Headscratchers / Armello

• The "Arson" card doesn't make much sense to me. You burn down a forest, but why does it turn into a Marsh?
  • Burning down a forest results in an area filled with smoke, ash and possibly still-burning patches, all of which could easily be as hazardous to one's health as a noxious swamp. Creating an entirely new tile that has, in terms of gameplay, no effective differences with a swamp would be far more trouble than just designating the new tile as a swamp, by way of shorthand.
  • In the phone version, burned forests leave behind a hex of charred stumps that acts as a swamp. Looks like it was just a placeholder.
• Why does the King continue to lose health even past a Rot value of 5 if the players don't? Just straight Gameplay and Story Segregation to make sure the game doesn't take ages or...?
  • This is actually a remnant before some of the mechanics were changed. Initially, if your rot stat was anything but Zero (or if you had the wyld talisman), you lost health at dawn, so it functioned identically to players afflicted with Rot. But since they changed that, now it's an Acceptable Break from Reality / Anti-Frustration Feature.
  • The King is addicted to Hot Rot Wine. Or he's Fighting from the Inside and trying to kill himself by struggling against the disease.
  • Alternatively, the Rot goes through stages, first damaging the sufferer until their body adapts to it, then passing through a "harmless" stage where the sufferer can wield it at will, and then growing out of control to become harmful again. The King has entered the "terminal" phase of his infection.
• It seems odd that when the heroes die, they promptly revive at their clan grounds - potentially on the same morning they died, no less - whereas when the King dies, that's it for him. There some kind of lore reason for this phenomenon?
  • Maybe he's been afflicted by the Rot too long, far longer than any of the other heroes, so his soul is pretty much decayed beyond salvaging.
  • I thought the King actually dies, whereas the heroes get knocked out and retreat to the clan grounds for medical attention.
  • Perhaps his Clan Grounds is very far away, too far for him to effectively come back and resume command.
    • The novellas confirm that yes, he isn't native to Armello.
• The flavour text for the Hand Cannons indicate that the King was wary of the power of gunpowder weaponry. Yet, Mercurio in his Mustachio skin wields a flintlock pistol. What's the story behind that?
  • Is it really surprising that the Lovable Rogue might flaunt the law?
  • Hargrave also does the same thing with his cannon-on-a-stick. He's also senile and insane enough to fire on Royal Guards unprovoked if they so much as approach him, so it makes sense that he would openly defy the King's decree. His bio also implies a connection to the Hand Cannons.