New rules.

• Added an acknowledgements section. There should be few surprises there.

• New rule: When all of an island’s routes are claimed anything left on the development stack is discarded. This can happen when two different player’s initial starting routes touch the same island.

– Entirely removed the Auction Routes phase. Possibly temporarily. As it was defined it was extremely interesting about 3 times per game and that’s simply not often enough to require a whole phase for every turn. I’ve rejiggered the turn order controls in response but more development may be needed.

• Rejiggered turn order setting. The result is that the bids during Explore Routes are effectively once-around for turn order. I’m still not entirely happy with it, but it is better. The handling of delivery versus claim order is at least better this way.

• Kitoum now scores in the end-game. Otherwise the incentive was to simply not be last. May be too rich. There is now also an incentive to be first and to have kitoum in general.

• Added phase aids to the map

• Added an Explorer track to the map (should be a bit, but I’m out of convenient bits that aren’t also silly sized). No rules annotation for this yet.

New rules.

• Removed and greatly simplified the remnants of all the MUST-DO rules.

• Added a simple (if harsh) bankruptcy rule for forced exploration.

• Added a Closed Markets track to the map, added related logic to Deliver section and thus greatly simplified the end game definition.

• Rewrote the Deliver section as regards bases.

• Allow players to pass on one of the delivery rounds in order to use double proas in the second round. (I may need to add a cost for this, but doubt it)

• Turn order now reverses during the Deliver section. This is surprisingly important, mostly in that it makes the route claiming action both important and subtle.

• Cleaned up the token type requirements for kula items. I’m still thinking about dropping the requirement for at least one shell kula token and am mostly but not entirely convinced that’s the right way to go. The basic argument is that shells are produced at the same rate as fish but are worth 3 times as much for kula and twice as much for bids. Ergo players should migrate towards near pure shell production rapidly – but I’d like to keep fish actively in the desireably balance…

First targets for development:

• The route auction may be removed. Most of the time it will be a no-op but I’ve left it in as in a few cases it clearly isn’t a no-op. Are those few cases enough to justify an entire phase for every turn? Frankly, I doubt it…except that when it is needed, such as when a player on initial setup is geared to make (say) 11 VPs plus 4 fish on the first turn of the game (maximal possible opening)… To remove the route auction (which was a hold-over from Lancashire Railways FWLIW), perhaps all that’s needed is an auction for turn order for the first turn and let later turns take care of themselves?

• The special case rules for the cases when players don’t have enough resources or discardable VPs to satisfy the various MUST rules need to be cleaned up and simplified (must explore at least once, must delivery, must buy a proa if can’t delivery, must give kula to bases etc). I expect that I’ll simply disallow deliveries to bases without matching kula, allow proas to be bought for straight VPs without resources, and simply mandate deliveries if possible.

• I already removed the constraint on how many VPs may be discarded per turn. I’ll probably also remove the constraint on kula items having to have both fish and shell kula tokens. The bonus value for shell items is already large.

• The costs for upgrades (5 fish or 3 shells) feel a bit too high. I’m not sure if that’s the real cause, but the game feels lurchy.

A place holder intended to encourage me to document one my earliest game designs: Keystone Escape.

New rules.

Three primary rules changes:

1) Added bases which must be bought, may be moved, double production at destinations and enforce kula gifts (bases promote late game arc, complexity and tension variance)

2) Changed default exploration bids ands VP/resource exchange rates in order to resolve previously noted ratio problems

3) Changed first turn and turn ordering to be a little more fair. First turn windfalls are still possible but can be bid against.

More minor changes:

• Tweaked setup to add more fish

• Determined distribution of market types

• Rewrote route claiming bid resolution section for clarity

• Simplified must-deliver/can’t-deliver rules

• Revised/reversed turn order controls

A conversational comment to David Boyd about arc in games, “Right, the optimal funnel should narrow and the variance of potential gains should increase,” got me thinking. Sometimes I type faster than I think. In this case the clear implication is that the special powers and roles should, nay must have limited use lifespans. Doh, of course!

