Notes from Twenty-third Playtest

Back with my weekday lunch playtesting crew, plus a 4th occasional player!


Today's Rules
(some of these I've tested for several games, but reiterating them here because I'm back with my lunch time playtest crew)

• Larger village (counts as one space, but occupies 2 spaces)
• Individually priced equipment, paid for from either score track. 
• Hunter kills remain hidden (but separate from gatherer's tiles, need player boards!)
• New Character - when a character dies, when you begin a turn with the new one draw 2 equipment cards blind. You may trade one of them with the face up cards.
• When a tile is turned in for points its value drops to the bottom.
• No more leapfrog on the score track.
• A gatherer can continue exploring if their first attempt reveals a deadly animal, but they escape alive.

Observations

The prices seam reasonable so far. I've been pretty close with most of the numbers with this game.

It sucks when you die, then die again. Hard to design around a run of terrible (I'm talking <8) rolls.

Re-spawned characters definitely need a trade in. Also need to handle the case where you can't use any of the 7 available cards.

Things to Try

• New equipment card distribution and smaller deck
• All equipment available all the time

Card Back Logo Concept

Yes, the logo is based on a computer programmer joke of sorts, the double pipe "||" means "or" in ECMAScript languages like JavaScript and C.

Notes from Twenty-second Playtest

Played on the ferry coming back from Vancouver Island with Cybil and her mom.

Experiments

• Trading - in the village you can trade an un-used equipment card for a different one, exchanging face up cards.
• Blind Drawing - instead of purchasing a face-up card, you can draw from the top of the deck.
• New Character - when a character dies, when you begin a turn with the new one draw 2 equipment cards blind. You may trade one of them with the face up cards.

The trading and blind drawing don't work together. If you're going to make a purchase there is no reason not to blind draw, since you can just trade it if you don't get what you want.

New Ideas

• Individually priced equipment. That way they don't all have to be balanced perfectly.
• All equipment available all the time. Instead of a draw deck, stack equipment cards by type and make them all available for purchase.

I'm really liking this idea of pricing the equipment individually. It would really help balance between rare powerful weapons like an Atlatl, and common disposable items like an Arrow. Here's a first pass at some values:

• Atlatl - 4
• Spear - 3
• Bow - 4
• Arrow - 1
• Sling - 3
• Club - 2
• Pouch - 4
• Torch - 1

I also really want to try out having all the equipment available all the time. There's plenty of random in this game between the tile drawing and the dice rolls, if the rest can be more controllable that could make it a better game. (It's actually almost like pulling in an element of Dominion now that I think about it, but you always get to use what you buy.)

Improved Tile Prototypes

Click for Detail

Notes from Twenty-first Playtest

Today's play was another test of the new Market / "Village Needs" track behavior, where selling an item drops its value all the way to the bottom. I think this is really working, nothing gets stuck at the bottom anymore. Final score was a more balanced 32-17-15 (there was some dying and unsold stuff at the end, and there were 4 large animals on the board, but no runaway loser this time).


Today's Rules

• Hunter kills remain hidden (but separate from gatherer's tiles, need player boards!)
• Equipment costs 3 points, payed for from the current character's score.
• When something is sold in the market its value drops to the bottom.
• No more leapfrog on the score track.
• When a character dies, the next time the player picks that role they draw 2 new equipment from the top of the deck.

To Clarify

• Characters can "go to the village" even if they are already there. This would most likely happen if the market or available equipment had changed.

Future Experiments

• Re-spawned "cousin" characters, if they can't use either or both of the cards they drew, can trade with the face-up cards until they can use both of them. Note that they cannot make 2 trades if 1 would have been enough. But if there are two different trades that would make both cards work for that character, they may choose.
• Allow players to draw "blind" from the top of the deck when making an equipment purchase.
• Allow players to trade with the face up equipment cards when they are in the village. No trading used equipment.

Things to Think About

These are some ideas that aren't fully formed enough to try yet, but I'm interested in input, or if these ideas spark any other ideas.

• Is the Torch crap?
• What else would be cool for a gatherer to have?
• New market values? Selling when things are worth 5 is such a big edge, especially if you've got 3 nuts (or something). Maybe the values should be 4-4-3-2-2?
• If we do do something like that to moderate the values, can we get the Equipment back in there? It would still only be for purchase (none of this buy low, sell high crap that happened in earlier experiments). But if everyone is buying it, how do we get the value to go back down? Just have it floor itself when it reaches the top spot? I'd really like to integrate it rather than have it arbitrarily cost 3, but I haven't figured out how yet.

Notes from Twentieth Playtest

Rules from last time I attempted this game.
I've learned my lesson and start testing much sooner now!

Playtest with Cybil and her mom. Her mom's 2nd play. Cybil's mom won by a tie break, I was the runaway loser!

The goal of this week is to beef up the Euro-game aspects of Hunt or Gather. That means more long term strategy, more memory aspects, more control of supply/demand, and more indirect manipulation of other players. Also more ways to compensate for runs of bad luck.

Today's Experiment

1. When a character dies discard all equipment. "Re-spawned" cousins pick 2 equipment the first turn that role is selected.
2. Turning in a tile for points moves that type all the way to the bottom of the track no matter how many were sold.
3. Equipment costs 3 points, off either track, spent after going to the village and turning in tiles.

Observations and Next Steps

You can see how complexity led to
the failure of my initial attempt at
this game.

• Instead of letting a re-spawned cousin/sibling pick whatever they want, the equipment draw should be blind.
• I think this change to the way the Village Needs (aka market) finally solves the problem where things get stuck down at the bottom.
• Although buying equipment for 3 point definitely works, I do want to experiment with other options, if I can make them work with the theme.
• I need to add Player Boards to the Components and Design pages
• Stop leap-frogging on the score track. Assume the real one will be big enough. It gets really annoying when you're spending points and backwards hopping.
• Hunter tiles are now going to be turned face down after the kill, but kept distinctly separate from gatherer tiles (thus the need for player boards, also they'll help new players).

Notes from Nineteenth Playtest

Played with Cybil and her mom. It was her mom's first play and Cybil's third.

Playing with Cybil adds a new level of  challenge to the evolution of the game. She will put the strategic and memory aspects of the game to a test, and as a small business owner will play the supply/demand track well. But after three games she's just catching on to how "to hit" rolls and damage work. She'll eventually memorize which weapons work well against which animals, but doesn't even want to know about the odds.

So the challenge this week will be coming up with ways to deliberately manipulate the supply/demand, or at least come up with something useful to do with low value tiles.

I'm also considering whether it's time to introduce trapping as an alternative way to catch animals without having to roll dice. I was going to save it for an expansion, but maybe I'll need it sooner to give another way to work the Hunt track when your luck is running low.