Notes from Fifth Playtest

Updated 3/14/2011

Finally got to play with Cybil! In addition to being my better half, she's the other half of my target demographic.

• Explore, Swap, Collect - define these terms so that rules can be delivered clearly
• Swap is always a free action
• Pouch is very powerful, maybe lose it when sell everything in it?
• Maybe more pouches in the deck
• Think about solutions to when something gets stuck at 1 in the market - since it's usually the 5, 4, and 3 spots that get sold, and in lower quantities as you get higher, it's rare that enough of something is sold to bump at item up out of that last spot.
• Possible hunter carrying limit via encumbrance, -1 move per animal.
• Mushrooms and hunting traps should be part of an expansion or advanced rules, this set is really tight, they feel needlessly complex. 

It would still be cool if there was some chance that Gatherers could die, and maybe I can do it without introducing new components (and throwing off the plant/animal balance). We've talked about Gatherers having a chance of dying if they encounter a deadly animal. Maybe try to roll greater than 10 if they find a Wolf or Bear?

It might be that the solution to dealing with items that get stuck in the 1 spot in the market is to give you something else to do with them. Maybe I could scrap the whole equipment cost thing entirely and simply say you can trade 1 tile for 1 equipment. If I did that I could get rid of the turn/round track entirely, which is really hard to remember to do move. But I'd have to come up with a new way to keep the game time short.

Update from Discussion on Facebook
Instead of a turn track we might play until the stack of tiles runs out (after reducing the number of tiles). This would introduce a new "card counting" element. It would also guarantee we eventually encounter the full distribution of tiles, unlike last time I played where there was only one Nut the whole game. And it would self-balance the length of the game between 2-4 (or maybe even 5) players.