Four Principles of Nightmare Design

It’s no secret that I love Nightmare mode. Whenever it comes up in the Cardboard of the Rings Discord server, I’m always there to sing Nightmare’s praises. I often insist that the Nightmare versions of quests are the best versions of the quests, and when given the choice between playing Nightmare and Standard mode I’ll always pick Nightmare mode.

But what is it, exactly, that makes me so excited about Nightmare mode? What do these add-on decks do to the quests to make them so much better? Let’s take a closer look at what really makes Nightmare mode tick—and then we can apply our learnings to see which quests show off the best that Nightmare has to offer. Hold on to your butts; things are about to get really nerdy!

It’s more than just difficulty

Obviously, the Nightmare version of the quest is harder than the original. That’s why they call them “Nightmare” decks, after all! But all the same, I have often held that “Nightmare” is a misnomer—in many cases, the Nightmare version of a quest simply updates it to match the difficulty curve of more modern quests. Some of them truly do come out as nightmarish experiences, but just as many of them are simply harder. I feel strongly that positioning these quests as only for hardcore players was a marketing miss—something that Fantasy Flight Games corrected in our sister game, The Arkham Horror Card Game, by calling the similar product line “Return To” boxes instead. In both games, the real value of these updates is to breathe fresh life into older quests, allowing you to get even more enjoyment out of the content you already have.

As I near the end of the officially published Nightmare cycles, I find myself wanting to do a retrospective on Nightmare quests as a concept. Furthermore, my involvement in A Long-extended Party has sent me even deeper into game design analysis mode. What does Nightmare mode aim to do? What makes the best of them work so well? Which ones do I end up recommending to others, and why? Thinking through the answers to these questions led me to reverse-engineer four guiding design principles which get to the heart of everything I love about Nightmare mode.

Let’s look at each of these four principles in detail, explore why they’re important, and see which Nightmare quests best exemplify them.

Principle 1: Lean into what makes the quest unique

Every quest has a quirk—a little mechanical difference that makes it unique among all the hundred plus other quests out there. Encounter at Amon Dîn has you rescuing Villager tokens before the orcs can get to them. Flight from Moria has its ever-shifting quest deck as you’re chased by a Balrog. The Three Trials has its tripartite boss fight in a haunted barrow-land. The best Nightmare decks take whatever it is that makes their quest unique and focuses the gameplay even more on that.

There are a few practical ways a Nightmare quest can do this:

1. Remove some of the cards which feel generic, or which build off unrelated mechanics.
2. Add new cards to emphasize the quest’s core mechanic or theme (directly or through synergies).
3. Add a new submechanic that brings the quest’s identity even more into focus.

Nightmare The Treachery of Rhudaur is an excellent example of this principle. What makes the original quest unique is its structure: you have five rounds to clear as many of its three starting Side Quests as you can. Whichever ones you complete give you a special bonus for the second half of the quest, which is a boss fight against the wraith Thaurdir. The Nightmare version adds a new submechanic: a punishment for each of the Side Quests you fail to complete in the form of a related card that you shuffle into the encounter deck when you advance to Stage 2. It also removes Cursed Dead from the deck—not because it’s too easy, but because its shadow effect plays off having a copy of the defender in your discard pile (a mechanic explored better in other quests, but which is otherwise unused in this one). It is replaced (at least in part) by Thaurdir’s Hunter, whose ability and shadow effect both directly play into the quest’s quirk by removing time counters or progress from the current quest. Most of the other encounter cards which are added in Nightmare mode focus in one way or another on making it difficult to make progress on a quest.

In addition to focusing the quest mechanically, it’s great when a Nightmare quest can add a tighter thematic focus as well. My favorite example of this is Nightmare The Dead Marshes. The original quest sees the heroes pursued by crows, wargs, goblins, and trolls across the marshes, but the Nightmare version takes all of those out and replaces them with Things in the Pools and Marsh-wights, giving the quest a much bigger focus on Undead foes and bringing the whole quest’s theme together more clearly.

