Sails & Sorcery revisited -- now on TTS!

It's been about a year and a half since I posted about, or even played Sails & Sorcery, Michael's game that I had been working on. For some reason it drifted back into my consciousness recently. I thought about a tweak to the most recent aspect (treasure cards for the Plunder role), and realized it should be pretty easy to make a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game so I could potentially play it again. So here's a quick update:

First, the tweak to Plunder and treasure cards...

In my last post I re-imagined the Plunder role: Instead of just killing off masses of pirates, the new idea was to use Plunder to "buy" treasure cards, which each have an ability (on par with the Davy Jones effect - adding a couple of pirates to the board and/or capturing a couple opposing pirates), as well as one of five different gems, which confer some set collection scoring at game end. I liked this format a lot, but I wasn't sure what the best way to implement it was. I had gone with a simple card row, with the cost ranging from 2 to 6 (a good range, on par with the other roles) based on the position of he card in the row. But I had a number of other options in mind. 

The card row was simple, and it worked, but I kinda wanted it to matter which area (or at least which island) you were in when you Plundered. Another cost structure (even using a card row) that might have had an interesting geographic effect was "2 Plunder + 1 per opponent in the area." I thought that might have provided an interesting incentive to go where other people were not, which could stand in contrast to the dynamic incentivized by the way certain areas score each round (encouraging players to congregate in those areas). That's still something I think I'd like to try.

In addition though, it occurred to me that - especially with the alternate cost structure above - there's no reason the cards would need to be in a row at the side of the board. Perhaps better if they were in the areas (or on the islands) themselves? Might they then drive players to go to specific areas (or at least specific islands) if they're chasing VP from the gems? Or is that too many hoops to jump through? Maybe the option of any card in the row is appropriately flexible? I guess it's worth trying, if I can ever get some testing done!

And on that note, in an effort to eventually get some testing done on this game, I went ahead and made a Tabletop Simulator mod:

As you can see in the screenshot, I placed a treasure card in each area. Almost immediately I thought it might be better to just put one card per island instead of per area -- which could foster a little more interaction (in the case multiple players are after them). However, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the better course is to just stick with a card row on the side of the board.

Even still, I would like to try the alternate cost structure (based on opponents in your ship's area) to see if that drives any geographical considerations or not. If so, and they're good enough, then that'll be great. If not, or if they're super weak, then the simpler cost structure might be a better choice.

Here's to hoping I get a chance to play it soon!