New rules – no big changes, just tweaks on wording.
Polynesian map rescalled and trimmed for easier play, but no graph changes.
Earthsea map added an island and a couple links to stretch the endgame by 1-2 turns.
The new map images are a little easier to play on due to better node spacing.
New rules.
I’ve moved kahuna to the Advanced Game and for now I’ve decided to go with the increased kula prices rather than shifting the multiplier ranges. According to the spreadsheet it works out well enough. Oh, and I upped the market colour count up from 5 to 6. We’ve played several games this way and it makes market delivery patterns slightly tighter earlier in the mid-game and brings in the end-game a turn or two faster.
The only rules change required for the smaller Earthsea map is a reduction in the market distribution to match the smaller set of nodes (25) and distribution stack markets (80) (as versus 30 nodes and 95 distribution stack markets in Polynesia).
No other changes seem to be necessary or called for in the game other than the above. It is feeling very close to done. Now to test the Earthsea map and re-verify the Kahuna-less game.
Another set of playtests on the Polynesia map went extremely well.
Despite my efforts the game persists in trying to last about 3 hours with all new players. 2.5 hours is definitely in reach for an all-new player group, but it is a fight.
The only aspect that I’m still fiddling with is the Kahuna. I’ve been convinced for a while that they are not strictly necessary to the game, but I like them and so left them in, seeing them as a possible expansion mechanism. I’ve played and without them. One of today’s games however revealed their downside with efficiency-minded players: They’re resource production magnifiers and when they’re used efficiently resource production rates get very high (I was producing almost 30 fish plus more than a dozen shell every turn) and the lower value kula tokens are thus simply not as interesting. That’s a problem. Fortunately the obvious resolution is simple:
1) Remove kahuna from the base rules and make them an optional advanced game
2) Rescale the prestige multipliers to every 15 rather than every 10 when using kahuna
or:
2) Increase the kula token costs to 5/11/7
That’s simple enough (I’ll probably drop the second rule change for the third after I work over the spreadsheet some more). Everything else is working well. Hopefully we’ll get in another game on Monday and again on Tuesday if Corrupt Benifecence doesn’t distract with its own playtesting.
Recent playtests have also started to clearly reveal that the game really has three phases. It always did, but it took a bit before I noticed it so clearly:
1) The first portion of the game is dominated by infrastructure building and is very zero sum competitive.
2) The mid and most of the late game is dominated by sustaining the income rates required for ideal gift-giving (kula).
3) The end-game, which is relatively short, is mostly defined by limiting and constraining the delivery opportunities of key players through route claiming and which specific markets are available for delivery when.
The only other change I’m looking to make is:
Not a biggie but it makes prestige even more fungible. It is a small change that, again, should occur in less than half of games, but it will make for more interesting end games.
I should remember to get pictures of the game in play posted…
The limited file storage space on BGDF was annoying so I moved all the images off to my own (slow) system. I’ve also updated a few of the below entries to contain the images I couldn’t post before.
New rules.
Also drew another map for the game based on Ursula K LeGuin’s Earthsea (an excellent series BTW). The Earthsea map has 20% less islands and rather less routes. The intent is for a smaller map better tuned to smaller player groups.
Two small changes:
1) When one market exhausts, finish the turn (this is already in the posted rules, I just forgot to mention it)
2) During the Explore Routes phase a player may discard 3 prestige in order to explore one more route than they have explorers. This change allows prestige to be fungible like other currencies
Both are fairly minor. The second should allow for more subtly interesting and challenging end-games.
Word of mouth appears to be working. Three people, two of which I don’t know and have never spoken to have approached me asking to get in on a game of ‘Ohana Proa. They say they’ve heard Good Things from other playtesters and like the look of the game. Multiple other positive murmers and reports in local groups. There appears to be an underground conversation.
Take aways:
Polynesian theme is popular
Gift economy is attractive. Get ahead through giving is thought to be weirdly good. Appears to resonate strongly.
The delivery process with resources constantly being handed to players is attractive. The constant earning without having to manage a snowballing (or not) balance sheet is particularly liked. (‘Ohana Proa requires sustained and rolling income, not income growth or resource accumulation)
Positive sum aspects are more attractive than negative sum aspects (the reverse of my preferences)
Map is “pretty” and “cool”. Note: map is mostly a standard issue atlas-style map of the south seas with a network and a few tracks overlaid.
The piles of bright pastic market tokens are attractive.
One caught on to the currency exchange basics of the game and called that out as a key interest.
But, no game this last Monday at SB-Boardgamers. Had to miss tonight’s session at SVB (car trouble). Next game scheduled for Monday.
New rules.
Changes:
Clarified currency usage in introduction
End game scoring extended by privilege multipliers. This is the biggie. x1, x2, x3, x3.5 (rounded down). The other choice is x0, x1, x2, x3, but the reward at +30 seems overly large
Turn order no longer (ever) reverses
Rewrote the Delivery section again
Rewrote and yet again re-determined how Kahuna work
Fees for moving over others routes with kahuna or empty optimised out
Entire resource game is now positive sum. There are no fees and no payments except for turn order auction, VP sales and kula. This small coherency change has a large bu subtle effect.
Rules are getting shorter.
Note: Not clear that Kahuna are still needed. For now I’m going to leave them. I don’t intend to remove them from the design. If they go anywhere it will be to an advanced/more strategic variant, leaving a simpler base game.
(I’m tired, it is late and if I don’t write this now, two days later, I never will. I’ll try to get back to this and update/extend but don’t be surprised if I don’t).
