Looking forward to beta

[Phill]

Hi

I backed Blade and have enjoyed playing it. I have been following you and like the slant you take particularly on timing, missiles and flaws. I'm keen to see the beta and give it a go.

Cheers Paul

[Stempest]

Seconded.

For me, I will be really keen to see how BoB presents its rules just in terms of the writing style. I was fascinated at the idea of Riddle of Steel, and pleased that Blade came out and cleaned it up a bit, but reading through the Blade rulebook I can't help but feel that:

A) There are a lot of exceptions and special rules to remember, and
B) It feels like there are a lot of rules buried in prose that would be easy to miss.

My personal hopes for BoB are that the rules are concisely written and that it is hard to miss rules in the text, and that they are based primarily around consistent core rules, with complexity coming from interaction of those simple rules rather than a number of special rules for each last detail. Yeah, no pressure guys

(To be fair, I understand that some of the complexity of RoS/Blade was required to make it the game it was, although I do think they could have been helped with slightly different presentation methods).

[Agamemnon]

I would say that hands-down the most difficult part of writing the beta has been organizing information. It's one of those things where you never think about it until someone has done it wrong. TROS was terrible about its organization of rules, and I can think of a number of games that had a hard time introducing rules in a way that you could both learn the game and reference it. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent moving sections around and re-organizing it. I have tried to make sure that everything that needs explained basically falls into the "one concept per heading" thing to make it easy to find and reference.

Rules exceptions generally suck. I can't count how many times we've measured or thrown something out on the basis of "yeah, but is anyone going to remember to do that?"

As far as the rules themselves, we've gone up and down in complexity over the course of our development. When we started early on, we were going for a super-simmy game where we wanted to model every possible detail. As time went on, a few things wound up changing.

First, that we wound up with something like seventy maneuvers and nearly a hundred weapons and some other crazy stuff. If that's what you're into, that might be cool (we have the notes laying around, maybe we'll do something with them sometime?) but from the perspective of expecting people to learn and play the game - man, it was just too much.

The second major thing for me was that in the time we were developing the game, I wound up playing a bunch of other stuff and it really helped me refine what I wanted out of a game.

There is an Albert Einstein quote that I've always loved, and it wound up being a goalpost for me in this process: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

When the switch was made to 'Bastards, we went through and tore out a lot of design choices based on unnecessary complexity. Truly "unified" mechanics were out of the question from the beginning simply because the detail we wanted in the split die pool combat didn't add anything to skill checks. Instead, our guidepost was to establish a few core processes for determining outcomes and try to make those processes as flexible as possible. It's all about preserving the internal logic of the design choices.

When the Beta comes out, I'll be going out of my way to write a whole bunch of support material for the game as well highlighting what choices were made and why, as well as how to take this information for developing your own content. I've got a growing pile of notes on just that.

[EinBein]

How's the progress, anyways? Even if we don't beg every day, we don't stop to writhe in anticipation!

[Marras]

True, we are curious

Even if I have been quiet lately I am still following. I just found out that I don't have a chance to run anything until fall (too busy otherwise)...

[higgins]

Having spent the last two weeks fighting all over Europe, I have to admit I'm curious as well!

I got a hold of Agamemnon last night just enough to say that I'm back at home, alive and relatively well -- still a bit ill for getting drenched while setting up our massive geteld style tent in Prague during a downpour at 2AM.

We'll definitely be tackling the game tonight and hopefully compile a sitrep as well.

[Agamemnon]

Having spent the last two weeks fighting all over Europe, I have to admit I'm curious as well!

Oh how they howl for my blood!

Sitrep being compiled now. Will get back to you post-higgins chat.

[EinBein]

Thuuuuuursday.... TM?

[higgins]

Thuuuuuursday.... TM?

All you need to do is ask. One minute later, you shall receive http://grandheresyforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=94

[DannyBoy]

Hey guys, it's a pretty nice Thusday TM up in Canada...

[EinBein]

I like to point out that it wasn't me asking... this time. Even though I have the same feeling in Germany.

[higgins]

No teaser means we're busy as bees working on the beta. Alas, me burying my last remaining grandparent last weekend put a major dent in everything, beta related or not. That said, focusing on the game is actually a good way to take one's mind off things.

[DannyBoy]

Aw man, I'm real sorry to hear that Higgins. Now I kind of feel like a jerk for being all impatient.

[higgins]

It's not a problem. There's no way you could have known.

In truth, it's good to hear that you guys like what you've seen so much that you turn up here every Thursday. If anything, we're probably more impatient to get the thing out than you are. But as Agamemnon said... You can make the first impression only once.

[EinBein]

Deepest sympathy