[MadDogMaddux]

I realize that with 8 players, we could just play two games at the same time. But I would LOVE to see a six player expansion to the core set. 4 player games are nice, but often end up leaving out one or two. I regularly find that I don't get to play many of my 4 player games just because I've got more than 4 people over.

In the meantime, I've got the starter cards from the demo set, and I'm going to try using them to allow for more players to join in. *shrug*
If it's not too cumbersome, I suppose Catalyst could just release packs with the 4 role cards and their starter cards, let people add them in at their whim? Just a thought.

[AJCarrington]

Wholeheartedly agree with this. Even if it was just a rules expansion that let us use the expansion pack.

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

I think it's probably easier to just make up extra role cards, since you have some extra basic deck cards.  The problem with introducing new roles would be that they'd be a lot less useful against some of the existing obstacles that require particular damage colors, and the existing roles would be useless against obstacles requiring new colors of damage.  You could probably invent new roles with different combinations of existing starting cards, though.  Like an adept (maybe 3 black, 2 blue, 1 red, 1 green?) or a rigger (maybe 3 green, 2 black, 1 red, 1 blue?), or just put in an extra one of the basic roles.  The basic box comes with 2 extra starting cards of each color, and the expansion pack comes with an extra starting card of each color, so you could manage something for a 5th player just from the basic box if it were balanced 2-2-2-1.  You'd need more cards for a 6th unless you were at the karma level that allowed substitutions  All it really determines is the starting deck, and the rest is determined by what cards you buy.

[MadDogMaddux]

Agreed, you can't add new "elements" without nerfing the core box. Or at least not that I can think of. So just publishing the original four roles with their cards, our new rules that use differing combos of the existing cards is the easiest route.

Me, I have a demo pack, so I'll experiment with having an extra mage our street sam in the party next time I have more than four wanting to play.

The real question will be if it unbalances the game to have an extra player and an extra obstacle our not. It *seems* like it should scale...

[Imveros]

I'd like to see hybrid cards. Like a physical adept that gets blue and black cards, a rigger that gets black and green, shaman red and blue, or a technomancer that gets green and red cards. Like previously said, as long as we use the same cards it should stay well balanced.

Unless of course you feel hybrid races water the game down?

I just wish it were a 5-6 player game

[incrdbil]

I mentioned this in a different post, but we've been doing some 5-6 person games.

.First of all, we add an additional obstacle to each scene equal to the number of additional players.  We put one Crossfire card already in the discard pile for every player over 4. (This might make an 8 person run incredibly deadly.)

If a situation refers to a character of a certain role/color, and there is more than one, have them d6 off, with the high roll becoming the designated target for that card.  Any damage effect that would apply to 'the mage' or any role affects all players of that role.

As for creating alternate starting decks..I'd still give them a default color and tinker with starting cards for now. Physical adepts are blue, but drop one mana card for a Quick Shot; technomancers are no different than hackers (If you really want a difference, drop one mark for a street smarts); riggers are green roles, use the decker starting cards, just dropping one mark card for a quick shot.

Hopefully these roles will get full fledged expansions, with their own decks, unique role cards,and black market expansions for them.

[MadDogMaddux]

Played a 6 player game last night.

Our two extra players each got 2 of every starting card, and had to give one up after looking at all 8.

We bumped the Nuyen benefit of each Obstacle up by the number of extra players to make sure everyone got a Nuyen any time an obstacle was defeated.


After we ran through it we decided that a) we should bump up the level escalation by the number of extra players and b) the extra nuyen might have been too powerful.

Even so, it was a really fun game, and I can see how it would be a lot of fun to allow people to build custom starting decks based on the character they want to play.