We are still about four months away from the official kickstarter release of Myth, although things are looking good for the base set to come a bit earlier than that.  So why am I already looking forward to future expansions to the game?  It’s simple.  The game looks awesome coming out of the gate, but it was very obvious from the mechanics early on, that the game is very expandable.  During the course of the kickstarter, as additional heroes and monsters got added, it quickly became evident how each individual component added to the replayability and longevity of the overall game.  Let me tell you, I don’t think we’ve hardly scratched the surface of what this game could eventually become.

I want to focus on 10 areas where future development could keep this game going for a long time to come.

1) New Heroes

Adding heroes to many games are a no brainer.  Often, it adds a special rule, or gives some kind of minor advantage.  Due to the deck mechanics, every hero truly is an individual.  Figuring out how to get the most of each hero is really a game within the game, so playing

the exact same scenario and creatures with a different hero quickly becomes a whole new game.  We’ve seen at least the basics of the mechanics for 7 of the 8 heroes coming out with the kickstarter, and each has a unique identity and card mechanic.  As long as new heroes continue to be as well thought out with creative mechanics, I see no end to how much variety could be added through new heroes and nothing else.

2) Hero Advancement via Deckbuilding

We know a little bit about swapping cards into decks to improve heroes, but not a lot about any of these cards.  The game isn’t a deck builder, but it’s got a slow burn deck building mechanic that lets you modify your hero over time.  Several levels of deck building have been mentioned and each offers new opportunities.  We already know 5 cards come with each hero for advancement, giving a straight forward advancement path.  The simple introduction of a new card or two for a hero could change how that hero could be potentially played.  We’ve been told that each hero will have two alternate paths of advancement they could build towards and evolve the hero into over time.  (The example, is necromancy and healing for the acolyte.)  Adding new paths (as well as expanding on existing ones) is an even more targeted way to give new life to each hero.  If the soldier gets stale, the option to turn him into a barbarian, a knight, a duelist, a paladin, and a commander/officer could let a wide variety of players find a style that suits them better with the same hero, or allows the same character to be played many times with very different results.

3) Advancement Through Titles

As much as the deckbuilding mechanic offers a lot of possibilities within each character, titles may offer just as much or even more.  We haven’t even really gotten a look under the hood for this mechanic yet, but there is a ton of possibilities.  Titles could be simple and straightforward, or could be more metagamish, and each could have huge effects on how a character can advance.  For example, a character could become an orcslayer, or a bug hunter, giving -1 TN against a certain race.  Or perhaps a master strategist title could allow the player to remove or add a card to their deck (playing 24 or 26 cards instead of 25.)  Perhaps a character being knighted not only lets them use a lord or lady title, it lets them show off their newfound wealth by keeping one treasure card from game to game instead of starting over with each story.  I’m just making them up.  We don’t know what is in the minds of the designers, but the point is there are endless possibilities here.  On the mechanics side, will titles require some condition to be met?  Will they just be chosen from a list?  We’ll have to wait to see.

4) New Monsters

The more detail I see of how monsters are played, the more I see how each monster type changes the game.  Fighting orcs is nothing like fighting elementals, either in complexity or difficulty.

• We played through demo games at GenCon using 3 different monsters races (bugs, orcs, and skeletons) and the tactics for the heroes changed with each of those challenges.  It will be quite some time before a seventh race of monsters will be needed in the game, but when that day comes, I’m sure it will once again refresh the game with the new challenges they provide.
• The six existing monster races aren’t tapped out either.  There are a number of ways to mix things up with smaller scale changes.  New stats for existing miniatures could make for elite units and elite captains, ramping up the challenge of something like a simple orc battle, but not requiring new miniatures or even mechanics.  New creatures added into the current line could mix things up as well.  Perhaps bugs could add ticks to their mix of minion options.  Or perhaps orcs could add a shaman variant as a captain.  Perhaps a giant flying wasp could create a different boss challenge as an alternative to the terror with 10,000 legs.  Whether it’s adding new miniatures or just alternate mechanics with current ones, adding to each race could add to the variety without having to introduce entirely new groups.
• Mixing in mini-bosses changes things up as well, only changing one miniature on the table.  Adding new ones doesn’t require near the commitment as adding a new race or boss, but they provide a great way to introduce new enemy mechanics.  A medusa…a treant…a werewolf…a vampire…a banshee all examples of single creatures of legend that could be added providing whole new opportunities for unique mechanics and storylines.  That list could easily go into the hundreds if not thousands before being exhausted.

