Notes from Eighteenth Playtest

Played with Brandon, who has only played once before, and that was before we removed the score track. Educational to play with a newer player again. It's still baffling to me that a game I designed actually has layers of strategy.

Your first several games are figuring out how the equipment works, and starting to get a feel for the way values move on the Village Needs track. Then you start getting a feel for the ebb and flow of equipment, tiles, and really understanding the Needs track. Finally you start playing the other players. When the right time to sell is a nice little game of chicken. I'm still getting a feel for the rhythm of game as a whole, when to buy which equipment, when to hunt and when to gather.

Notes from Today's Play

• Hide started out at 5, Meat at 1. Even with this extreme split Hunt and Gather score tracks were similar.
• Now that a player's characters can pick up stuff for each other you should be able to draw blind from the top of the deck.
• Question: should a Gatherer be able to keep exploring after fending off a deadly animal with a Torch (or equivalent equipment). I'm thinking yes. It's so lame to have your turn ended early.
• We played with purchasing of equipment for 3 points. I like the balance and challenge it provides, but I definitely want to try giving re-spawned "cousins" 2 equipment.

The Early Death Problem

This game, being a Euro/Ameritrash hybrid, enjoys the exciting tension and surprise events from its American heritage, but is also suffering a bit from those swings of luck. It's especially bad if your Hunter dies early in the game. You lose your starting choice of weapon, and the positional advantage of those key spaces near the village.

One solution to this is to make equipment free. We've been trying that out for a couple of games. But I'm not convinced that it's the right direction for the game. It removes a tension filled decision of how much to spend on equipment, and whether it's better to go with the more powerful but disposable spear/bow&arrow approach, or the re-usable sling/club. It also forces you to pick things up one at a time (hopefully after a successful hunt, or you're wasting time), instead of making one big purchase when you've had a bit of luck. And it removes the strategy of using your more successful character to support the other.

Another rule we're definitely adding, whether equipment is purchased or free, is that what a character dies and is replaced by a sibling/cousin, the new character gets a piece of equipment for to start. The player has already lost a weapon, a turn, a tile, and possibly a key space on the board. To prevent them from being completely screwed they need to get something.

Now here's what got me thinking. In Small World, when you get completely destroyed you set that society into decline and come back in with a new, often more destructive, race & class and take your revenge. Coming back is often better than lingering with a mediocre society, because you're still getting some points from your society in decline. This is a catch-up mechanism without being overly artificial.

My new thought is that maybe that new characters needs to surge back in with two new equipment, giving that player an advantage to offset their loss.

Notes from Seventeenth Playtest

Suggestions

Dan, Far From Home

We played with the same rules as yesterday, so today I will just provide our observations and suggestions.

• Even if we're not going to have purchasing of equipment, hunter & gatherer characters should be able to pick up equipment for each other and exchange.
• 3 movement is probably too little, there's no poaching, and if you get boxed out of the village (see photo) it's hard to get home.
• The villiage should occupy 2 or more spaces so that the first couple turns aren't so critical.
• Considering changing Bow and Arrow cards to a combined Bow & Arrow card with one shot, and a Quiver of Arrows card with infinite shots. There would be fewer Quivers than there are currently Arrows, so there would be room in the deck for a 3rd gatherer equipment type.
• Torches - thinking about switching them to purely an "extending the day" card that would let you either explore a 3rd time, or gather a second item.
• ????? - something else could take the place of the way Torches protect Gatherers from deadly animals. Maybe something that makes noise?

Notes from Sixteenth Playtest

Board at End of Game

Today's Experiments

Swapping - does this rule even come up? Is it worth the effort to explain the edge cases it creates? It came up once this game and felt cheesy.

Move 3 Spaces - Trying to make moving around the board more challenging and cut down on poaching. After one play I'm dubious. Maybe it was chance that we clumped up and didn't interact, but I think the hidden information rules change cuts down on poaching pretty well. Also poaching can be a fun interactive part of the game. But we'll try it again and see how it goes. We can also try on a hex board when I start experimenting with board layouts.

Torch - An item that prevents a deadly animal from killing your Gatherer. Replaced 4 Arrows, 2 Clubs, 2 Slings to add 8 Torches. We picked them up (equipment is free) but they didn't really come up in play.

Easier Escape Roll - Need to roll 10 instead of 11 for a Gatherer to escape a deadly animal.

