In reply to Fresh perspectives wanted on possibly bloated design.:
My second post:
Thanks for the considered response. That would be a solution but I don't think the solution for this particular problem. Mixing cards of differing types in the same deck isn't my sticking point. It is how to control the usage of two different types of cards.
The starting deck cards, which are the Action and Role cards, wouldn't be categorized as "things that require effort to do" rather "things that allow you to perform things that require effort to do." They are themselves a resource that require management to control which options are available for a player.
I suspect that the answer is to mix the two card types, this increases the importance of how well a player is able to track when cards are available to collect from the Action Timer and ensuring that spaces are available either in the Belt or the Backpack to receive the cards he wants.
It also makes it that much more important to protect the Action Timer from attacking opposing players. If you can sit on a Role card without it using a slot in the Belt or the Backpack I think it weakens strategic decisions.
All that said just 4 or 5 days ago I twigged to that same realization that everything collected during the game should be roughly equivalent, that is to say "EVERYTHING is a quest." The effects of a puzzle, monster, or quest card might be different but it functions the same way within the game. They are added to a player's hand in the same way, they can be used to purchase Mid-boss encounters at the same exchange rate.
Role cards are separate from this thus my question, and really action cards are as well. In reality there will be four types of cards in the same deck: Role cards which define a list of specific actions a player may perform, Action cards that are used to purchase/accomplish those actions, Quest cards which define new actions, and Jems which increase the power of any action but have no use on their own.
Looking at it through the lens of either increasing abilities or furthering the agenda is helpful. I think I have a good split. For the most part cards that further a player's agenda do so by decreasing downtime on availability for other cards.
One quest nets the player the A/RPG ubiquitous Speed Boots. Which on the surface seems an increase in abilities but really has no effect during quests, rather it halves the time cards spend on the Action Timer. A player with this card active can theoretically plunge through the game in half the time as an opponent.
Unless I misunderstand and you mean that any card that increases any in game effect is the first type, and only cards that get a player closer to the end game scenario are the second. If that is the case I have same sticking points later in the original post that touch on that.
I think two major differences between our two designs is the time factor for cards added to a player's tableau and allowing players to "attack" each other.
The first means that players really can't accumulate an ever increasing list of increased abilities, they must make continuous decisions about which effects are active and manage how cards are dispersed once they finish their downtime.