Bare Handed Hunting

Knife

A common request from players is to be able to go hunting bare handed. This may be because suicide is a strategy (see my earlier post on Seasons). Or it may be a more visceral thing. Either way, it might be a nice addition to the game.

I came back to it while thinking about the knife, a short lived piece of equipment from an earlier hunting system. As a person living in the 22nd century, I never go anywhere without my pocket knife, why would a primitive hunter?

Mechanically, the knife is a piece of equipment that players don't have to buy. It doesn't take up one of the hunter's 3 equipment slots, and it's not even a card, it's embedded in the graphics of the board. Using the knife to hunt is always an option.

Exploration Tiles - Birds

UPDATE:

I got some great feedback on the animal tiles, here's the latest iteration.

ORIGINAL:

Exploration Tiles

Squirrels may be replaced by birds, with a Quail and Pheasant shown on the far left (need to pick one).

The big play balance difference in these new tiles is that now the majority of animals have only meat or hide, not both. I'm hoping this will allow for more good opportunities to score. Until now, whenever someone scored even a rabbit or squirrel it would completely tank the market for anyone else wanting to score an animal.

At this small size light text on a dark background was too hard to read, so I've switched back to dark text.

The deadly animals an now distinguished by their red text. Also, the fangs have been replaced by the gatherer icon, to indicate which character needs to roll that number.


I've also done these on a plain white background. It doesn't look as nice, but may be easier to read in print (it's pretty harsh on screen).

Seasons

Seasons

Seasons started out while playtesting on the cruise. When playing multiple games, the event tiles would get bunched up, and one person might draw 4 or 5 in a row. Their turn would go on long enough that they'd start feeling back. So I started dividing the event tiles evenly between four stacks.

The next evolution came with the idea that there should be more goals to work towards, because the secret goals cane be arbitrarily difficult. I'm using this opportunity to guide the players towards better / more interesting play.

Another piece of feedback was that death is too good. Experienced players know that you want to die once or twice early in the game to get extra goals, preferably while your other character holds on to your valuable equipment. By changing what happens when a character dies each season I can hopefully reduce the number of character suicides. Also, some seasons will simply grant more goals at their end. This might spell the end for on of my favorite goals: Speaker for the Dead.

An additional bonus is not having to refer to the rulebook to see what happens when a character dies.

Each season will have 3-4 different variations, except for maybe Winter, since there's enough going on during the end game without extra rules. If it is always the same, I'll leave a graphic of the card built in to the board.

JoCo Cruise 2018 Playtests

I got so much great feedback on the cruise!

Here are the playtests I ran:

One Hundred and Ten

One Hundred and Eleven

One Hundred and Twelve

One Hundred and Thirteen

One Hundred and Fourteen

One Hundred and Fifteen

One Hundred and Sixteen

Below I'll summarize all the changes that I'll be making and experiments I'll be running based on notes taken on the ship.

While on ship we made pockets to stop the Marketplace mat from sliding.

Graphic Design / UX Notes

1. Exploration tiles should have a white background for maximum legibility at their small size. Deadly animals will have red numbers and icons.
2. Deadly animals: instead of fangs, have gathered meeple icon with the number to indicate what the number is for (gatherer's escape roll).
3. Integrate the Marketplace mat with the main board (illustration below).
4. Move hunt track to other side because that's where the hunter equipment is.
5. Make the score tracks larger so that we can use Ticket to Ride style flat wooden scoring disks.
6. Put silhouettes of the pieces under the score tracks.
7. Player aids should have red/green sides with graphics from the score tracks to further connect those concepts.
8. Make an area on the board for discard event tiles.
9. Make spaces on the board for the Seasons cards.
10. The six events that go on the board should have a tone on tone green event icon on the back.
11. Split colors on the box art?

This is my idea for how to eliminate the separate Marketplace mat
and still have different values for 4-5 players than with 2-3 players

Experiments

1. Animals update: rabbit becomes two hide zero meat, wild turkey replaces squirrel and is two meat zero hide.
2. Goals and benefits associated with each season: 4 possibilities for each of the four seasons. For example, re-spawning gets you X points only during Spring, Everyone gets a goal at the beginning/end/first-event of the Summer. Have to think of shared goals that don't just reward the player who is ahead, if anything they should be catch-up mechanisms.
3. Time to revisit the secret goals! Make sure all goals can be actively worked towards. Add more goals that care about placement.
4. Improved or cheaper sling, maybe even make sling do 2 damage, bow & arrow 1. If bow does less damage, it should cost 4, pouch should cost 3, and players start with 3 or fewer points. If sling does more damage, spear is looking weaker, so spear could change so that it's only discarded when you miss (or hit?). Probably better to not have the sling do more damage which makes it clearly better than club or spear, but just lower the cost.
5. New gatherer equipment: moccasins, cost 2 move 4/5 spaces 
6. More bluffing opportunities. Empty/free exploration tiles that could be claimed immediately or left there would add more bluffing. Drawing an event card could be optional, just leave it there and use/collect a retry.
7. Long range weapons: one option for incentivizing the more expensive weapons in 4-5 player games would be to make characters using the AtlAtl, Bow, and Sling immune to deadly animals. Since these weapons already have really good odds, it wouldn't be a huge functional change to the game. Maybe less exciting though.
8. Tornado: isn't working as intended, try a new way of determining the direction it takes you.
9. Include an odds table in the back of the rules, share it with the playtesters at the start of the game.
10. Retry: re-roll one die instead of all three.
11. Pick your goal when you die, but don't keep it until you use that character again.
12. Everyone starts with a sling and no points.
13. Change the number of spaces moved depending on the number of players.

