Hacking the win condition in your head

So I played the first game of the new board game I got this week, Paleo, alone and quickly lost. Then I kept playing until I met the win condition. Paleo uses a relatively simple algorithm to determine wins and losses: you get 5 "winner" points before you get 5 "loser" points. However, the lack of point loss counters (skulls) does not prevent you from continuing to play after reaching 5 skulls. Standing on 5 heads makes sense if you want a faster game. But at some point, if you don't want to stop and start over after growing your tribe, another win condition also makes sense: play until you win and try to do it with as few skulls as possible. Since Paleo is a game that tends to get better with experience, if you keep repeating the same scenario over and over, you're more likely to do it with fewer skulls and at least 5 at a time.

In competitive games, other players are guaranteed to win. In single player and co-op games where you play against the system (or AI), victory is conditional. It's a bit like jumping high in a stadium alone: ​​what is victory? If you jump higher than before, even if it's much lower than the world record, it would be enough for most people.

The great thing about tabletop games is that there isn't a computer that throws you off course with the "Game Over" screen. It is up to you to follow the suggested course of action when you reach a state of victory or defeat. But once you understand that the terms winning or losing are arbitrary, you can decide to change them up based on what you like best. Some people like to start over, while others like to keep playing.

I think over time I'll get better at paddling, getting past the first 'easy' level and moving on to intermediate and harder. But if I didn't improve and couldn't manage a certain level of difficulty, I wouldn't want to miss these last very difficult stages. Although I find it "very difficult" to follow the developers' arbitrary rules, I prefer to change the win/loss conditions and play difficult scenarios. I'm also planning to go to Spiel Essen 2021 in a week and maybe get an extension for Paleo. Getting harder DLCs for a game you haven't beaten would be foolish. but if for some reason the paleo expansion is too difficult, "hacking" the win condition is an obvious way to solve the problem.

Tobold's block