The prototype is complete. The kula tokens are chits cut from picture matt with the size of the chit proportional to its value, and the colour representative of type. This works surprisingly well. The markets are 12mm in diameter so I’ll probably need to scale the map bigger again (and it is already quite big). At the same time I’ll put claiming token locations on the routes. A quick trial run of three turns suggested that the economy richness is not far off right and if anything may be a little too rich.

1) I still need to redo the VP_discard/resource ratio as already noted. This will likely have a sympathetic effect on all pricing, mostly upward.

2) The idea of a home base token is growing on me. The implementation would be relatively simple:

– Players don’t start with a base

– There is one base per player

– A base may be bought during any delivery phase and placed on an island delivered to

– Deliveries to islands containing the player’s home base produce double resources (this may be too rich)

– Bases may be moved in the same way as markets but base movements earn nothing

– A player making a delivery to an island containing another player’s base must give that player a kula item. If there are multiple bases on the island the player must give a kula item to each base’s player.

3) 151 markets in the game suggests 4 market colours with 30 tokens and 1 with 31. Fair dinkum.

A conversational comment to David Boyd about arc in games, “Right, the optimal funnel should narrow and the variance of potential gains should increase,” got me thinking. Sometimes I type faster than I think. In this case the clear implication is that the special powers and roles should, nay must have limited use lifespans. Doh, of course!

New map:

The main change is the loss of the Market Development Charts as described below. The little yellowish spur bits are where the markets that will be priced on that island are placed during setup in a stack (must remember to update rules to that effect). Each small yellow circle contains a number which defines how many markets are to be placed there during setup. Simple!

An interesting aspect of this is that I can tweak the numbers of markets in specific locations downward to change the weighting of the graph if needed.

I’ve decided to use stacking plastic counters for markets (they’re small discs with a central dome that stack well, similar to the damage markers in Heroscape)

They’re readily available in large quantities and in multiple colours from educational supply stores.

As they’re not very small (12mm is the smallest I’ve found) I’ll need to increase the island size to accommodate, probably to 20-25mm. I’ll then need to make the map bigger in response , and this will allow me to hang a staging circle off each island (essentially a circle connected by a differently coloured non-route). Bingo! Instead of the market development charts I can use stacks of tokens on the staging areas for each island. They’re visually distinct from the islands and yet obviously connected. The islands also won’t need to be numbered any more. Good stuff.

While I don’t intend to use them (see prior post), these would make good fish counters (even better if they were not red):

They’re called “bean counters” and are also available from many educational supply stores.

Other items:

1) There’s a problem with the numbers. A 1 VP kula item can be bought with 2 fish. 1 VP may be discarded for 3 fish. Ergo making kula items from VPs is more efficient than from natural fish, and in turn players may as well concentrate almost exclusively on shell routes as soon as they can. Not good. I could simply drop the exchange for VPs down to 1:2 for fish, but that has nasty effects on proa costs (5 fish or 3 shells) and the rules forcing players to discard VPs to buy proas. The proa cost ratios are fairly carefully weighted for the behaviours I want and changing them won’t be pretty. Damn.

2) What to do if players collusively hoard fish by exchanging them with each other in faux auctions? Eventually the game will run out of fish? Possible addresses:

• Force higher rot rates for players with many fish
• Players sopposed to receive fish take them from players with more fish
• Allow shells to be taken instead of fish and possible allow shells to be cast down into fish

The third option is the most attractive and the most unsettling. It adds a flexibility to the split economies which I’m quite uncomfortable with. A core assumption of the game to date is that fish and shells have very limited fungibility.

3) The game ending rules have a logical gap when the last market of a colour can’t be delivered because the destination is more than 7 proas away, or it is simply the last market of that colour on the board. This is a problem given that markets may satisfied at values of 3, 4 or 5 – there will be stragglers. A rewrite of that section is in order.

4) I’m still waiting for #4 but I don’t think I’d recognise it if I saw it.