Corrections

1. Allow market manipulation to drop a resource to the bottom. Moving it to the top is too powerful, wrapping it around only from the topmost space to the bottom is more limiting and makes less sense.
2. Market manipulation should be usable at any time during that turn, even split up before two sales, or in between selling of meat and hide.
3. The staggered starting points didn't work out, it was too complicated for little gain. Everyone will start with 2 points on each track. If points for equipment go down I could try basing the total starting points on the number of players. It would probably be either one point per player, or one less than that.
4. Verify that Speaker for the Dead and Survivor note goals that the goals don't have to be scored.
5. Celestial phenomenon: get rid of the "of all 3 match"
6. View from a bluff has a typo "to not" should be "do not"
7. View from a bluff: should be if either character has a weapon.
8. Territorial don't say "on the sides"
9. Goals that say ties don't count should specify what kind of tie.
10. Pathfinder: clarify that it is a straight line.
11. Master Scout: can't name the events in the corner.
12. Copycat: clarify that you need to see if you could accomplish the goal you are copying.
13. Reconsider number of points for the goal that requires hoarding equipment.
14. Rules clarification: you can re-roll a successful roll with a retry.
15. Tall Tree: clarify what the correct character/space means.
16. Wandering Trader: clarify if can manipulate market with events.
17. Atlatl Event: too powerful early game, should not include the option of buying a spear.
18. Temperance - score some points if they are close but not the same.
19. Haggler should be 3 points.
20. Wolf Master should score points for one wolf.
21. Brave should also give scaled points.
22. Fog should require that you be moved to an empty space. The way it's worded now the player moving the character should always move you to a space with something on it, but rarely do because the full text of the card is not read aloud.
23. Snare should not be able to draw past the current season. Lots of edge cases and clarifications required with this one, might have to lose it.
24. Potlatch: FAQ that you can discard equipment.
25. Tall tree: complicated. 
26. Strange mushrooms: clarify that you draw them one at a time.
27. Rabid beast: should say "end of" your following turn.
28. FAQ: can two characters who are maxed out on equipment exchange?
29. Goals that mention "trade points" should say "cost" instead and have shell symbol.

JoCo Cruise 2018 Playtesters

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Sixteen

Comments

"I've played a number of games where you spend points to help yourself, but it's nice that in this game you can spend it from the track that doesn't matter."

Like the length.
Like the market manipulation.

FAQ: can two characters who are maxed out on equipment exchange?

Retry: re-roll one die instead of all three.

Players not fans of hidden information, optional rule of leaving deadly animals face up.
(Not going to do this, paying attention during other players turns is important)

Sling seems kinda garbage.
Atlatl seams only better against bear and costs much more than the bow.

Get the text perfect on the events.

Needs more gatherer equipment, although like gatherer being able to play support.

Death rewards too strong. Feels wrong that need to die.
Seasons: if each season gave you goals then you wouldn't have to die.

Change number of spaces moved based on number of players?

Swap 1 damage from bow to sling?

Box art: split colors

To try: everyone starts with a sling and no points.

Events

• Wandering Trader worked!
• Potlatch: FAQ that you can discard equipment. 
• Tall tree: complicated. 
• Strange mushrooms: clarify that you draw them one at a time.
• Rabbit beast: should say "end of" your following turn.
• Cornucopia: happy players.

Goals

One of the goals still says "sides".

To Try Next

• Retry: re-roll one die instead of all three.
• Improved or cheaper sling, maybe even make sling do one more damage, bow & arrow one less. If bow did one less damage, maybe it and pouch should cost one less, and players start with fewer points. If sling does more damage, spear is looking weaker. Spear could change so that it's only discarded when you miss (or hit?).
• Goals/Benifits that vary per season. For example, re-spawning only gets you points during the first season, Everyone gets a goal at the end of the second season

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Fifteen

Notes above are from a separate play with the same player, she checked it out from the library.

What we tried

Events divided between four seasons
A two player game

Event Notes

• Trader doesn't do much early game
• Fog - Need to be clear before person moves you that you will get to explore the space if it is empty. Otherwise, need to require that they leave you on an empty space. <- do this

Ideas

Include an odds table in the back of the rules (with spear + sling combo)

Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Fourteen

Playtest with Cybil, Lisa, and Alex

What did we try?

Seasons: exploration tiles divided into four stacks with two events in each stack.
Manipulate market in between scoring meat/hide.

Ideas

Event at end of every round? Or season?

Marketplace manipulation:
Wrap around or drop a resource to the bottom?

Dying experiment: draw the goals immediately when you die, but place it sideways and don't put it with your other goal until you use that character again.

Deadly animals face up and impassible?

Terrain?

Event Notes

• Snare - limit to the current season, shuffle up and put back. Work on clarifying the wording. Also being able to look is very powerful. Maybe should just take it.
• Fog event: weird that basically requires you to be moved to a space with somehting on it

To Try

• Allow market manipulation to drop a resource to the bottom. Moving it to the top is too powerful, wrapping it around only from the topmost space to the bottom is more limiting and makes less sense.
• Pick your goal when you die, but don't keep it until you use that character again.