Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Sixteen

Comments

"I've played a number of games where you spend points to help yourself, but it's nice that in this game you can spend it from the track that doesn't matter."

Like the length.
Like the market manipulation.

FAQ: can two characters who are maxed out on equipment exchange?

Retry: re-roll one die instead of all three.

Players not fans of hidden information, optional rule of leaving deadly animals face up.
(Not going to do this, paying attention during other players turns is important)

Sling seems kinda garbage.
Atlatl seams only better against bear and costs much more than the bow.

Get the text perfect on the events.

Needs more gatherer equipment, although like gatherer being able to play support.

Death rewards too strong. Feels wrong that need to die.
Seasons: if each season gave you goals then you wouldn't have to die.

Change number of spaces moved based on number of players?

Swap 1 damage from bow to sling?

Box art: split colors

To try: everyone starts with a sling and no points.

Events

• Wandering Trader worked!
• Potlatch: FAQ that you can discard equipment. 
• Tall tree: complicated. 
• Strange mushrooms: clarify that you draw them one at a time.
• Rabbit beast: should say "end of" your following turn.
• Cornucopia: happy players.

Goals

One of the goals still says "sides".

To Try Next

• Retry: re-roll one die instead of all three.
• Improved or cheaper sling, maybe even make sling do one more damage, bow & arrow one less. If bow did one less damage, maybe it and pouch should cost one less, and players start with fewer points. If sling does more damage, spear is looking weaker. Spear could change so that it's only discarded when you miss (or hit?).
• Goals/Benifits that vary per season. For example, re-spawning only gets you points during the first season, Everyone gets a goal at the end of the second season

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Fifteen

Notes above are from a separate play with the same player, she checked it out from the library.

What we tried

Events divided between four seasons
A two player game

Event Notes

• Trader doesn't do much early game
• Fog - Need to be clear before person moves you that you will get to explore the space if it is empty. Otherwise, need to require that they leave you on an empty space. <- do this

Ideas

Include an odds table in the back of the rules (with spear + sling combo)

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Fourteen

Playtest with Cybil, Lisa, and Alex

What did we try?

Seasons: exploration tiles divided into four stacks with two events in each stack.
Manipulate market in between scoring meat/hide.

Ideas

Event at end of every round? Or season?

Marketplace manipulation:
Wrap around or drop a resource to the bottom?

Dying experiment: draw the goals immediately when you die, but place it sideways and don't put it with your other goal until you use that character again.

Deadly animals face up and impassible?

Terrain?

Event Notes

• Snare - limit to the current season, shuffle up and put back. Work on clarifying the wording. Also being able to look is very powerful. Maybe should just take it.
• Fog event: weird that basically requires you to be moved to a space with somehting on it

To Try

• Allow market manipulation to drop a resource to the bottom. Moving it to the top is too powerful, wrapping it around only from the topmost space to the bottom is more limiting and makes less sense.
• Pick your goal when you die, but don't keep it until you use that character again.

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Thirteen

Event Notes

Strange Mishrooms: does it specify that you get to look at them?
Torch burned down village! Funny chain of events in a single turn, same person picked up the Torch event followed by Village on Fire.

Ideas

Crafting! It would be on theme if resources could be converted into equipment.

Trade between players? No, I've thought about this, don't want to slow down the game.

Tile that you can't always collect, like only collect in certain season.

Event or equipment that lets you move through another player's spaces for free.

Ideas To Try

New Goal: ending game with 2 un-scored tiles.

More bluffing? Empty spaces that could be claimed for free or left there would add more bluffing. Or try not requiring people to draw event.

Special events at the bottom of each season.

Rabbit and squirrel should only be worth one or the other. New animals experiment: Wild turkey is two meat, rabbit is two hide.

Seed the board with known tiles.

Nice idea of being able to use 1/2 of an event's market manipulation, scoring a tile, then using the other half (or maybe even in the middle of scoring an animal) came up again. Good to keep the rule flexible just in case people come up with a way to utilize it, reward that clever play.

Goal Notes

Time to revisit the secret goals! Everyone fairly universally hated their own goal (or at least protested so). A lot of them need adjusting for the new hex board, and also the ability to partially achieve them.

More goals with outcomes that you can actively work toward.

End of season should be scheduled points scoring for fixed goals.

More goals that care about placement

Specific notes

• Temperance - score some points if they are close but not the same.
• Haggler should be 3.
• Wolf master should score points for one wolf.
• Brave should also give scaled points. 

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Twelve

Events 

• Tall Tree: Clarify what the correct character/space means. 
• Wandering Trader: Clarify if can manipulate market with events. 
• Atlatl: Too powerful early game, should not include the option of buying a spear. 

Rules

Can you re-roll a successful roll with a retry? This comes up when you're trying to die, but made your roll.

Oops! Someone had to use a second spear when they re-rolled using a retry.

New Ideas

A felt draw bag would be more random and hide the end game timing. Neither of these are things I want. End game play is critical and needs to be open. Rather than 100% random, I want the events to be more evenly distributed.

New Event: herd migration, dead (scored) animals come back on the board.

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Eleven

Event & Goal Notes

• Speaker and survivor need to note goals don't have to be scored.
• Celestial phenomenon: get rid of the "of all 3 match"
• View from a bluff has a typo "to not" should be "do not"
• Territorial don't say "on the sides"
• Reconsider number of points for the goal that requires hoarding equipment.
• Tornado: isn't working as intended

Graphic Design / UX Notes

• Player aids should have red/green sides.
• Marketplace mat needs to be integrated with the board. It slides around.
• Make event tile discard area on the board.
• 6 events that go on the board should have event icon on the back. 
• Deadly animals: instead of fangs, have gathered meeple with the number.

