Notes from Eighty-fifth Playtest

What we tried

Same rules as last play. The focus now is testing the goals, and trying to die to get more.

Notes

This was a very evenly matched high scoring two player game. We each even made the same mistakes. The final score came down to the goals, we each accomplished both of them.

Conclusion

Specialist, the goal that scores you points for multiple disks of the same type may scale up too high, and despite that doesn't seem to be a goal players pay much attention to during the game, but that concern might just be because I lost two it twice in a row.

Other than that this game is playing smoothly. Next time I do want to try dying more. I'll spend all my starting points on spears for my hunter, and send my gatherer out scouting to find the wolves.

Notes from Eighty-fourth Playtest

Kris and Ryan

What we tried

Instead of a choice between a goal or equipment when a character dies, you always get a goal and only two points for equipment.

I also removed restrictions from trading in equipment. Instead of being required to upgrade, you can now swap out for equal or lesser value.

Notes

This was Ryan's second game, but Kris and I decided to take the gloves off and play as hard as we could. But Kris died on the first turn, so it was an uphill battle. But the game is long enough now (closer to an hour than 45 minutes) that he had time to almost catch up. I triggered end game and prevented him from making a big score and was 10 points ahead. I also accomplished a large goal. Then Kris scored his goals, the first one caught him up to where I was before my goal scored, and the extra goal he had from dying on the first turn pushed him ahead. Very tight and exciting game!

Conclusion

There are goals that can now be completed which were nearly impossible before, Wolf Hunter (kill two wolves) and Crack Shot (kill two rabbits or two squirrels). This is simply because there are now three of each animal instead of two.

I'm still a little bit concerned that a "suicide strategy", getting killed intentionally to get a bunch of goals, might be successful. Back when players got a goal and three points worth of equipment that was definitely a problem (although a pretty advanced strategy), but now it's two points, and the better equipment is more expensive.

Kris, who has been playtesting this game from the beginning, through many revisions, said something great. He said that the game now has the same level of decision making as a much earlier edition of the game, but with much simpler rules. That to me is a breakthrough. Also, the experienced players trounced the score of the newer player, pretty good for a game with both input and output randomness!

Notes from Eighty-third Playtest

Kris, Ryan, Nigel, and Lester. Despite his body language here, Lester won soundly.

Background

This is the first playtest with new players since this latest round of updates, changing the equipment numbers, the amount of disks, and the points on the goals. I taught two new players, and got two of the original playtesters up to speed with the latest changes. I did not play myself, instead I took notes about every play.

Play by Play

Lester

Bought a Sling and a Spear.

Hunter: used a spear to kill a wolf.

Kris

Bought a Pouch and Torch

Gatherer: used the torch on a boar, explored but failed to pick anything up.

Ryan

Bought a Sling and Spear

Hunter: spear fails against Bear, died.

Nigel

Bought a Pouch and Torch

Gatherer: picked up something.

Lester

Hunter: failed to poach rabbit with his sling.

Kris

Gatherer: rolled to live against wolf

Collected plant

Ryan

Re-spawned hunter, bought Sling and Spear.

Hunts wolf with spear, failed and died.

Nigel

Gatherer: explores and gathers a second different plant.

Lester

Hunter: fails to poach (it was a plant), fails to find animal with another explore.

Kris

Gatherer: collects a second plant.

Ryan

Re-spawned his Hunter, buys a Sling and Spear.

Hunts deer with spear, succeeds.

Nigel

Gatherer: used torch on bear, ended turn early for safety.

Lester

Gatherer: picks up plant.

Kris

Gatherer: went home, sold herbs for 6 points.

Ryan

Hunter: sold deer for 12 points.

Nigel

Gatherer: sold berries for 10 points, herbs for 8 points.

Lester

Gatherer: sold nuts for 10 points.

Kris

Hunter: bought club, misses rabbit.

Ryan

Hunter: upgraded Sling to Atatl.

Missed boar, died.

Nigel

Hunter: bought a Bow & 2 Arrows.

Shot bear with bow twice, killing it.

Lester

Scored 15 points for wolf.

Kris

Attempted to hunt a boar with his club, failed and died.

Ryan

Re-spawned gatherer, bought Pouch and Torch.

Gatherer: explores and collects a plant.

Nigel

Buys 2 torches.

Gatherer: collects a plan.

Lester

Hunter: kills boar with spear.

Kris

Re-spawns hunter and buys Bow & Arrow, and a Sling

Hunts and kills a rabbit.

Ryan

Gatherer: finds a non-deadly animal, collects a second plant type.

Nigel

Hunter: found a bear a and shot it with his bow, killing it.

Lester

Sold boar for 15 points.

Kris

Hunted wolf with bow, killed it.

Decided to play it safe and not use sling for his second roll, and rolled a 7 which hit with the bow, but would have missed with the sling.

Ryan

Sold plants for 15 points.

Nigel

Sold nuts for 5 points.

Lester

Bought pouch and torch.

Gatherer: collects a plant.

Kris

Sold wolf for 15 points, rabbit for 7 points.

