Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Eight

What we tried
This was an opportunity to teach the game to a new player who was not a regular gamer. She had at least heard of Catan, although I'm not sure if she had played.

We played with 2nd edition rules, including all the new events, and players starting out with points on the score tracks.

Since it was a learning game I shortened the play length, taking out 12 plants & animals, and 4 events (leaving 24 and 8 respectively).

Notes
I'm going to work on a demo script for teaching a few sample rounds of the game, probably with a fixed scenario. The game is very free form, there's nothing telling you where you should go, or which character you should use. I think providing some more structure for a few rounds of play would help. Our guest this time felt she fully grasped the game a few turns before the end.

The Atlatl & Spear event just needs to say how much it costs, not the discount it gives. It should end the turn.

The Cornucopia event did nothing, which would likely often be case. New idea: each player, starting with you and proceeding to the left, scores as if they had just turned in a value 1 plant of their choice. After being scored that plant value drops to the bottom.

What's next?
There's a little more work I think can be done balancing out hunter and gatherer abilities. I could try limiting the animals a hunter can carry, something like no more than 3 meat 3 hide. But, rather than start with limitations, I'm going to experiment with some improvements to the gatherer side. One thing I've included in my trial print run of 2nd edition is higher value plant tiles.

Another new idea is to allow players to combine and score multiple plant tiles at once. So if you had one nut, and two nuts, you could score it as 3 nuts, which could make as many as 12 or 15 points, depending on the number of players. Right now higher point scoring is far more common on the hunting side. Since there are 3 different kinds of plants, this won't be as common as you might think, but it might lead to new strategies.

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Seven

Playtesters: Cybil and Beejell

What we tried

• Movement reduced to 0, 1, 2, or 3 spaces
• 4 points starting equipment (this was a setup mistake last time, but I'm sticking with in)
• 2 points of equipment when a character dies
• Bow costs 5, Atlatl 4
• Equipment can be paid for from either or both tracks.
• Retry cubes are collected if you explore and didn't get to claim a space, whether you fail or die.
• Hunter can use retry cubes to re-roll attacks.

Notes

• Retry cubes introduce a strategic approach to hunting deadly animals that have been revealed by another player. You can wait until you have one before hunting it.
• The market manipulation action (needs a better name) that you can invoke by turning in an event card that you found earlier, evolved in the middle of play. From that discussion I did not agree with the idea that a resource pushed beyond the top value in the village should wrap to the bottom. But the rule we did change was allowing a resource to be moved either up or down. This gives players much more control of the market.
• The "village value track" should just be called the "marketplace".
• Idea: retry tokens could score points, or get equipment.
• Most events should let you explore again. This is twice in a row the least experienced player drew the most event tiles.
• Component mistake! Two of the events that should have been able to manipulate the value of berries had herbs instead, the ones paired with meat and with hide.

Event Notes and Ideas
View from a Bluff worked!
Injured would be more clear if it sayd "not carrying anything".
Lost you should roll to see how far you move.
Idea: Turn one market tile face down until until somebody scores again.
Idea: Move something in the market up to top.
Idea: Market manipulation events give you something different, like +1 movement.
Idea: Move one character back to village.

What's next?

After this playtest I did a complete overhaul of all the events. The each were each updated to clearly state whether your turn continues or ends. I worked with Cybil on the flavor text and interactivity level of every events. It should now be rare that an event can be drawn and you escape it with nothing good or bad happening. More events were added, most of the new ones are much simpler, like gain a piece of equipment. I added 10 more events with only a single resource icon.

The big next thing is the 2nd edition board, with hex spaces. The text of all the goals was updated since orthogonal vs. diagonal is no longer a concern.

The new board is also irregularly shaped. I want to try starting the game with face down events in the far corners of the board.

I'm also going to try having players start the game with points on the board that may optionally be spent on equipment. This will simplify teaching the game, because the first turn will be no different than any other. Players first turn choices will be easier too, since they will not be pressured to spend all their starting points.