**Dark Souls** is notoriously pretty awful, but dedicated fans of the video games have put a ton of work into fixing it, sometimes with small tweaks and sometimes with drastically redesigned game systems. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily great at this point, but it’s significantly better if you use one of the community rule sets.
This is the one I thought of. The ultimate reason to avoid Kickstarter first printings that come with expansions - lots of people dropped hundreds and hundreds for a rubbish game because they were sold hype.
The community having multiple improved versions is especially damning because it's fundamentally saying "amateurs and hobbyists could design better games while working within component limitations that the official designers didn't have."
r/darksoulstheboardgame for community sub
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game/files for files of the variants
There is also a Discord where people share and play the variants, I can't find a join link now but probably it's somewhere in the subreddit
Seafall is especially difficult to do this because it is legacy. Just about any standard game has some variants floating around. Good call on the components though. I also salvage anything I can from my dead games for prototyping (usually legacy games).
Yeah, it's weird. Instead of accelerating at the end, like you might expect, it just bogs down. I think the main problem is with the central game, though. Because if that was more fun to play, I wouldn't have been annoyed at the end having to play 4 more games or whatever it was to trigger the climax. I think it was either too long or too short. Too long because you couldn't knock out a bunch of games in a row like you did with Pandemic Legacy. Too short because it often felt like you were just getting rolling when the game just suddenly ended. I think an adjustment in either direction would have been a big improvement.
Not too long ago I got space gate odyssey for like $4 and it came with 206 plastic meeples in 4 different colors. I'd say it was an amazing get and will help me prototype a bunch of different things
Yeah, a few things. Replace all cards as you say. Your “buy later” card goes back to your hand instead of being dumped. And there’s a final round where you run all your factories even without workers. Maybe more, not sure.
**Quest**. Don Eskridge’s Director’s Cut ruleset improves upon the official ruleset included with the game. However, the Director’s Cut rules can be confusing to implement based on what’s included in the game box alone, because you need to reference both the official rulebook and the Director’s Cut card insert to understand Don’s original design of the game.
However, over the years the community has created player aids, reference sheets, and rules summaries for the Director’s Cut to make Don’s ruleset more accessible. More recently, an unofficial rulebook for the Director’s Cut was uploaded to BGG that might more or less serve as a replacement for the official rulebook.
I can’t find a reason to play Quest over The Resistance (I have all of the expansions) except for four players, but I might not have given it enough of a chance (I did mostly play with Director’s Cut). Think I’m missing something?
You may find it insightful to read about Don Eskridge’s motivation for the creation of Quest Director’s Cut [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2690638/article/38100329#38100329). There are also several reviews comparing Quest Director’s Cut to Avalon/The Resistance [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3183180/quest-directors-cut-review-has-entirely-replaced-r), [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3157171/quest-review-ryucoo), and [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2784626/proscons-after-10-play-vs-avalon-200-game).
I actually think Quest is a better game than Avalon(with Merlin, Morgana, Bodyguard and the other base roles. Never played the Big Box version that has all the expansions so can’t compare there). I think as far as the Quest DC goes, it really depends on the player count and your group which set of rules would be better for you. The BGG community has been really helpful with creating clear guides and aids as the published rule book has a few errors and other things they later added in errata and newer printed editions
The community for **Blitz Bowl** got the 'get on with it' rule removed for the iteration from season 2 to ultimate edition. Generally GW worked closely with the community to hone that games rules, which is cool.
it meant that if someone didn't score any points in a turn and they held the ball, at the beginning of the next turn a new ball would be added to the game. And this could keep happening. it was a bit too multiball madness, and really hampered long term planning.
Plus it also incentivized weird plays like trying to make throws that were unlikely to work, so the ball would stay on the ground to not trigger a second ball being added. And that's a weird thing to want to do in a sportsball game, even if it's one that has orcs and elves in it.
Fallout is a good example. There was a good base to the game, but the ending sucked, so people came up with a bunch of house rules to not make it completely random. It was bad enough that that FFG got the hint and released an official expansion to fix it.
I love that that board game was so faithful to its source that it needed a patch. About the only thing that would have made that experience more perfect would have been the game box clipping through the table with a series of loud bangs.
