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Post-Vacation Musings Checkin

 Alright, where we at? I’ve just gotten back from a five-day-vacay, and while I didn’t physically work on any of my designs, I did think and talk about them a lot and made some progress.  I guess I’ll just do a roundup of some of those? Mash it together with a progress report?

So let’s start with the neglected design of the year, BURN.  I was reminded that the mechanics for this one truly are the most elegant and original out of any of my designs.  In explaining the system (and the inspiration of Spy Games), I got the very helpful suggestion that I may want to offer the Handler player a little more thematic agency, by giving them specific cards/actions they can play that affect the closing of the borders.  So what I’m currently picturing is a set (randomly dealt at the outset?) of one-time-use favours that cost both points to play AND intensify the heat on one or more neighbouring nations, hastening the close of the border(s).  Some of them can even decrease tension to open a border back up, but always at a two-to-one cost, the idea being that you can keep a specific border open a little while longer but doing so infuriates the other two possible allies.

Component wise, I wonder if this means that on the board, each border has a track that a token moves along; the token is moved by both cards drawn from the tension deck, as well as these Favour cards played.

I really don’t have anything new to add to Fantasy GM Squared, so moving on to Amberlodge, I’ve really settled on having my calendar deck be six rows (Winter, Early Spring, Late Spring, Summer, Early Fall, Late Fall), which I think is the right amount of granularity, and which will still give me 720 possible permutations while also having more room for icons and text within each row.  And if I worry that it’s somehow not interesting enough having six possible outcomes for every section, I can always pad out the calendar deck but specify that only six cards get drawn.  Or do twelve cards but you deal out two full years before you re-shuffle.  Whichever.  The other main thought that I had was that you should be able to affect demand beyond the careful management of how much you supply.  Demand could also be affected by the Calendar cards (a shortage or a surplus of specific good), increasing your ability to make a higher quality product, or perhaps a combination of both (a limited-time opportunity to raise your ability).  Could really add in a replayability element of whether you focus entirely on making and alchemizing your products or split time between production and selling to maximize profits.

Righty-o, that’s enough for this week.  I do somehow need to get next week’s five pages of play, and blog post, written before Tuesday, as that’s when I’ll have my lower wisdom teeth removed, and I doubt my writing will be top tier while I try to recover from that.  So even though I’ve got an hour left in a book I desperately want to finish reading, and even though my brain today has resembled nothing so much as a very spongy hunk of quartz, I’m going to try and press onward with more writing.  Til next time!

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