Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Twenty-three

Playtest with Kris, Ryan, Elsa, and Dan

What we tried 

 

Spring: +1 for scoring, 2 points for all of everyone score.
Note: in a 4-5 player game that's rarely if ever going to happen, it would be sufficient to require everyone to collect something.

Summer: 3 points for claiming a space not touching another. End summer: play order changes. 
Note: Players adjusted fine to the order changing, but it had little to know impact on the game and is not worth the confusion. Also, unlike other games with some kind of marketplace, it isn't the player to your right that makes that big a difference, it's the other player at the table that has collected the same type of tile as you.
To do: Re-word goal "for having a claimed space" and all the goals should specify that they happen at the end of season, not that some seasons have mid-season bonuses.

Fall: 2 points if one of your character is dead.
Note: Maybe it should be 3 points? Arranging a death has an opportunity cost.

Winter: note that I need to clarify that everyone gets one more turn.

Rules Clarifications

Village on fire: early in the game players can score 2 without penalty. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just unexpected.

Wise woman: typo "a elderly" should be "an elderly". It was funny, we were trying to figure out what Kris had seen based on his questions, but both tiles turned out to be the same.

Torch: explore this space again.

Tall tree: face down non-event tile.

Question: what happens if two seasons empty in one turn? (Super edge case with 3 torches?)

Observations

Game ended unexpectedly fast!
Less events should explore again. Question whether Wise Woman and Strange Mushrooms should ever draw 2-3 tiles.

Teaching script note: teach it with player mat upside down so people learning can read it and see where things go. Have the gatherer start out with moccasins.

Graphic Design & Usability Notes

Seasons art: If I'm going to keep them arranged circularly, they need to have arrows and maybe each section with colors. Otherwise they should read left to right and be arranged in two lines.

There should be more visual queues that characters go back to the village, maybe an empty area or more silhouettes of meeples.

The marketplace symbols could stand out more on the events. Maybe use stones as a divider like around the village and background graphics from the board?

To try next

Lower equipment costs for 4/5 players? Let's try it! Each player gets fewer turns.

Events should not let you explore again, but they will be explicit about telling you to pick up a retry crystal, which effectively pays off the opportunity cost of picking one up. As it was they were over-powered. The "explore again" feedback was based on an earlier version, were they were more random, more of them were bad, and they didn't give you the ability to manipulate the marketplace.