Winds of ... change?

I've been letting ideas for Winds of Fate stew since I talked to Jeff and company after their playtest. One of the main things they commented on (and it's something I'd seen myself as well) was that there didn't seem to be enough player differentiation. If everyone wants pretty much the same thing, then the bets are pretty similar, and the game isn't very exciting. So here's the current idea to address this:

Instead of 2 decks of cards (Help/Hinder) - or one deck of Help/Hinder cards - imagine a deck of cards which is comprised of say 5 different suits. Each suit would be associated with a different Greek god. One suit would be Athena, and she would always add to the Help total of an Adventure. One suit would be Poseidon, and he would always add to the Hinder total. The other three suits would be different Greek gods, and each one would add to the Help total in some Adventures and either add to the Hinder total or not at all in other Adventures.

In addition to this, each location (or else each Encounter tile) would be associated with one of these gods. The cards matching the god in the location would be the ones that add to the Help total of that Adventure. Also, particular cardplay in each Adventure would earn a player a token of the god at the location, and these tokens could be used to offer rewards.

I will be thinking more along these lines to see if I can't improve the game and make it feel more exciting.

In addition, to differentiate the betting, I'm considering making bet chips location specific. So far I'm thinking they would be drawn randomly from a bag, and each one would be associated with one of the locations. When placing a bet, you would really be saying "I think that Odysseus will reach THIS location on THIS round" - not just when the game will end. Each player would start with one bet chip associated with the Game End, so you would still be able to bet on that as well, but any Bet Chips obtained during the game would be drawn randomly from the bag.

I'm thinking that it might be neat if a player chooses to use an early, not-too-lucrative bet in order to collect some bet chips to use in later bets, rather than try and fight for them.