Player count

Frequently Asked Questions

Setup

• Can one person play more than one Spirit?
  Practically speaking, sure. Because the game doesn’t usually have secret information that only one player knows, one person can play as many Spirits as they’d like. However, that one person is taking on the roles of multiple Players, e.g., simultaneously being the Red Player, the Blue Player, and the Yellow Player. The game mechanics scale with the number of Players, not the number of people who are participating.

  Two scenarios involve secrets and thus get easier if a person plays multi-handed:

  • A Diversity of Spirits introduces communication barriers between the people playing the game. When playing multiple Spirits, only gain the Strength in Diversity benefits when a Spirit you are playing adds Presence to the land of a Spirit being played by a different person. If you are the only person playing, don’t play this Scenario — it will have no effect on the game.
  • Destiny Unfolds adds extra setup steps where no communication is allowed. Playing multi-handed considerably reduces the Difficulty of this Scenario and changes the dynamics of the extra setup. If some of the participants are each playing multiple Spirits, it is strongly recommended that there be at least three people participating, e.g., by each playing 2 Spirits using the 6-Player rules.
    Tags: Player count, A Diversity of Spirits, Destiny Unfolds
• Can you play 5-6 players with two copies of the base game?
  Yes, with some caveats. You will need Presence disks and reminder tokens in different player colors. We also strongly recommend your first play or two be with 4 or fewer players per game. 5-6p games are fine when everyone involved knows the game well, but with newer players there's just an overwhelming amount of board to parse.

  If 5+ people want to learn together, we suggest two side-by-side games, to let everyone use a low-complexity spirit and keep the visual complexity of the island reasonable. (You can share some of your experience by using identical island layouts and spirits for each game, and seeing where they diverge based on player choice and Invader exploration.)

  Once you know the game and want to play 5-6p, basically any way you puzzle the boards together is fine, with some changes in dynamics. (If you string everything out into a long line, spirits starting at one end will have a rough time getting to where they can help out on the other end of the board.) Official "standard" layouts for 5-6p and alternate layouts for all player counts are in the Jagged Earth rulebook.
  (Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Player count, Island setup