Mechanically and thematically, by leaning into whatever it is that makes the quest unique, the Nightmare version of the quest gains more of an identity and becomes a more attractive choice when deciding which quest to play on game night.

Principle 2: Increase encounter card variety

Almost paradoxically, in addition to narrowing the mechanical and thematic focus of a given quest, a good Nightmare deck will also broaden the number of interesting cards you’ll see, adding new variety to spice old quests up. In the game’s 10^th anniversary stream, designer MJ Newman likened it to playing against a friend in a competitive game who has had some time to add new cards to their deck—it’s both a familiar and fresh experience!

In the earlier cycles, where the base encounter decks would often run over 50 cards, this could be accomplished by thinning out a large chunk of the easiest cards and replacing them one-for-one with new Nightmare cards. In later cycles, though, where encounter decks might fall closer to the low-30s, Nightmare decks can increase card variety by cutting fewer cards than are added. Every Nightmare deck contains 19 new cards. Many modern quests only cut around 10 cards, resulting in a thicker (and therefore more diverse) Nightmare encounter deck.

Even more interesting, however, is determining which cards get cut. Obviously, some cards are simply too easy and have to get the axe—if the deck has too many easy flops, then when combined with the more difficult cards the quest will feel swingy and luck-based. But beyond that, there are a couple of tricks I’ve noticed that Nightmare decks take to ensure that they have more variety than the original:

1. When possible, reduce duplicate cards down to only 2 or 3 copies.
2. Avoid cutting too many cards from the quest-specific encounter set to 0 copies…
3. …but do cut a few cards from the encounter sets shared by multiple quests to 0 copies.

The third trick here is interesting because it promotes variety not just within this single quest, but within the entire Nightmare cycle. Many of the cards shared between multiple quests have a single quest with which they synergize best, even if they work alright with the others. By putting shared cards first on the chopping block, the cycle as a whole ends up seeing fewer repeat cards, further driving home the unique identity of each individual quest and bringing greater overall diversity.

One of my favorite examples of this principle is Nightmare The Fords of Isen. The table below compares the number of cards from the original version of the quest with the number of copies of those cards that appear in Nightmare mode. The cards which received cuts in the Nightmare version of the quest appear in bold.

	Copies in Normal Mode	Copies in Nightmare Mode
Dunland Raiders (Shared Set)
Dunland Prowler	3	0
Dunlanding Bandit	2	0
Dunland Raider	2	2
Old Hatreds	2	2
Dunland Warriors (Shared Set)
Dunland Tribesman	2	2
Dunland Chieftain	2	2
Dunland Berserker	3	2
Wild Men of Dunland	2	2
The Fords of Isen (Quest-specific Set)
Gríma	1	1
The Islet	1	1
Fords of Isen	3	3
The King’s Road	2	0
Gap of Rohan	4	2
Pillaging and Burning	2	2
Down from the Hills	1	1
Ill Tidings	2	2

Only three cards were cut in their entirety: The King’s Road—a softball Location—and two Enemies from a shared encounter set, Dunland Prowler and Dunlending Bandit. Of these two enemies, Dunland Prowler appears in a later Nightmare quest (The Antlered Crown), turning it into a unique card for that other quest. Furthermore, Nightmare mode cuts most cards down to 2 copies each, ensuring a variety of threats. The Nightmare version grows the quest by 10 cards, from 34 to 44 total. This means that just under half of Nightmare The Fords of Isen is composed of new cards—all without losing much of the diversity found in the original quest! The added variety alone rehabilitates an otherwise so-so quest for me.

Another great example can be found in Nightmare The Battle of Carn Dûm. Already an extreme challenge in its base form, the Nightmare version of the quest doesn’t lift the difficulty by very much. Instead, it goes ham on increasing the number of interesting things you might see happen. Only three cards are cut in their entirety from the encounter deck (two of which still appear in other Nightmare quests elsewhere in the cycle) and the already beefy 49-card encounter deck is increased to 59 cards in Nightmare mode. This means you can go a long time before you’ve seen the entire encounter deck, increasing the odds that something new and interesting will come up in a future replay.

