I’ve continued to bang away at Packer’s Last Resort a bit since last week. The latest iteration (which you can still download here) is better, but still has some problems:
Too much food! There’s still too much food, and not enough desperation. The problem here is two-fold. Not only does it tamp down the game’s tension (and thereby the fun) but it makes the game longer. A longer game with less fun is never a good time.
- Solution: The next time I test it, the “Forage” card will just give 2 Food to the player, rather than 3 and giving an option to get Food for the whole group. (No one chooses that option anyway.)
Too little danger! Without an outside force adding pressure, the players are likely to dawdle. They’ll ignore the whole “traveling to Colorado before the deck runs out” aspect until they’ve got enough Food to safely make a go of it. While that makes for wise travel across the mountains in the 1800’s, it makes for a lesser (and slower!) game experience.
- Solution: I’m adding a “Blizzard” counter to the game that “chases” the players down the Journey Track. Some of the Journey cards now have “blizzard” icons; when one of these cards comes up, the Blizzard counter moves. If the Blizzard catches up to the players, each of them takes a wound.
Not enough stress! Okay, there are probably enough Stress counters floating around in the game, but they don’t really do anything at the moment, so taking on more Stress doesn’t affect things one way or another.
- Solution: I added a rule that says that if a player gets too much stress, that player snaps! He or she must immediately choose and attack another player (per the “Fight” card). I like how this plays, but because it suddenly makes Stress a good thing, the cards that mitigate Stress will need some serious tweaking.
I’ll kick around and solidify these changes this week. If I like what I see, I’ll post an updated version for you folks to kick around too. In the meantime: keep your friends close and your cutlery closer!