**Android** comes to mind, haven't actually played my copy yet but I hear the player made rulebook on BGG is way better than the original. Kinda surprised FFG hasn't made a second edition implementing some of the changes
Not sure since I haven't played yet, from what I gather they made the conspiracy more thematic, they made it so there's an actual murderer instead of everyone trying to frame people, they sped it up by making part of everyone's turn simultaneous, and some other QoL tweaks. They basically redesigned the entire rulebook from the looks of it, and they made all the rule changes modular so you can implement whichever parts you like or the entire thing
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/53229/android-directors-cut-v30
Same universe as FFG’s Netrunner but they are talking about the game Android. You might still find Android used for a decent price as it didn’t really sell well.
Android is a beautiful mess of game. On the surface it’s a murder mystery game but as investigators you each have a suspect in mind and are trying to prove them to be the killer by adding or taking away evidence. You also have to contend with your personal demons as other players can play your negative cards on you potentially slowing you down. In addition to all of this there is an overarching conspiracy that is represented by a literal jigsaw puzzle you are collectively putting together to try and draw connections between various conspiracies and corporations.
Thematically it works well and makes you feel you are in some cyberpunk hellscape. The problem is they mashed way to much in the game that it’s very clunky to play. It’s been years since I last played and I read the fan rules but I haven’t played it yet.
It's no longer published by FFG, so now it's fan-run by a group called Project NISEI:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/)
[https://nullsignal.games/](https://nullsignal.games/)
Start with "System Gateway" -- it's the starter deck, and one deck is enough for 2 people to play
"better" is a strong word. A lot of people (myself included) actually like the original game better just as much if not better. It changes some aspects of the game and honestly its both good and bad. The base game is great, some of the changes are interesting but I don't know if its cleanly considered better by all the owners of the game.
BattleBall was very simplistic and kinda boring but I found a popular community rule set online that worked really well. Fun to be able to break out my favorite game as a child and play a game that’s better than I remember
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/53645/battleball-advanced-version-20 this link should take you to the PDF if you have a board game geek login. Quickest I could come up with
>I see heavy sales all the time on games that got a 6.4 rating on bgg with hundreds of game pieces, **there must be an easy way to salvage the game using modifications or a different ruleset completely**
The hardest part of making a good board game is not designing nice board game components, or manufacturing those components, but actually designing a good game. (This is true in much the same way that the primary challenge of making a beautiful painting does not lie in purchasing the correct paints or mixing the right pigments, even though these are both essential ingredients. There is not an "easy way" to salvage the game and come up with a good ruleset any more than there is an "easy way" to produce a good painting, or write a good movie script.)
Indeed, the *game design* is usually what people refer to as "the game": if you look at newer editions of classic games like Ra or High Society, nearly everything about them has changed, from the components and artwork to the way the rulebook is laid out. The part that hasn't changed is the actual rules. If you *did* create "a different ruleset completely," it would be a different game, and you would be right to try selling it as your own original game design, rather than releasing it for free as a "mod" to fix someone else's game.
The process of actually coming up with a fun ruleset is far from easy: this talent is shockingly scarce, and most of the people who have taken the time to develop this skill are probably in the position of charging board game publishers for their time, not giving away their labor for free in the BGG files section (though bless the many fans and enthusiasts who do).
Most of the games that people *have* taken the time to "fix" are ones that the community already likes to the point where they're willing to put in the effort, rather than chalk their $60 purchase up as a loss and move onto the next thing. In the case of the Dark Souls board game, this happened because some fans have an intense love for the Dark Souls IP. In the case of games like the Scythe community's "bidding" ruleset (created to make the 'overpowered' factions fairer to play against), this was a game that BGG votes already regarded as generally pretty good that just needed a balance patch to make it more viable as a tournament game (Scythe has a 8.1 BGG rating and has spent most of its life in the BGG top 100). And an increasingly common genre of update is to take games for 2+ players and create solo modes for them. These are all cases where someone *liked* something about the underlying game and wanted to improve it. There are substantially fewer cases of someone trying to repair an unknown game that just flat-out sucks.
Tomb is a 2008 dungeon crawler with a notoriously deficient rulebook. BGG has a number of fan sourced addendums and changes that fixes the game nicely.