By carefully choosing how many and which cards to cut, the Nightmare versions of quests can offer an increased variety of encounter cards both in each individual quest and throughout the Nightmare cycle, adding to replayability across multiple dimensions.

Principle 3: Shore up the quest’s weaknesses

Whether it’s due to gaps in playtesting during development or the result of new cards being released, not every quest holds up well. Various problems in a quest can become apparent through repeated plays, or over time as the playerbase has a chance to analyze and dissect it. These problems include:

1. “Bugs” in the game design where the quest doesn’t really work as intended.
2. A dominant strategy which makes you only want to play a quest in one way. Even worse are cases where one or more strategies completely trivialize a quest.
3. Mechanics that in retrospect… just weren’t that fun.

The best example of a Nightmare quest shoring up the weaknesses in the original has got to be Nightmare Assault on Osgiliath. This quest allows players to “take control” of Locations when they explore them, with the players winning when they control all Locations in play. The original version of the quest can defeat itself in the first staging step if The Power of Mordor is revealed, which can shuffle all the Locations in play into the encounter deck, handing victory to the players. Furthermore, there are a few easy ways to cheese the scenario—either by bringing lots of early game willpower and blazing through it in a round or two, or by choosing Ancient Harbor as your starting Location, hoping not to reveal a second Location, and then using lots of hero readying to clear it on round 1. Sometimes, however, you can run into the opposite problem: the quest throws so many Locations at you that you can’t keep up, and only being able to clear a single Location per round can lead to some long and grueling games. Even if you have everything under control, each new Location reveal becomes another round you’ll have to play before you can claim victory!

The original version of Assault on Osgiliath is a hot mess. But the Nightmare version cleans it all up beautifully. First off, The Power of Mordor is removed from the encounter deck entirely. No more self-defeating Treacheries! Secondly, a new Location is added to the Staging Area during Setup: Palace Remains, which cannot be traveled to until you have captured 5 other Locations, effectively acting as a minimum round timer ensuring that the quest can’t be so easily cheesed. And to ensure that the game doesn’t overstay its welcome, the Nightmare card allows you to clear a second Location per round whenever the Staging Area has more Locations than there are players in the game. Together, these tweaks effectively rescue a quest which otherwise isn’t likely to see much play.

In the game’s 100+ quest run, there were bound to be a few duds here and there. It’s nice when Nightmare mode can save a few of those duds from the bike spokes by fixing up whatever makes them less fun to return to. For some quests, this may end up being the most important principle of the four—after all, a quest which isn’t fun to play won’t get played at all, so any other changes made to the quest won’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s also the principle which is most unevenly applied. There are many quests which desperately needed some sort of change-up to get them to hit the table more often—Road to Rivendell, Into Fangorn, or The Nîn-in-Eilph, to name a few—which didn’t get the extra love they needed to be resuscitated by Nightmare mode.

Principle 4: Increase the difficulty by about 2

The fourth and final principle is perhaps the simplest of them, and the principle which gives Nightmare mode its name: Nightmare quests are harder than the original. But this principle isn’t without nuance! As I mentioned before, the name “Nightmare” is misleading, because in my opinion the best Nightmare quests only raise the difficulty by about 2 (on a 10-point difficulty scale). The goal is clearly not to crank every quest up to 11—indeed, quests that are already at the top of the scale like The Battle of Carn Dûm don’t even change by much in Nightmare mode as far as difficulty is concerned.

There are two primary reasons to increase the difficulty of quests:

1. To allow something you have already mastered to be a new and interesting challenge again.
2. To adjust for the slow, inexorable power creep that occurs as new player cards are released.