Ryan

Collects plant

Nigel

Would have liked to swap for a torch for an arrow, but current rules only allow upgrading, not equal value swaps.

Gatherer: found two non-deadly animals.

Lester

Gatherer: collected a second type of plant.

Kris

Bought a torch.

Gatherer: found a non-deadly animal.

Ryan

Bought a Bow & Arrow.

Hunter attacked boar with bow, and killed it.

Nigel 

Gatherer: collected a plant.

Lester

Gatherer: sold berries for 5 points, nuts for 8 points.

Kris

Gatherer: founds non-deadly animal.

Collected a plant.

Ryan

Hunter: sold a boar for 12 points.

Nigel

Gatherer: used a torch to fend off a bear.

Collected a second plant.

Lester

Gatherer: collects a plant.

Kris

Bought Arrows.

Hunter: went after a deer with his bow and killed it.

Ryan

Gatherer: collected a second plant type.

Nigel

Hunter: sold a bear for 10 points.

Lester

Gatherer: sold berries for 8 points.

Kris

Gatherer: sold herbs for 5 points, nuts for 5 points.

Ryan

Bought 2 arrows.

Hunter: Missed a squirrel with his bow.

Nigel

Sold a bear for 15 points.

Lester 

Hunter: missed a squirrel with his sling.

Kris 

Hunter: killed a rabbit with his sling.

Ryan

Gatherer: sold herbs and nuts for 16 points.

Nigel

Gatherer: sold berries for 10 points.

Lester

Hunter: attacked a squirrel with his sling and got it.

Kris

Collects plant

Ryan

Hunter: went after a wolf with with his bow, and got it.

Nigel

Bought arrows and a sling.

Lester

Gatherer: explored twice, doesn't pick anything up.
Triggered end game.

Kris

Hunter: sold a deer for 15 points, and a rabbit for 4 points.

Ryan

Hunter: sold a wolf for 6 points.

Nigel

Hunter: sold a boar for 6 points.

Lester

Hunter: sold a squirrel for 4 points.

Secret Goals 

Kris failed at Pathfinder, Nigel had an equal path.

Ryan wasn't successful at Homebody.

Nigel got 4 points for Isolationist.

Lester couldn't use Copycat because it only works on neighboring players, and Ryan was across the table.

Lester won by correctly assessing the end game, and running out the clock the game before Kris could pull off his master plan.

Conclusion

The consolation prize when a character dies needs adjustment. The rule we've been trying is that you get either 4 points for equipment, or an additional goal, instead of 3 points and a goal. But, even with the more valuable goals, players have not been drawing them. It's too easy to turn 4 points into an atlatl or bow.

I'm considering having characters come back with 2 points and a goal, or else a choice between that option or 4 points. Further playtesting is required.


Another rule I've been debating is the upgrade rule. I think it's great to be able to turn in your starting equipment and purchase something more expensive, but there have been several instances, including in this game, where exchanging for equal value equipment would be a great strategic move. I'll have to playtest that. The quest remains: is it too dangerous to simply allow players to turn any amount of equipment for temporary points, even if that means they might downgrade. Downgrading could be part of a suicide strategy, which I'm trying to keep out of the game. But every rule that gets added to an otherwise tight game puts it in jeopardy, and I might have to lose the whole concept of exchanging equipment. So, more playtesting is required.

Notes from Playtests Eighty-one and Eighty-two

Playtest 81

The focus now is playing lots of games to test the new goals. A couple of them had some issues.

Haggler is probably over-pointed at 7 points, players sell everything they can more often than not, so getting rewarded for that behavior doesn't add that much to the experience.

All In, where you score points for having no equipment left over at the end,was an interesting experiment but in practice it doesn't make sense to play the whole game with disposable equipment, torches and spears. Because of this impracticality, to achieve the goal you have to die later in the game, and suicide as a strategy is something I'm trying to discourage.

Playtest 82

Paranoid is extremely difficult and only ever works if you have it from the start. Increasing points to 12 to try it again. 

Pathfinder and Wanderers are about right. I gave up 5-6 potential points to score Wanderers.

Playtests Seventy-eight through Eighty

With this round of development, prompted by a video review of the game, I'm revisiting the secret goals to raise their stakes, and make them more skill based.

Current Goal Landscape

Before we could begin thinking about new goals, I needed to know what I have. I decided to lay out the goals on the table in a matrix graph, plotting left to right the time during the game at which it's critical to engage with the goal, and top to bottom the degree of control vs. luck. We did this with 3x5 cards as labels, laying the cards out on the table as you can see in this picture:

Goal "Graph"

Good, there was nothing in the bottom-left corner, luck driven goals that you have to act on from the beginning. But I could use more goals in the top-right, skill based goals that can be acted upon from the middle to the end of the game.

Here are some new goal ideas Dan and I came up with and have been trying out:

• Survivor: 7 points for ending the game with only this goal, 3 points if only one other.
• Temperate: 5 points for having equal hunt and gather scores.
• Haggler: 7 points for ending the game with both characters in the village, and all disks scored.
• Gambler: 2 points guaranteed, or trade this goal in to draw a new goal.
• Hoarder: 5 points for ending the game with more than 10 points worth of equipment.
• All In: 7 points for ending the game with no equipment.