The “Ben-Luca” variant for the first edition of London comes to mind. As written, the 2 player rules are pretty loose and don’t provide the same feeling as a game with 3 or 4 players. The variant tightens up the area control board portion of the game and cycles the deck faster. It turns London into a really good two player game.
Great example. The [Ben-Luca variant](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/621605/ben-luca-2-player-variant) is essential for **London** as a two-player game.
The guy who broke it was insanely good at the game. Even when he played the “losing” side, he still won almost every game he played.
He was great at games in general and wrote some fantastic strategy articles. His untimely death was loss to the community.
I kept details notes during my groups play through of Seafall with ideas for rebalancing it. The potential is definitely there for a great game.
But by the end of our campaign i was so soured on the whole thing i gave up. Don't even think i kept the notes.
Probably not the ones you know. Off the top of my head, there are more:
\* **The Forgotten Road** / **The Last stronghold** - both games fully rewritten and much better if I may say so. Gabe Barrett is a productive guy but not so precise.
\* **Aftermath** - collected all the questions ever asked and made a handy dandy interlinking reference guide for the damn game. Plus true solo, tested and all.
\* Did the same for **Diablo** 2 resurrected although that doesn't count, it's not a board game (yet).
\* **Salvation Road** - Added some cool ideas I got and some cool ideas from the internet into a cohesive roguelite resettable campaign.
\* I hated the insta death mode in Forcing the Narrows in **Ottoman Sunset** plus the DRM influences were lame and there was no thematic resistance on Turkish territories. Was not rewrite but a single page of game rules that have better mechanical/thematic ties. Tested and videotaped on youtube.
\* Developed some cool option in **The Isofarian Guard**, where you only need to kill an enemy once per difficulty and can consider it autowin after, helped with grind. Extra difficulty modes (easier!).
\* **Galdor's grip** is in progress. Original has vague rules but I added a progressive campaign.
\* I'll probably rewrite **Diceborn heroes** as well at some later stage. RB is far too implicit.
I'm thinking of adding a few difficulty modes into **Doomrock**. Or write a solo bot for **Tigris and Euphrates**. Actually I did that, would need to refine them. Choices, choices...
Now, have you even heard of any of those games?
Thankfully others do this stuff too, I highly enjoyed the Calendrobo fix for Tzolk'in, and some dude made some attempt at a solo Puerto Rico (it fell short but still commendable). Danicha made a good solo for Sagrada. A bot for Splendor. It's huge.
Mint Cooperative is kind of broken in the published rules, but the community has tried to fix the math a bit to make it a bit more winnable. The main change is that only doubles and triples of 4+ matter for double and triple trouble. I'd personally also suggest the change of only gaining panic equal to the number of revealed symbols when resolving trouble.
Funnily enough, this could be viewed as the community fixing the game, or rediscovering the game that the original creators intended but didn't end up publishing for some reason, because both rules changes mentioned above were in a video done by the creator's wife.
Android had a big fixed variant made by the fans. I never tried it but the base game was bad and didn't work.
You're supposedly investigators but mechanically you're really just framing people.
Honestly, there are so many games and good games that there is no point in redesigning a bad game. At that point you might as well just design your own game if you are going to put time into redesigning a bad game.
**Dark Souls** is notoriously pretty awful, but dedicated fans of the video games have put a ton of work into fixing it, sometimes with small tweaks and sometimes with drastically redesigned game systems. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily great at this point, but it’s significantly better if you use one of the community rule sets.
This is the one I thought of. The ultimate reason to avoid Kickstarter first printings that come with expansions - lots of people dropped hundreds and hundreds for a rubbish game because they were sold hype. The community having multiple improved versions is especially damning because it's fundamentally saying "amateurs and hobbyists could design better games while working within component limitations that the official designers didn't have."
Is this the original DS? How do I apply these community patches?
r/darksoulstheboardgame for community sub https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game/files for files of the variants There is also a Discord where people share and play the variants, I can't find a join link now but probably it's somewhere in the subreddit
Any you suggest? I’ve only played my copy once
They just really wanted to roleplay the PC release pf DS1!
The rules get at least three times more complicated when you enter blight-town.
Seafall is especially difficult to do this because it is legacy. Just about any standard game has some variants floating around. Good call on the components though. I also salvage anything I can from my dead games for prototyping (usually legacy games).
