Notes from Sixty-eighth Playtest

Eddy rolls 3 ones,
the next turn I did the same!

Simplified Combat, Take 2

What we tried:

1. "to hit" number on the weapon (less math!)
2. wounded animals don't move
3. if multiple weapons are used, weapons are selected before rolling. If either misses against a deadly animal, the character dies.

The game plays even smoother with so much of the math removed from combat, but the weapons retain their distinction, and characters still die. Man do they die. I died twice, Eddy three times, and Lester 4. Lester almost won with the Speaker for the Dead goal!

Notes:

I'll also remove the animal movement when wounded with a torch. That will remove the animal movement rules entirely, and also clear up an odd exception where you could drive an animal away and explore the same spot again.

Next Steps:

Get in another playtest or two, update the equipment (smaller cards), and rules.

Streamlined Combat

Today's experiment:

Remove half the math from the combat system, while retaining as much game balance as possible.

Instead of having the number that you need to roll on the disk, and the bonus to your die roll on the weapon, I averaged out the odds of hitting in the old system, and put the number you need to roll on the card. The life/damage numbers are changed to more visually oriented to hearts.

Initial Thoughts:

The weapons seem more normalized. The club got a lot more use even without its special power. The deadly animals felt less scary. I guess even though with the old system the highest you'd ever need to roll is a 12 (with the +1 from a club), it's still scary to see a Wolf with its 13 to hit.

The game plays very fast, closer to 30 minutes with 5 players. Definitely time to try it out with 36 tiles instead of 24.

Left to right: Eddy, Dan, Kris, Lester