Notes from Eighty-ninth and Ninetieth Playtests

Lester, Ryan, and Kris
at Game Häus Cafe

What we tried

• Players only explore once per turn.
• Collect a hunger cube when you fail to find something, use it later to explore a second time.

Current rules around this have more complexity than fits nicely on a player aid: your turn ends after a single explore if you hunt an animal, it doesn't end if you are a gatherer and escape a deadly animal, it ends if you claim the space.

Notes

With this new approach you are guaranteed to get something every turn, an exploration disk, a hunger cube, or killed. And getting killed is often not a bad thing, as I'll discuss further in a moment. It reduces the complexity of most turns, and keeps the game flowing smoothly.

Conclusions

Overall everyone agreed is a great change. I need to work on the wording of the rules, to clarify whether a hunger cube can be used when hunting and you miss. We played that you could, but it was confusing. I'll take the opportunity to revisit the clarity around hunting - that when you miss your turn is always over. I noticed some confusion around this in a review on The Game Crafter.

Last year I overhauled the goals, adding some new ones and increasing their value. I needed the goals to be able to swing the winner of the game, to keep everyone engaged up until the end. The points needed to be scaled up to fit with higher scores because, by popular demand, I increased the game length from 45-60 minutes to 60-75 minutes. The problem this created, which has always been there to a certain degree, is that suicide became a broken strategy. So I created a limit of 6 goals. From recent playtesting it would appear that there is still a problem, as the game is now you need to die 4 or 5 times to be in contention to win the game.

Next Steps

• Continue working on the wording of the rules.
• Experiment with a limit of 4 or 5 goals.
• New idea: fleshing out a terrain idea from a review of Hunt or Gather on The Game Crafter by turning the "tar pits" into event disks, that you flip over and something happens (some good, some bad, some altering things like the market).

Notes from Eighty-eight Playtest

Brandon (left), Lester (right), guest (center)

What we tried

This was a play through of the latest edition of the game, with two veteran playtesters (one who hadn't played in a while), and a new player.

What went really well this time was teaching the game. This was roughly my fifth time explaining the latest version of the rules, and they're really clicking into place; enough so that the new player was able to win his first game (and I only held back a little).

Teaching Script

Players each control these two characters (show and tell which is which), a hunter and a gatherer. Every turn, the first thing you need to decide whether to do is hunt or gather.

The characters go around exploring and collecting things.

Then you'll come back and turn in those things at the village to score points on hunt and gather tracks (move scoring cubes).

At the end of the game we remove our higher score (remove one score cube), so it's important to do well at both. (If new players don't volunteer something about a balanced diet, mention here. In this case he did.)

Now lets look at a typical turn (take out gatherer). We can walk up to 4 spaces (show, and mention no diagonal moves) but we'll typically start out closer to home. We can explore two times (pick up disk, keep hidden). If it's deadly we'll have to show it. If it's a plant we can pick it up. But only one type of plant at a time. (collect a plant tile)

You put a claim disk down on the space where you collected something. Both your characters can now walk over that space for free.

Now let's look at hunting. Hunters need equipment. On your first turn of the game you'll get 4 points worth, here are costs (point to bottom of cards). Characters can swap equipment if they're on the same spot.

Let's take a sling and a spear. (Show exploring, find a non-deadly animal, and a hunting roll.)

OK, time to score points. Scoring takes whole turn, no exploring, just walk home. (Take home character with best scoring opportunity, show how that works. Take other character home to score.)

Show other hunting equipment, Bow & Arrows, Atlatl (spear-thrower). Mention that you can trade in equipment to upgrade.

Talk about deadly animals and death, but re-assure that families were big back then, so if a character dies a cousin or nephew will step in, and you'll get an additional goal and a couple points for new equipment.

Show gatherer equipment. The pouch works well to remind players that gatherers can only collect one type of plant at a time.

Show a couple secret goals.

Deal out secret goals and start play. Remind players that they must both hunt and gather, because only the lower of the two counts in the end.

Conclusion

That's about it. The tar pits on the board usually come up as questions (simple to explain you can't walk there). It also helps to show people how the back of their secret goal cards works as a player board, and is important so that you can tell who has plants or animals they haven't scored yet.

There are more details, and this isn't a word-per-word script, but a structure that worked well, did more showing than telling, and reinforced some of the more important rules by mentioning them more than once.

Upgrade Kits

I've sent out upgrade kits to the remote playtesters who participated in the first big round of blind playtesting. This post is a supplement to the card labeled "Instructions" hiding in with the player aids. (It is double sided!)

Here is an overview of what's new:

1. Starting points are always 4, regardless of the number of players.
2. There are a few more goals, and goals are worth more points.
3. The hunting system has been simplified. Instead of weapons having attack modifiers, now you just need to roll the number on the equipment card.
4. When a character dies, the next time you use that character you get an extra goal and 2 points for equipment.
5. The better equipment is now more powerful, but more expensive.
6. You can trade in equipment to get better/different equipment throughout the game.
7. There are 50% more exploration disks so the game takes closer to an hour than 45 minutes.

I hope you enjoy the changes!

Notes from Eighty-seventh Playtest

What we tried

Dying, lots of dying. We needed to test whether the game would fall apart when players aggressively gathered goals by intentionally killing their characters.

Notes

It worked! We broke the game for the first time in years. The timing couldn't be better, as I'm about to send out upgrade kits for the holidays, and a copy to a publisher.

Dan was the most aggressive, taking only a club every time he died, and getting himself killed nine times! I tried to balance getting goals with successful exploration, trading in clubs for a bow, bow for an atlatl, and finally atlatl for a pouch, successfully collecting 15 disks.

Here is the final score break down:

Dan's base score (lower of two) was 32.

Out of ten goals, the following scored:
5 points Temperate,
18 points Speaker for the Dead,
8 points Omnivore,
10 points Brave/Foolish,
8 points Wanderers,
12 points Copycat of Specialist

...for a total of 93 points.


My base score was 42.

Out of five goals, the following:
6 points Territorial,
5 points Hoarder,
12 points Gambler turned in for Specialist

...for a total of 65 points.

Conclusion

I think I can kill two birds with one stone here. By limiting the number of goals a player is allowed to collect to 5 or 6, I can also keep the Speaker for the Dead goal down to 8 or 10 points.

Notes from Eighty-sixth Playtest

Emi (playing blue) dominated her boyfriend Mondo (red)

What we tried

I took the Specialist goal for myself so that I could try a more difficult variant of the scoring:
1 point per set of 2 or more.
-or-
6 points per set of 3 or more, maximum 12 points.

I wanted to try a suicide strategy to get lots of goals, but that was incompatible with the Specialist goal, so it would have to wait for later.

Notes

The Gambler goal needed to be clarified to make it clear when to play it.

I told another playtester an opening strategy I had in mind which involved passing equipment back and forth between your characters as they went on suicide runs, but she wasn't playing seriously and didn't execute the strategy well.

Conclusion

The Specialist goal is much improved, you really have to work at it. Emi and Mondo, who have purchased their own copy of the game, enjoyed the improvements including the longer play and more powerful weapons.

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!