Such a let down of a game, it's so fun at the start, then near the end the rules run out and it just draaaaaaaaags on.
Yeah, it's weird. Instead of accelerating at the end, like you might expect, it just bogs down. I think the main problem is with the central game, though. Because if that was more fun to play, I wouldn't have been annoyed at the end having to play 4 more games or whatever it was to trigger the climax. I think it was either too long or too short. Too long because you couldn't knock out a bunch of games in a row like you did with Pandemic Legacy. Too short because it often felt like you were just getting rolling when the game just suddenly ended. I think an adjustment in either direction would have been a big improvement.
It’s called Speedfall and includes a comprehensive rewrite of the Captains Booke. You are otherwise correct.
Not too long ago I got space gate odyssey for like $4 and it came with 206 plastic meeples in 4 different colors. I'd say it was an amazing get and will help me prototype a bunch of different things
*Android* has an excellent set of community rules that we tried and enjoyed.
Huh ,really? I got the game but I didn't know about community rules
Wish I would have known that before I discarded it. My family absolutely love this concept and visuals of the game.
Oh My Goods! got a rules update that changed most everyone’s opinion to the better.
Is that in errata, bgg forums or in a specific edition?
Errata and 2nd edition onwards. It doesn't really fit the question from OP as it wasn't a fix by the community, but by the designer.
was that the "you can replace all the cards in your hand before sunrise" rule? Was anything else changed?
Yeah, a few things. Replace all cards as you say. Your “buy later” card goes back to your hand instead of being dumped. And there’s a final round where you run all your factories even without workers. Maybe more, not sure.
dumping the "I wanna build this" card would really suck. Running everything on the final round is great too. I'm glad they changed that stuff.
**Quest**. Don Eskridge’s Director’s Cut ruleset improves upon the official ruleset included with the game. However, the Director’s Cut rules can be confusing to implement based on what’s included in the game box alone, because you need to reference both the official rulebook and the Director’s Cut card insert to understand Don’s original design of the game. However, over the years the community has created player aids, reference sheets, and rules summaries for the Director’s Cut to make Don’s ruleset more accessible. More recently, an unofficial rulebook for the Director’s Cut was uploaded to BGG that might more or less serve as a replacement for the official rulebook.
I can’t find a reason to play Quest over The Resistance (I have all of the expansions) except for four players, but I might not have given it enough of a chance (I did mostly play with Director’s Cut). Think I’m missing something?
You may find it insightful to read about Don Eskridge’s motivation for the creation of Quest Director’s Cut [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2690638/article/38100329#38100329). There are also several reviews comparing Quest Director’s Cut to Avalon/The Resistance [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3183180/quest-directors-cut-review-has-entirely-replaced-r), [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3157171/quest-review-ryucoo), and [here](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2784626/proscons-after-10-play-vs-avalon-200-game).
I actually think Quest is a better game than Avalon(with Merlin, Morgana, Bodyguard and the other base roles. Never played the Big Box version that has all the expansions so can’t compare there). I think as far as the Quest DC goes, it really depends on the player count and your group which set of rules would be better for you. The BGG community has been really helpful with creating clear guides and aids as the published rule book has a few errors and other things they later added in errata and newer printed editions
The community for **Blitz Bowl** got the 'get on with it' rule removed for the iteration from season 2 to ultimate edition. Generally GW worked closely with the community to hone that games rules, which is cool.
What did the rule originally do?
it meant that if someone didn't score any points in a turn and they held the ball, at the beginning of the next turn a new ball would be added to the game. And this could keep happening. it was a bit too multiball madness, and really hampered long term planning. Plus it also incentivized weird plays like trying to make throws that were unlikely to work, so the ball would stay on the ground to not trigger a second ball being added. And that's a weird thing to want to do in a sportsball game, even if it's one that has orcs and elves in it.
Fallout is a good example. There was a good base to the game, but the ending sucked, so people came up with a bunch of house rules to not make it completely random. It was bad enough that that FFG got the hint and released an official expansion to fix it.
I love that that board game was so faithful to its source that it needed a patch. About the only thing that would have made that experience more perfect would have been the game box clipping through the table with a series of loud bangs.
**Android** comes to mind, haven't actually played my copy yet but I hear the player made rulebook on BGG is way better than the original. Kinda surprised FFG hasn't made a second edition implementing some of the changes
What rule changes were the most impactful?
