v1.7 Difficulty Settings

Mail Mouse is by and large very forgiving. I felt that by saying, "we're playing on easy mode", it absolved the game of managing its economy. But a harder setting still didn't describe what I felt was missing: Steep terrain and resting.

Now that the cost of the 1st success in a Task is special, I had an opportunity to address this.

Survival mode is gone. Now each Scene has a rating from 1 to 5. This is the cost of the first success in a Task (-1 if a Descriptor applies, each additional success still costs only 1 pip). A Scene rated 1 would describe sitting around a campfire telling stories - most Tasks would effectively be free and players can concentrate on roleplaying. A Scene rated 5 would be the most harrowing mountain climb in the deadliest storm - this would be an exceptionally rare event that the players have saved up for with great rewards at the end.

This change means that all Scenes were previously rated 2, which is acceptable for travelling on a well used trail. But now players have the option of taking risky shortcuts and being certain they can stock up on pips when they stop to rest.