Notes from Twenty-first Playtest

Today's play was another test of the new Market / "Village Needs" track behavior, where selling an item drops its value all the way to the bottom. I think this is really working, nothing gets stuck at the bottom anymore. Final score was a more balanced 32-17-15 (there was some dying and unsold stuff at the end, and there were 4 large animals on the board, but no runaway loser this time).


Today's Rules

• Hunter kills remain hidden (but separate from gatherer's tiles, need player boards!)
• Equipment costs 3 points, payed for from the current character's score.
• When something is sold in the market its value drops to the bottom.
• No more leapfrog on the score track.
• When a character dies, the next time the player picks that role they draw 2 new equipment from the top of the deck.

To Clarify

• Characters can "go to the village" even if they are already there. This would most likely happen if the market or available equipment had changed.

Future Experiments

• Re-spawned "cousin" characters, if they can't use either or both of the cards they drew, can trade with the face-up cards until they can use both of them. Note that they cannot make 2 trades if 1 would have been enough. But if there are two different trades that would make both cards work for that character, they may choose.
• Allow players to draw "blind" from the top of the deck when making an equipment purchase.
• Allow players to trade with the face up equipment cards when they are in the village. No trading used equipment.

Things to Think About

These are some ideas that aren't fully formed enough to try yet, but I'm interested in input, or if these ideas spark any other ideas.

• Is the Torch crap?
• What else would be cool for a gatherer to have?
• New market values? Selling when things are worth 5 is such a big edge, especially if you've got 3 nuts (or something). Maybe the values should be 4-4-3-2-2?
• If we do do something like that to moderate the values, can we get the Equipment back in there? It would still only be for purchase (none of this buy low, sell high crap that happened in earlier experiments). But if everyone is buying it, how do we get the value to go back down? Just have it floor itself when it reaches the top spot? I'd really like to integrate it rather than have it arbitrarily cost 3, but I haven't figured out how yet.