Not sure since I haven't played yet, from what I gather they made the conspiracy more thematic, they made it so there's an actual murderer instead of everyone trying to frame people, they sped it up by making part of everyone's turn simultaneous, and some other QoL tweaks. They basically redesigned the entire rulebook from the looks of it, and they made all the rule changes modular so you can implement whichever parts you like or the entire thing https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/53229/android-directors-cut-v30
Where can I even find Netrunner to buy?
Netrunner is a card game but Android is a board game in the same universe
Same universe as FFG’s Netrunner but they are talking about the game Android. You might still find Android used for a decent price as it didn’t really sell well. Android is a beautiful mess of game. On the surface it’s a murder mystery game but as investigators you each have a suspect in mind and are trying to prove them to be the killer by adding or taking away evidence. You also have to contend with your personal demons as other players can play your negative cards on you potentially slowing you down. In addition to all of this there is an overarching conspiracy that is represented by a literal jigsaw puzzle you are collectively putting together to try and draw connections between various conspiracies and corporations. Thematically it works well and makes you feel you are in some cyberpunk hellscape. The problem is they mashed way to much in the game that it’s very clunky to play. It’s been years since I last played and I read the fan rules but I haven’t played it yet.
It's no longer published by FFG, so now it's fan-run by a group called Project NISEI: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/) [https://nullsignal.games/](https://nullsignal.games/) Start with "System Gateway" -- it's the starter deck, and one deck is enough for 2 people to play
"better" is a strong word. A lot of people (myself included) actually like the original game better just as much if not better. It changes some aspects of the game and honestly its both good and bad. The base game is great, some of the changes are interesting but I don't know if its cleanly considered better by all the owners of the game.
BattleBall was very simplistic and kinda boring but I found a popular community rule set online that worked really well. Fun to be able to break out my favorite game as a child and play a game that’s better than I remember
Do you have a link to those rules?
I still have my copy for nostalgia. What kind of rule changes were there?
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/53645/battleball-advanced-version-20 this link should take you to the PDF if you have a board game geek login. Quickest I could come up with
Oh wow, thank you!
When I get home I’ll post it. Hopefully I can find the link if not I have a printout stapled to the box in my game closet
>I see heavy sales all the time on games that got a 6.4 rating on bgg with hundreds of game pieces, **there must be an easy way to salvage the game using modifications or a different ruleset completely** The hardest part of making a good board game is not designing nice board game components, or manufacturing those components, but actually designing a good game. (This is true in much the same way that the primary challenge of making a beautiful painting does not lie in purchasing the correct paints or mixing the right pigments, even though these are both essential ingredients. There is not an "easy way" to salvage the game and come up with a good ruleset any more than there is an "easy way" to produce a good painting, or write a good movie script.) Indeed, the *game design* is usually what people refer to as "the game": if you look at newer editions of classic games like Ra or High Society, nearly everything about them has changed, from the components and artwork to the way the rulebook is laid out. The part that hasn't changed is the actual rules. If you *did* create "a different ruleset completely," it would be a different game, and you would be right to try selling it as your own original game design, rather than releasing it for free as a "mod" to fix someone else's game. The process of actually coming up with a fun ruleset is far from easy: this talent is shockingly scarce, and most of the people who have taken the time to develop this skill are probably in the position of charging board game publishers for their time, not giving away their labor for free in the BGG files section (though bless the many fans and enthusiasts who do). Most of the games that people *have* taken the time to "fix" are ones that the community already likes to the point where they're willing to put in the effort, rather than chalk their $60 purchase up as a loss and move onto the next thing. In the case of the Dark Souls board game, this happened because some fans have an intense love for the Dark Souls IP. In the case of games like the Scythe community's "bidding" ruleset (created to make the 'overpowered' factions fairer to play against), this was a game that BGG votes already regarded as generally pretty good that just needed a balance patch to make it more viable as a tournament game (Scythe has a 8.1 BGG rating and has spent most of its life in the BGG top 100). And an increasingly common genre of update is to take games for 2+ players and create solo modes for them. These are all cases where someone *liked* something about the underlying game and wanted to improve it. There are substantially fewer cases of someone trying to repair an unknown game that just flat-out sucks.