If Nightmare mode were to truly increase the difficulty of each quest to 9 or 10, as its name suggests, it would greatly reduce their potential audience. After all, there’s a reason that quests are developed with varying difficulty levels in the first place. A diversity of challenge levels ensures that different types of players (or even the same player on different days, depending on their mood) have something they can enjoy. Nightmare mode isn’t going to make quests any easier, certainly, so to preserve some level of diversity it needs to be judicious with how many points it adds to the quest’s difficulty score.

Put another way, I like to mentally chunk quests into four difficulty categories: easy, standard, hard, and table-flippers. I find that quests which fall into the “easy” or “table-flipper” categories tend not to see much play from me. Sometimes I want a standard quest, sometimes I want something a little harder, but easy quests I generally only reach for when I’m playing with newer players, while table-flippers I generally beat once for the challenge and then move on. Rather than automatically escalating every quest up into the table-flipper category, the best Nightmare decks only jump the quest one difficulty category higher. This ensures that each one becomes a new and interesting challenge without automatically pushing them into “play once and move on” territory.

Quests which start out on the easy side, like Trouble in Tharbad (currently difficulty 3.9 on the Quest Companion) come out with a standard difficulty after the Nightmare treatment. Your more standard difficulty quests, like Foundations of Stone (currently difficulty 6.1 on the Quest Companion) become hard—tough challenges that will likely take several tries before you can get a win. Quests which are already hard, like Shadow and Flame (currently difficulty 7.7 on the Quest Companion) turn into real table-flippers. You’ll need to bring a well optimized deck and can expect to beat your head against them for a while before you can attain victory. But of course, the quintessential table-flipper, The Battle of Carn Dûm (currently difficulty 9.5 on the Quest Companion) didn’t change much at all.

As always, there are exceptions, especially for particularly easy quests such as Encounter at Amon Dîn, which jumps from a measly 2.9 to something closer to a 9 in Nightmare mode. Even so, I can’t help but feel like that quest might have been better served by tuning the Nightmare difficulty a little lower, since it goes from being a quest that rarely hits my table because it’s too easy to being a quest that rarely hits my table because it’s too hard. In general, Nightmare decks are most successful when they push the difficulty just enough to make them feel fresh rather than trying to get them to jump several difficulty categories.

So, to recap

Far from just adding to the difficulty, the best Nightmare quests improve quests along multiple different dimensions at once, often making them my favorite version of any given quest. The core principles that make a good Nightmare quest are that they:

1. Lean into what makes the quest unique by focusing on a few core themes and mechanics.
   Examples of Nightmare quests which do this especially well:
   1. The Redhorn Gate
   2. The Drúadan Forest
   3. Encounter at Amon Dîn
   4. The Three Trials
   5. The Treachery of Rhudaur
2. Increase encounter card variety both in the quest and in its cycle by cutting cards carefully.
   Examples of Nightmare quests which do this especially well:
   1. The Dead Marshes
   2. Into Ithilien
   3. The Fords of Isen
   4. The Battle of Carn Dûm
3. Shore up the quest’s weaknesses by countering dominant strategies and fixing unfun mechanics.
   Examples of Nightmare quests which do this especially well:
   1. Passage Through Mirkwood
   2. The Hunt for Gollum
   3. Flight from Moria
   4. Peril in Pelargir
   5. Assault on Osgiliath
4. Increase the difficulty by about 2 unless a quest is exceptionally easy or hard to start with.
   Examples of Nightmare quests which do this especially well:
   1. Foundations of Stone
   2. Shadow and Flame
   3. Trouble in Tharbad
   4. The Antlered Crown

These principles allow Nightmare mode to improve on a good thing, making Nightmare mode quests even better than the originals. I only wish the marketing name had been chosen more carefully, and perhaps they would have had a slightly clearer focus and broader appeal! As it is, rumors abound that Nightmare decks didn’t sell well enough to justify their continued development, and so it is sadly likely that we’ve seen the last of the official Nightmare products. All the more reason to cherish the quests we have!

What experiences have you had with Nightmare mode, dear readers? What do you enjoy about the updated decks, and what parts of Nightmare do you wish were left behind? Which are your favorite Nightmare quests, and why? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!