be raised by +1 all around. Thus, you could pick up 3 loot after all mobs are vanquished, 2 loots if you are just 'looting' or resting. This would certainly speed up the game considerably. (Speed only being an issue when at 5 hours the player exploiting Ray's schtick flipping errata was just having too much fun).

Another question is whether the loot to schtick ratio in calculating the victory points is appropriate. Should they be equal or should schticks count for more?
Just to make sure we are on the same page, the rules say that you can:
  • Pick up 2 loot if you clear the last monster in the room (by killing or displacing)
  • Pickup 2 loot if you rest in a room that contains only loot (no monsters)
  • Pickup 1 loot and then move to a new room and have the rest of your turn
  • Move into a room and pickup 1 loot assuming that the room contains only loot and one or more other players so no new monsters are played.
During early playtesting we started out letting folks pick up larger amounts of loot. I don't really remember it speeding up the game, but it did make the game more imbalanced toward the stronger melee characters (Roy, V, and Belkar). It let them kill a bunch of monsters for XP and then immediately pick up a lot of the loot too. By limiting how much loot they could pick up, it gave the weaker melee characters a chance to walk in and share in the loot. We also liked the loot-gathering mini-game that would spring up whenever a large loot pile formed (especially in the lower levels). It also had the nice side effect of giving the characters another reason to stay close to each other.

To further help with the loot balance, Haley, Elan, and Durkon also have other ways to increase the amount of loot they collect in the game (Haley has a shtick that simply lets her pick up extra loot, Elan has a shtick that makes him more attractive when offering loot for assistance in battle, and Durkon can offer to heal other players in exchange for loot).

Because we felt we had balanced the loot gathering and the shtick gathering, we decided that they should contribute equally to the victory condition. At the end of the game, some characters tend toward having more shticks while others tend toward having more loot. We tried a lot of different variations and the rules we finally settled on seemed to hold up the best across numerous play tests.

If you happen to try out some rule tweaks, please post your results. We would be interested to hear how your change affected the gameplay (either positively or negatively).