Two games were played on Saturday at the Los Altos Gamesday. Both were using the new reduced map (all single-edge leaf nodes removed) and a variety of small teaks to kahunas and kula and the end game condition simplified to one market exhausted. Both were four player games. I played in both – I find that I can’t really evaluate a game if I don’t immerse myself in the decision making process for that game.
First game:
I gaffed the route claiming in the initial round. Rather than a free claim in player order, then a paid claim in payer order with turn order going to the last in turn order, I did a forward and reverse order with ties going to the higher turn order. Ooops. That really screws the player in last in the initial turn order and gives the first player total certainty on his gains on the first turn.
The new delivery model (delivery over route and that player’s routes produce on the next island. Worked well and explained easily. Resource production increased less than I’d expected. Cause appeared to be that players simply far more frequently delivered over other’s routes for a close to net zero gain in total resource production.
The kahuna changes worked badly (payouts only if other player delivers through kahuna).
Prestige did not work well. My earlier analysis that prestige accumulation was too monotonic seemed verified. The changes to increase variance and range of prestige allocations worked but did not provide the tension or arc I was expecting. The only focus was to not be last. Being first in prestige or having high prestige had no interest other than not being last.
Late in the game one player admitted that this was not his sort of game, complaining that it was too combinatorial and that he preferred simpler high tactical games. The other two players married couple) only really warmed to the game as the end-game approached and the prestige race really hunkered down. They appeared to greatly like the positive sum aspects of the game and ended the game with saying they wanted to play again.
Playtime was 3 hours.
Lessons:
0) New map is good. 1) Get initial turn order assignments right. 2) Make kahuna reward their owners and other players 3) Add a reward for high prestige, something to draw players up the prestige scale in addition to the fear of being at the bottom 4) New endgame definition worked well but was slightly slow.
Second game:
Fixed initial turn order worked much better.
As an experiment I tried another variation on kahuna only rewarding on other player actions. This worked moderately well for me as I occupied the centre of the map and my kahuna were hit on east/west traversals. The other players never bothered to invest in kahuna (and I can’t blame them).
Added a scoring multiplier to prestige of (int (prestige/10)+1) with a max multiplier of x3. This worked well. All players focussed on prestige early and engaged ion kula exchange ASAP. Considerable plotting went on to ensure that the only profitable deliveries available either had no players attached to give kula to or only specific players. The turn order auction tightened. Final highest prestige was 35 with two other players in the mid/high 20s. All previous games ended with most players with prestige in the teens and the high point in the low 20s.
One player was overly tired and had a hard time grokking the currency conversions. The other two adored the game and asked for repeat plays. Points they brought out as particularly liked were the delivery model, the prestige multiplier, and the challenges of maintaining income while competing for prestige.
Removed 5 markets of one type before seeding board so that orange markets were less common than all others (26 vs 31). Endgame worked much better though it wasn’t orange that ran out.
Play time was 3.5 hours (one very slow player who never really figured out what they were trying to do (it was after midnight so there’s some excuse)).
Lessons:
1) Multiplier for prestige. Probably need a bonus for >30 but moving to x4 is too large a leap. 2) Free claim in turn order, paid claim in turn order, ties won by player later in turn order works. 3) Revert kahuna to paying the owner for their deliveries and paying all other players for making kahuna pay. 4) Lose all the negative sum aspects of the game for resource management. Distracting, confusing and not necessary. 5) Reconsider limiting kula to two tokens. 6) See if endgame can be pulled in by ~2 turns. This is difficult.
I played two playtest sessions this weekend at the Los Altos Gamesday, both with 4 players. In both games I made a variety of small rules optimisations (more on that later), but in the second game I made one small rules change to the scoring of prestige which suddenly snapped the whole game together and into strong focus. It was…amazing. I’ll post a more detailed report later but here’s the teaser:
Score=VictoryPoints+(Prestige*multiplier)
I see four core challenges and one obervation/opportunity:
New rules.
Delivering a market over another player’s route has no fee, but the route-owning player gets the resources produced by their routes at the island. (estimated 15% growth in resource production rates but the auction and raised costs (below) should soak this up))
Players continue to pay route fees for moving kahunas.
Delivering to a player’s kahuna over that player’s route gives the delivering player a prestige point. I’m hopeful that the new delivery/cost rules will make for much more route sharing.
Prestige points can be earned as follows:
The most concerning thing here is that there are really only 3 points of variance for the value of a kula:
- 5 markets - Did you create it? - Delivered to kahuna? - Delivered to kahuna over their route?
The prestige for giving is constant and the prestive for max-sized tokens is likely near constant for any given kula item. I’m not sure if that’s really quite enough dynamism to keep the distribution of prestige point awards well spread (and thus prompting tension and arc), but I’m hopeful.
- Kula items can only be two tokens and kula rot in the same way as fish. Kula token values are now also more limited: 1/4 for fish and 3/6 for shell (no 2 fish or 4 shell). Cost is 3 resources for the small ones, 7 for the big (which come with a prestige point when given) and 5 for an upgrade.
There are several things combined here, but the key items are: Kula aren’t worth as many VPs, Kula need to be moved, fast, before they rot, there’s a much broaded ranger/variance in the prestige points that may be earned by a single delivery and actions that directly help other players (deliveries and gifts to their kahunas) are rewarded directly.
I’m pretty much convinced that the two-part division of the game is a given. I’m not sure it is a problem. They best I can do is blur the line. No matter what the game is going to split into:
1. Get more Proas and get routes out. 1. Setup for scoring!
I’m hopeful that the new prestige rules will have prestige coming out earlier in the game, and will make the rush to 7 proas a little more interesting (and not quite as automatic).