Stumble And Turn Back

So I didn't have Cultivate Contest-Ready by the deadline.
I've been putting off posting that here, since I posted it in the contest thread, and then the entry thread. It was the right call, as I had developed serious doubts about how far I'd taken Project Chestnut, and how quickly. I rushed out a prototype and called it Components Ready, without having exhaustively (or even adequately) playtested it at all. My buddy John Horton has been working on a Flash mockup of Cultivate based off the rules - so much was missing, so much was poorly thought-out. I'm looking back on this blog where I thought that the 8x8 board was restricting. What? Right now it feels too big. Which leads to examining whether Chestnut was really the right lane of development to go with...
All of which leads me back to the conclusion that I should have stuck by my guns as far as the parallel development process is concerned. Entering the Contest was a great idea, and incredibly useful. It gave me the inspiration and urgency for everything that came after. But I did let it carry me away. I focused on being done, rather than on being good. Luckily, I now have a whole year to make changes, and return to my parallel development process.
Of course, I'm also now free to work on other designs. And I'm all fired up to re-visit some old ones. Here's to life after losing.

Comments

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year. Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics. I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5. Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5. On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly. The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators. They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself. Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs. I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away. Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023. This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever. I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show. I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here. Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn. I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the application was rather more literal, which was a fascinat

Velocimancer Games

Search This Blog