Free Equipment - Second game trying this. I'm not sold, but Dan & Kris like it. It shifts the focus so you can concentrate on turning in your tiles at the right time. I think it takes away a lot of the strategy. When equipment is purchased you can buy all the equipment you need when you need it, or be frugal in your purchases. It also means that if your hunter is doing poorly your gatherer can't take go pick up equipment for them - this was one of the several self-balancing mechanisms in the game. It lets you balance out the luck between your two characters by turning points from the one who is doing well into equipment for the one who isn't.

There are a couple issues to address with points purchasing equipment. One is that when a character dies you're put in a tough spot of having to send a gatherer to go find something to buy weapons for your hunter. To fix that I would give the "respawned" cousins one equipment card to start, picked from the face up cards.

The other issue is the math complexity behind selling tiles for points, but then having to use those points immediately to buy equipment, and only scoring the remainder. To address this we could simply turn in the tiles for points, and then move your score backwards in the track of your choice to make purchases. This would be another point of control for the players, further balancing hunt vs. gather scores.

It would be nice to try a simple tiles for equipment (or tile value for equipment) trading system.


What's Next?

We're going to try the same rules set tomorrow.

Equipment and Tile Value Distributions

Tile Distribution

These numbers were used in playtests 14 and 15.

Nuts: 4 tiles (17%), 8 combined value (15%)
Berries: 4 tiles (17%), 8 combined value (15%)
Herbs: 4 tiles (17%), 8 combined value (15%)
Meat: 8 tiles (33%), 14 combined value (27%)
Hide: 8 tiles (33%), 14 combined value (27%)

Gatherer Tiles: 12 (50%), 24 combined value (46%)
Hunter Tiles: 12 (50%), 28 combined value (54%)

Complicating factors:

• Both types of tiles have challenges in collecting them, plants have strict carrying restrictions, animals require dice rolls to kill.
• Animals values typically both move down together, as most animals have both Meat & Hide.

Equipment Distribution

Current:

8 Club
8 Sling
12 Spear
12 Arrow (requires bow)
4 Atlatl (requires spear)
8 Bow
8 Pouch

With Torches:

6 Club
6 Sling
12 Spear
8 Arrow (requires bow)
4 Atlatl (requires spear)
8 Bow
8 Pouch

8 Torch

Notes from Fifteenth Playtest

Kris Rolls 3 sixes, and kills a squirrel!

Today's Experiments

Equipment is Free! Your characters gain 1 equipment as they leave the village, but can only pick up equipment they can use themselves. At the start deal out 3 equipment and keep 1.

I'm not entirely sold. I think it's nice in that it makes it easier to recover if you die, but I think it detracts a lot from the long term strategy of the game. Whether equipment is worth buying depends a lot on where you are in the game. This experiment does speed up play.

Kris won by 1 point!

Animal Meat & Hide Values We tried them the same as playtest 14. Their values pretty much tanked. Dan pointed out that it didn't help that he got his gatherer killed while carrying a number of Herbs and Berries, which kept demand for those high.

What's Next?

• Keep keep tuning the Meat & Hide Values.
• Reduce the number you have to roll to defend your gatherer from deadly animals.
• Add Torches to the equipment deck, an item that defends the gatherers from deadly animals.
• Reduce movement to 3 (wounded animals only move one).
• Experiment with different sizes and shapes for the board.

Update: More Ideas

• In the version of the game where you still have to pay for equipment, when a character dies the "cousin" who takes his or her place will get to draw 3 equipment and keep one.
• The rules for "swapping" face down tiles are unclear, and it doesn't come up very often, is it time to bury them?
• Speaking of Berries, would the market (which I want to rename "Village Needs") if I removed them so that the Nuts and Herbs were balanced with the Meat and Hide? With the new animal values this might work. Time to run the numbers again.

Notes from Fourteenth Playtest

Josh, not dying

Two player game, rules teach and play in a bit under and hour (he'd read the rules before hand, such as they are).

Josh had a rocky start, dying near the beginning of the game. But he got it sorted out and played the market well. In the end the score was only separated by a single Hunt point, and a single Exploration tile!

What we tried:
I adjusted the animal numbers down from yesterday, and the effect this time was the Gather track scored high. Squirrel and Rabbit still 1 and 1. Deer 2 meat 1 hide, Boar 2 meat, Wolf 2 hide, and Bear 1 meat 2 hide.

Hidden information - Josh took more advantage of this than I've seen, exploring to find out lots of information. You can even see it in the board state at the end of game in the photo.

End game scoring - smaller numbers are definitely better, especially as the game balance gets tighter.

Things to try:
11 is probably too high to roll to see if you die. I'm thinking 9 or 10. Those still feel scary, but statistically are much different.