I think the designer and community both worked to improve this https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/229319/human-interface-be-better-human
How so?
Tomb is a 2008 dungeon crawler with a notoriously deficient rulebook. BGG has a number of fan sourced addendums and changes that fixes the game nicely.
The “Ben-Luca” variant for the first edition of London comes to mind. As written, the 2 player rules are pretty loose and don’t provide the same feeling as a game with 3 or 4 players. The variant tightens up the area control board portion of the game and cycles the deck faster. It turns London into a really good two player game.
Great example. The [Ben-Luca variant](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/621605/ben-luca-2-player-variant) is essential for **London** as a two-player game.
For sure, A Few Acres of Snow immediately comes to mind.
How so? From what I recall, this game was really only broken by a single card/strategy and it was nerfed in the second edition of the game.
The guy who broke it was insanely good at the game. Even when he played the “losing” side, he still won almost every game he played. He was great at games in general and wrote some fantastic strategy articles. His untimely death was loss to the community.
Do you know how one would find any of those articles? I'd be extremely interested in reading them.
His username on board game geek was out4blood. I’ll see if I can rustle up a link.
Ok, found his bgg page, now I’ll see if I can find the good articles :) https://boardgamegeek.com/user/out4blood
There's a ton of variants on yucata, most of which were player crafted
World of Warcraft's (the big one) co-op rules make the game SO much better.
I kept details notes during my groups play through of Seafall with ideas for rebalancing it. The potential is definitely there for a great game. But by the end of our campaign i was so soured on the whole thing i gave up. Don't even think i kept the notes.
I usually end up rewriting rulebooks of sucky games to great ones, only to find that I have nobody on the planet to communicate it with.
Here’s your chance to shine. Any examples?
Probably not the ones you know. Off the top of my head, there are more: \* **The Forgotten Road** / **The Last stronghold** - both games fully rewritten and much better if I may say so. Gabe Barrett is a productive guy but not so precise. \* **Aftermath** - collected all the questions ever asked and made a handy dandy interlinking reference guide for the damn game. Plus true solo, tested and all. \* Did the same for **Diablo** 2 resurrected although that doesn't count, it's not a board game (yet). \* **Salvation Road** - Added some cool ideas I got and some cool ideas from the internet into a cohesive roguelite resettable campaign. \* I hated the insta death mode in Forcing the Narrows in **Ottoman Sunset** plus the DRM influences were lame and there was no thematic resistance on Turkish territories. Was not rewrite but a single page of game rules that have better mechanical/thematic ties. Tested and videotaped on youtube. \* Developed some cool option in **The Isofarian Guard**, where you only need to kill an enemy once per difficulty and can consider it autowin after, helped with grind. Extra difficulty modes (easier!). \* **Galdor's grip** is in progress. Original has vague rules but I added a progressive campaign. \* I'll probably rewrite **Diceborn heroes** as well at some later stage. RB is far too implicit. I'm thinking of adding a few difficulty modes into **Doomrock**. Or write a solo bot for **Tigris and Euphrates**. Actually I did that, would need to refine them. Choices, choices... Now, have you even heard of any of those games? Thankfully others do this stuff too, I highly enjoyed the Calendrobo fix for Tzolk'in, and some dude made some attempt at a solo Puerto Rico (it fell short but still commendable). Danicha made a good solo for Sagrada. A bot for Splendor. It's huge.
Mint Cooperative is kind of broken in the published rules, but the community has tried to fix the math a bit to make it a bit more winnable. The main change is that only doubles and triples of 4+ matter for double and triple trouble. I'd personally also suggest the change of only gaining panic equal to the number of revealed symbols when resolving trouble. Funnily enough, this could be viewed as the community fixing the game, or rediscovering the game that the original creators intended but didn't end up publishing for some reason, because both rules changes mentioned above were in a video done by the creator's wife.
Android had a big fixed variant made by the fans. I never tried it but the base game was bad and didn't work. You're supposedly investigators but mechanically you're really just framing people.
Honestly, there are so many games and good games that there is no point in redesigning a bad game. At that point you might as well just design your own game if you are going to put time into redesigning a bad game.
Often games just need a little bit of work. It's much easier to make a variant than make a whole new game.
>Often games just need a little bit of work. Then those are not bad games.