5) New Traps

Along with creatures, new traps can give infinite challenges.  We’ve only seen a couple traps through playtests and videos so far, so we don’t even know the variety of traps already in the game, but adding new devious traps to quests can refresh quests without having to change anything else.  Just pulling out an old copy of Grimtooth’s Traps could keep the designers occupied for years, figuring out new devious traps and tiles to challenge heroes.  These could be traps that cause damage, traps that help monsters, traps that hinder heroes, or even puzzles that must be resolved in order to get past a tile.  A tile with an interesting trap or environmental condition completely changes how a combat plays out, even if you use the same heroes and monsters.

6) New Quests and Stories

This is probably one of the simplest ways to add on to the game.  New chapter, act, and story cards are easy to print (or for fan content, don’t even need to be cards), and can change the scope of the game.  This gives us three levels of storylines that can be attacked with new content, mixing old and new cards over the course of a story to make something new.

7) New Equipment

In some ways, if feel this is the least important item on the entire list.  With the randomness of treasure, you can’t guarantee it will have much impact on any individual story.  Where you can guarantee use of a new monster, you can’t do the same with treasure unless it’s somehow connected to a storyline element.  Yet, at the same time, treasure will have a major impact on the evolution of the game.  As the game adds orange and even purple items (the levels of items go brown, white, green, blue, orange, purple to quickly classify their strength) the heroes will be equipped to tackle greater challenges, allowing more variety in areas such as traps and monsters.  Until characters advance and acquire stronger equipment, it’s doubtful that they can even tackle the creatures laid out before us right now, so this is a necessary component to expand to greater stories.

The fate die mechanic really shines here, since new items can be designed by coming up with a recipe, and some effect for that recipe.  Powerful effects can be balanced, and strong items can be made by giving several recipe options.

8) Myths, Legends, and Epics

We already know the mechanics of how chapters, acts, and stories come together, with each act being a single session of play, and a story connecting several acts together.  However, the designers have already let us know that there are bigger stories to come.  Whether it’s a large story with more acts than normal, or a huge epic made up of multiple stories, by expanding the scope of the game, we can add layers of complexity while at the same time, keeping the simple and elegant mechanics that make the game so easy to pick up.

9) New Rules and Story Modes

We’ve already seen the introduction of Slaughterfield as a variant method of playing the game.  With the core rules being so simple, it’s likely inspiration will hit for many new variations on the game in the future.  I’m sure future expansions will provide many optional rules to normal story modes as well, putting new twists in the game.  Slaughterfield already has individual achievements.  Is it possible that something along those lines may be in the future of storyline mode so that sometimes you don’t want to be 100% cooperative as you decide what’s best for the individual vs. best for the party?  Perhaps it could go even farther with a full traitor mechanic introduced as an option at some point, where you need to root out the one who is holding the party back on purpose.   Only time will tell where this game can go over time as we dig into it deeper.

10) Fan Content

The future of this game is in no way limited to the official releases.  Although MERCS will no doubt give us endless content with which to construct our stories, most of the areas listed here are just as accessible to the fans as to the designers.  New stats for “elite monsters”, new quests, new traps, and new titles for advancement are all areas that can keep fans busy designing as well.  The world of Myth is so easily adaptable, that it becomes easy to create your own content to go along with creating your own stories.  If I didn’t see a rich future in this area, I likely wouldn’t have put together this site.