until the player realizes every single one of them has him rolling a die and reading flavour text instead of engaging in flavourful mechanics. It’s as having the world’s biggest toolbox and finding out all the tools are differently sized hammers.
First, I question what constitutes a "flavourful mechanic," and second, what is it that is wrong about streamlined mechanics based around die-rolls?
The game makes no difference between a flash flood, killer rats or talking your way out of a bar fight, the process you follow is the same and the effects pretty much interchangeable. You read what happens but it doesn’t actually happen because there’s nothing in the game state that reflects it.
But these events do cause situational changes, such as the gain/loss of health, sanity, money, equipment, spells, monster trophies, companions, and gate trophies. There are certain events where you might be hired as a policeman or join a cult, others where you are sucked into an alternate universe or lost in time and space. Certain events will also close neighborhoods, add or remove traders or conditions, restrict movement, bolster enemies, and so forth.
But perhaps the most baffling aspect of the game is how many technical problems it has, like not being able to lose or that the eight otherworldly portals are practically identical from each other.
Actually, while the card drawing is somewhat random, portals do have varying strengths, and by analyzing all the cards one finds that certain realms are generally nastier to the player than others.
But more importantly, "not being able to lose" is something that I'm baffled by. Do you mean the players can't lose? Over time, I've noticed players getting better at the game as they learn their characters and how to react(each character having unique abilities to benefit them but also entering into certain roles in the party, such as combat, magic, gate-closers, etc.), but this generally came with time after the game handed them their butts the first couple of playthroughs. Did you start by playing with experienced people? And did you ever have to face down an elder god, or did you just move to close gates until they were done?
Finally, the expansions add new mechanics and conditions to the game and generally make things more difficult(for instance, The King in Yellow expansion can cause the players to lose in three turns if they get bad event draws, while the Innsmouth Horror expansion adds a new city to explore and allows for the possibility of becoming a cultist and "winning" by helping the elder god awake).
