Notes from Eighty-seventh Playtest

What we tried

Dying, lots of dying. We needed to test whether the game would fall apart when players aggressively gathered goals by intentionally killing their characters.

Notes

It worked! We broke the game for the first time in years. The timing couldn't be better, as I'm about to send out upgrade kits for the holidays, and a copy to a publisher.

Dan was the most aggressive, taking only a club every time he died, and getting himself killed nine times! I tried to balance getting goals with successful exploration, trading in clubs for a bow, bow for an atlatl, and finally atlatl for a pouch, successfully collecting 15 disks.

Here is the final score break down:

Dan's base score (lower of two) was 32.

Out of ten goals, the following scored:
5 points Temperate,
18 points Speaker for the Dead,
8 points Omnivore,
10 points Brave/Foolish,
8 points Wanderers,
12 points Copycat of Specialist

...for a total of 93 points.


My base score was 42.

Out of five goals, the following:
6 points Territorial,
5 points Hoarder,
12 points Gambler turned in for Specialist

...for a total of 65 points.

Conclusion

I think I can kill two birds with one stone here. By limiting the number of goals a player is allowed to collect to 5 or 6, I can also keep the Speaker for the Dead goal down to 8 or 10 points.