Hey ho and up she rises!

Another playtest of ‘Ohana Proa last night using the knocked back rules (no reciprocal giving, shorter prestige track, single prestige for extra explore or extra proa etc). This time I got to sit out and watch them play rather than participating directly. Game-wise it worked well.

Notes:

• Several requests to add a boat marker so that players can move the boat along the routes during their deliveries and thus more easily visualise their positions and potentials. This seems a fine idea.
• Just like the last playtest, many comments to the effect of the game being mechanically simple and yet quite un-obvious.
• Many exclamations on how well balanced the game was. While one player fell far far behind in prestige, he was able to catch up through clever route building and bidding in the late game. Scores ended up with a ~25% spread from first to last (the eliminated).
• Single prestige discard for extra explore or extra proa worked well and was regularly used. Player who used it the most later cursed this as he ended one turn in the lead with 29 prestige and was then second when the game ended. I was delighted.
• Complaints that the board is too busy and difficult to visualise. Primary problem seemed to be that the route markers are round and easily visually confused with the round markets. The result was that there were many Oh dear that route is/isn’t claimed yet! during the game. Discussion suggested that making the route markers rectangular and visibly directional so that they clearly indicate the claimed routes and strongly visually suggest the connected network.
• Only one kahuna was placed during the entire game and it was central to that player’s success. Early kahuna are clearly worth more than late kahuna. The players were not convinced that kahuna were really useful, but most indicated that they’d look hard at putting down early kahuna if they played again.
• Remembering whether kula were fresh or stale when given was found a problem. The kula tiles are too small, easily flipped, easily lost track of etc. Some of the current problem is simply due to the tokens being too small. Cards may be a better option. -The game again ran long: ~200 minutes. These latest games have run far longer than previous playtests, despite the accelerated start, simpler end-game, faster economy and other game-shortening measures. I suspect this is due to the majority of prior playtests being conducted with experienced Age of Steam players who quickly grokked the delivery patterns of the game.
• The game nearly ran out of markets before players broke 30 prestige. This is concerning. Prestige production rates are slightly lower now that prestige is not rewarded for making new kula. There are a few obvious addresses: 1) Lower the end-game prestige bar, 2) Increase kula production rates, 3) Increase kula production opportunities. It feels like the kula pool needs to be sweetened by 15%-2o%. The problem with sweetening the pool is that it then also becomes more volatile. A little more volatility would be nice, but 20% would be far too much. I don’t want to drop the bar. I don’t want to re-introduce prestige for new gifts. Thematically prestige for stale gifts works better but is also richer than I want. So far the most tempting idea is to award an additional prestige for giving away more than N gifts at a single island where N is probably PlayerCount-1. Another idea is to multiply the points received by the recipient by the number of gifts given at the island. This would be a much more indirect approach but have faintly similar outcomes(?). Interesting…

Good stuff. Yep, gifts for gift-giving parties seem a fine idea. Now to run some models.