Quotes

"god damn pouches are expensive"

To Try Next

Starting points are confusing, everyone gets 2.

Work on the distribution of events by dividing plants & animals into 4 stacks of 6 and then mixing two events in with each stack. Label areas for 4 stacks on the board, 4 seasons.

Weapon idea: new players less familiar with the bell curve of 3d6 need some extra incentive to upgrade to the more expensive weapons, and also the sling, a clever weapon but less suited for taking on all animals.
   The idea is make the characters using long range weapons immune from deadly animals. Specifically the Sling, AtlAtl, and Bow.

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Ten

A playtest on the JoCo Cruise with Cybil and three new players.

What We Tried

New torches cost 1.

Graphic Design Updates

Move hunt track to other side because that's where the hunter equipment is.
Put silhouettes of the pieces under the score tracks.

Notes

• Torch worked, and got something on second explore.
• View from a bluff: should be if either character has a weapon.
• Goals that say ties don't count should specify what kind of tie. 
• Suggestion to further differentiate the expensive weapons, maybe don't die against deadly with bow?
• Goals that mention trade points should say cost and have shell symbol.
• Pathfinder: clarify that it is a straight line.
• Master Scout: can't name the events in the corner.
• Copycat: replay the event (scout)

Fun was had with the language of the game (a not unintentional feature, I'd have wood in it if I could).
"Sell my meat"
"Push those nuts"
"Push the nuts below the meat"

2nd Edition Events

Atlatl & Spear

Celestial Phenomenon

Club

Cold Snap

Cornucopia

Fletcher

Fog

Illness

Potlatch Ceremony

Pouch

Rabid Beast

Rockslide

Set a Snare

Sling

Spear

Standing Stones

Strange Mushrooms

Tall Tree

Torch

Tornado

View from a Bluff

Village Gossip

Village On Fire

Wandering Trader

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Nine

A playtest with Lester, Kris, Ryan, and Dan. I watched and took notes.

What We Tried

Gatherer scoring experiment: score more than one plant tile together. Example: score a 1 herb and a 2 herbs as 3 herbs.

New Torch

My new idea for the torch is that it would push the deadly animal to the nearest empty space, and you get to explore the space you are on again. But, you have to roll a 7 and it costs 2.

New turn summary

6 events on the board in the far corners.

Players start out with points on the board, balanced but not the same:
Player one: 3 hunt, 1 gather
Player two: 1 hunt, 3 gather
Player three: 2 hunt, 2 gather
Player four: 4 hunt, 0 gather
Player five: 0 hunt, 4 gather

Plant distribution remains the same:
4x 2 point plants of each type
2x 1 point plants of each type

Notes

• Should make score track bigger and use ticket to ride score markers.
• Spending retries to move greater distances without being forced to do an explore.
• Is being able to collect lots of retries too much? Limit 1 or 3? Conclusion: no.
• Kris scored 24 points in on turn, combining tiles is probably broken. Two other players were able to add a one point tile to another tile and salvage what would otherwise been a low scoring sale. 
• The gatherer saving throw number on the deadly animals can be confused with what the hunter needs to roll.
• Idea: move deadly to attack others or on top of other tiles.
• Make sure the rules are clear that you can move a resource up from the top space or down from the bottom and nothing happens.
• Make use of discarded event tiles? Seasons?
• 36 tiles plus 12 events is too long, length of play is too much, and hard to get home at the end.
• New equipment to try: moccasins, move up to 4/5 spaces each turn.

Events

• Lester got the Sling event while carrying only a sling, pretty funny.
• Tall tree - not useful first turn.
• Village gossip, once collected does it go face down? Fun, both had collected berries.
• Fog - moved into corner
• Celestial Event, 3 is lots of goals!
• Potlatch - Kris pulled the Kris move and returned a zero cost arrow.
• Village on fire right after potlatch is madness, but cool. Can totally nerf a couple of the goals. 
• Club - your fathers favorite club?
• View from a bluff worked, gotta be paying attention. 
• New event idea: adds a village.
• Set a snare is crazy near end game without many tiles left. Lots of info revealed.
• Rabid beast. Wording is easily misread, have to decide if to simplify. 

What's next?

Don't allow combining of plant tiles when scoring.

Plant distribution to try:
2x 3 point plants of each type
3x 2 point plants of each type
1x 1 point plants of each type

Torch
Return cost to 1.

Re-Thinking The Torch

Torch card, full bleed art prepped for printer

I've been thinking about the role the torch plays in the game, and considering making it more powerful so that it's more interesting early in the game.

With the current rules a torch is a mid to late game purchase you make only to protect a Pouch. Experienced players realize that early in the game it is better to die than to fail to collect something. New players will make the mistake of buying a torch because they think dying is bad.

My new idea for the torch is that it pushes the deadly animal to the nearest empty space, and you get to explore the space you are on again. It is still then discarded.

But, as Dan pointed out, maybe the torch shouldn't be a sure thing? If you still had to roll to survive against the deadly animal it would add another moment of dramatic tension, compared to now where you just discard it. It would also be another opportunity for risk assessment. Looking at the numbers, having it give a +2 to your role takes the odds from 50-74% to 74-91%. +3 would probably be too goo at 84-95%, although we'll see.

Cybil pointed out that having to roll a different number against different animals and then having a weapon with a bonus to that role is actually the same as the old hunting system, which was too complicated for people without a D&D background. It would better to have the torch change the number that you need to roll against any animal, rather than having to teach people to make a die roll with a modifier. I'm thinking it should either require you to roll an 8 (84%) or a 7 (91%).

The next concern, especially in a 4 or 5 player game, is that the at the start of the game the first players might grab all the torches. Two solves for this would be providing more of them in the supply, or increasing the cost to 2.