I'd also like to come up with a goal that has to do with the state of the market at the end of the game, possibly related to un-scored disks. Every goal must be based on something saved in the state of the pieces at the end of the game. Most are based on disks collected, or spaces claimed, but I'm exploring other possibilities such as the location of the characters, equipment owned, and potentially un-scored disks.

Raising the Stakes

I've gone through and nearly doubled the points that you score for goals. Before the goals were usually between 3 and 6 points, now they are 6 to 10.

Playtest Notes

Playtest 78

To balance the additional value of the goals, and try to counter the suicide strategy, when characters die and re-spawn, players must choose either 4 points, or a new goal, not both.

This new rule collided with one of the new goals: Survivor. Survivor was based on the premise that each time a character dies you get get another goal, and so it scored 9 points for what was intended to be never dying. But since it is now possible to die and not get another goal, the points scored had to be adjusted down, after Dan exploited it for a very high score of course.

Playtest 79

Another thing that came out of these playtests, completely unrelated from the goals, is the starting placement of the village. We always try different tar pit placements every game, and playtest 79 (see photo) came up with a new setup that makes for a very competitive game. Instead of allowing players to take separate paths (see photo from playtest 78), this setup forces competition ever a narrow access point to the rest of the board.

Playtest 80

Testing goals is a time intensive process, because it requires playing through a full game to evaluate only a handful of goals (depending on how often characters died). One thing I've been doing to increase our insight into the goals came from trying to evaluate the new Gambler goal. With that goal you may choose to replace it with a random new goal. To know how many points to assign the default value of the goal, I need to calculate the expected value of a random goal. At the end of each game we have been dealing out the remaining goals and determining which ones would score points, how many points that would be, and dividing it by the number of goals to get an expected value of a random goal. So far they have been averaging about a point and a half. Note that this is not the same expected value as a goal gained during the game when players have time to act on them.

Bow & Arrows vs. Atlatl & Spear

Let's take a closer look at the math behind the new more powerful but also more expensive Bow and Atlatl. Each now costs 5 points and has become easier to hit with. You need to roll a 7 for the Bow, and an 8 for the Atlatl.

Everyone understands the Atlatl. In this game it's basically a prehistoric bazooka. At an 84% chance to hit, it's going to succeed a little more than 4 out of 5 tries, and doing 4 damage will destroy even the deadly animals in one shot.

The Bow is a little trickier. Arrows do half as much damage as Atlatl/Spear, so it takes two hits to kill a deadly animal (which have 3 or 4 life). But it's a more accurate weapon, hitting 90% of the time. Arrows are also cheaper, costing 1/2 point per shot. So, a Bow is a better weapon against smaller animals, and perfect against a deer. Hitting twice however reduces your odds to less than the Atlatl at 81%, and the ammunition not only costs as much, but it uses up the entire Arrow card.

So, the subtle numeric differences allow each to be optimal in specific situations, but both are still versatile enough to justify the higher cost, and allow for player taste.

This is what I really like about the 3 six-sided dice system, the bell curve allows me to make significant changes in the probability with small changes in the numbers. 

October 12th Update:

I found another happy accident in the math. A bear takes 4 damage to kill, which is the same amount that a club does, with 37% accuracy. A sling and a spear, if you hit with both, will also do 4 damage, and coincidentally, also has a 37% chance of success!

Now, there are plenty of other differences between those weapons. A club costs 1 point, spear and sling cost 2 points each. The club always has a 37% chance of success. Spear and Sling, used individually, have much better odds. Sling against rabbit or squirrel is 74%, sling against deer (2x) is 55%, and spear against wolf or boar is 50%.

Notes from Seventy-seventh Playtest

click to enlarge

What we tried

You may turn in unused equipment at the village for points which my be used immediately to buy new, more expensive, equipment.

Notes

Upgrade allowed me to take a strategy where I began with a sling and then upgraded it to a bow and arrow attempting to accomplish a Crack Shot goal. Dan was successful picking up a bow late in the game to secure the "furthest from the village" Explorer goal. At one point in the game I was losing pretty badly so I went out with an Atlatl and killed both a Wolf and a Boar, which scored 18 points in a single turn.

Conclusion

It's working really well not starting out with these weapons that are now more powerful, but being able to shift strategies later and upgrade. Being able to upgrade will also make it easier on beginning players. The decision about what to buy on your first turn is not nearly as final, you can explore various weapons throughout the game.

The game now feels like it has a beginning, middle, and end. It's always had that frantic rush at the end as players race to make one more score, or accomplish one more goal. But the rest of the game, with all the equipment more or less at your disposal from the beginning, has been more flat up until now. It makes sense, in a 45 minutes game you want to drop right into the middle of the action. Now that I'm looking at increasing it to an hour I can afford to ease into the game.

Next Steps

Goals! Should they be worth more points? Can they be more skill based? Should you get points and a goal when a character dies, or only one? Are there any we haven't thought of or tried?