We sent in the Schlock Troopers once again last weekend to give John S. a chance to test out some new Star Schlock character profiles that he wants to include in an upcoming secret project as well as test a new approach to asymmetrical and dynamic missions for each team. Conceptually the approach to the mission cards is novel and allows players to revise their goals in response to developments in the game. It'll take quite a bit of playing and tinkering with these mission cards (each team chooses three, and then uses or discards them in different ways as the game proceeds) to get the kinks worked out, but they are already quite promising. It's a mechanism unlike any I've encountered, and it addresses some of the concerns we had in the last playtest game around mission objectives. A simpler version of this asymmetrical missions mechanism was part of the very first playtest game I did with John about three years ago, and then it disappeared from most subsequent playtests....
A Tabletop Field Marshal's Campaign Journal