Darien

Problem:
Maximum location cards per turn = 3-4 (1 per player)
Maximum number of location cards that can be cleared per turn = 1

Solution:
Allow the party to concurrently explore an additional location with 3-4 players.

Instead of allowing the active player to pick only one location at a time to travel to, we allow the heroes to explore 2 active locations concurrently. The effects of both locations are active simultaneously. When the players successfully quest, the active player may distribute any progress tokens among any of the active locations. Progress tokens may still be placed on the main quest only when there are no active locations.

Reasoning:
Most of the game’s mechanics scale very well when adding more then 2 players. However, time and time again we have found ourselves losing because the location cards pile up faster then we are able to clear them.

Obviously there are ways to clear these extra locations (ie Northern Tracker), but if you are only looking at how many can be cleared by questing it gets more difficult to keep up each time you add another player. The game loses some appeal when the Northern Tracker becomes the ONLY strategy. This variant allows the heroes to clear more then 1 location a turn if they are willing to commit enough willpower to the cause.

One of the great things about this rule, is that it doesn’t break the feel of the game. It actually makes perfect sense with a party of 12+ heroes (Fellowship of the Ring) that they would split up to deal with threats as needed.