Overview: Forbidden Desert is one of my favorite co-op board games. I love the theme, the dynamic board state, and especially the sense of urgency created by the ever-increasing piles of sand. However, I was growing bored playing the same old roles over and over again. So I decided to make (and play with!) my own. This post will detail the creation and playtesting of the custom roles. At the end of the project I want to print actual cards to add to the box and then do a post-mortem blog to bring it all together.

Note that some inspiration was taken from this Reddit post by /u/Adhawk13.

Collector

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Easily pick up items that dropped far away from the team
• Balance the risk/reward associated with holding onto Flying Machine parts vs. dropping them off

Water: 4

Card Text: When a Flying Machine part is placed on a tile, you may travel to that tile immediately. Gain a bonus action per turn for each Flying Machine part you have.

Number of Plays: 1

Playtest Feedback: The Collector is the definition of a quality-of-life character. The ability to teleport to newly discovered Flying Machine parts removes one of the challenges (read: headaches) of the later stages of the game. It is yet to be determined if the Collector can teleport to items that players drop when they die. More playtesting will be needed to determine this.

Desert Spirit

Pillars of Gameplay:

• No water level management
• Travel through the storm itself
• Heavy trade-offs to offset the above characteristics
• Not a member of the flight crew

Water: N/A 

Card Text: You may travel over blocked tiles and through the eye of the storm. You have no water level. You may not carry Flying Machine parts nor items.

Number of Plays: 1

Playtest Feedback: N/A

Dune Master

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Character that can actually compete with late game storm sand drops
• Meant as a niche pick in a late game comp in order to delay running out of sand tiles for as long as possible

Water: 4 

Card Text: You start the game with a Dune Blaster with infinite uses. Each use during your turn costs 1 action. You cannot excavate tiles.

Number of Plays: 0

Playtest Feedback: N/A

Nomad

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Thrives off of the land - takes advantage of tunnels
• More efficient than other roles, but at a cost
• Not a member of the flight crew

Water: 4 (subject to change)

Card Text: You may spend one water to take two additional actions once per turn. If you end your turn in a tunnel, you gain one water.

Number of Plays: 1

Playtest Feedback: The Nomad was probably the single most overpowered role we have played so far. The Nomad has utility, survivabilty, and a high level of impact on the game due to the sheer number of actions it can take. Potential tweaks going forward include dropping the max water level to 3 from 4 or editing the card text to allow only one additional action for one water.

Pilot

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Help starting and finishing the game
• Straightforward role - minimal decision making/thought required
• A beginner friendly role (not all custom roles are for experts)

Water: 5 (Subject to change)

Card Text: You begin the game with the landing zone excavated.

Number of Plays: 1

Playtest Feedback: The pilot is in a good spot balance-wise. The role is definitely for beginners as the role has limited interactivity compared to even the base game roles. Going forward, I would like to have the Pilot also reveal the crash tile and take the item from it before the game starts. With this thematic change, the role seems a bit overtuned so I would reduce the max water level to 4 from 5.

Scavenger

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Item hoarding/collecting
• Leverages items over direct action/movement benefits (though items can give both)
• Extra item draw mechanic (affects how other characters use items)

Water: 4

Card Text: When you excavate an item tile, draw two item cards. When drawing an item card, you may choose the item on the top of the discard pile.

Number of Plays: 0

Playtest Feedback: Leaving a note here for later, I added the latter mechanic of taking items from the discard pile because playing with the Scavenger risks running out of items. This makes the Scavenger powerful off the bat but can ruin a team in the later stages of the game.

Solatron

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Sun Beats Down benefits this character
• Naturally character will have a weak early game and ramp up over time
• Wants to avoid tunnels

Charges (instead of Water): 4

Card Text: You begin the game with 2 actions per turn. You permanently gain one action per turn every time the Sun Beats Down. (subject to change see feedback!)

Number of Plays: 1

Playtest Feedback: Solatron is in a weird spot. We are split on the design direction. We can't decide if we want Sun Beats Down cards to affect the health (charge) of Solatron or the number of actions that it can perform on a given turn. I think we will experiment with a hybrid where the Solatron player can willingly spend charge to take actions (one charge = 4 actions?), which are then recharged by Sun Beats Down.

Storm Chaser

Pillars of Gameplay:

• The storm interacts with this character in a unique fashion
• The character benefits from being near the storm

Water: 4

Card Text: You may take actions equal to the storm level. You may move across unblocked tiles surrounding the storm for 0 actions.

Number of Plays: 0

Playtest Feedback: N/A

Survivalist

Pillars of Gameplay:

• More actions = more flexible turns
• Flexibilty could be useful in a scenario where players draft their roles
• A beginner friendly role

Water: 4

Card Text: You may take 5 actions per turn.

Number of Plays: 0

Playtest Feedback: Probably safe to call balanced without playing it. Nonetheless we'll give it a go next time Forbidden Desert hits the table.

Sweeper

Pillars of Gameplay:

• Inspired by the Terrascope
• Excels at finding specific tiles, more useful in the endgame

Water: 4

Card Text: You may peek under the tile you are standing on for 1 action once per turn.

Number of Plays: 0

Playtest Feedback: The Sweeper felt underwhelming in the current iteration. The only time it makes sense for the Sweeper to look under a tile is when the tile has 1+ sand on it. If the tile has 0 sand then the Sweeper wouldn't bother sweeping but instead would just excavate it. The only time that the tile the sweeper is on would have more than one sand on it is if the Sweeper got buried or if the Climber brought him along and left him on a heavily buried tile. Both of these are extremely rare/situational so we can assume the large majority of sweeps will be done on tiles with only 1 sand on them. So the question becomes... is it worth it to spend one action to look under a tile or two to clear the sand and just excavate it? The question is not so easy to answer. Sure excavating the tile takes one more action in the scenario described above but it removes one more sand from the desert, makes the desert more traversable, and most importantly it resolves the action on the other side of the tile since it got excavated. The "power" of sweeping, when theorycrafted to death, clearly becomes less powerful. Going forward, we may experiment with giving the sweeper the ability to sweep neighboring tiles as well as the tile he is standing on.

That's it! Thanks for reading.