The week of September 27th

This week we reviewed the beginning tasks we had brainstormed alone and continued to define what we want them to do in the game. We decided that, in addition to the six things I mentioned in the last post, beginning tasks have an overarching goal, a greater objective that lets players know how to frame success and failure. This can usually just be rolled up into the task's description, but we separate it out on our card file just to make sure we give each task it's goal. Our overarching goal for the Prison Break from last week, for example, is to stop the opposition from escaping with the prisoner. Here's another example of a beginning task, a new one from this week's meeting:

  • Name: Gala
  • Quote: "And these are my +1's"
  • Description: Reject Squad is attending a black-tie event! Unfortunately, so is the opposition!
  • Task at Hand: You weren't actually invited to the event! Find a way in without disrupting the attendees.
  • Important Question: What is the nature of this event?
  • Overarching Goal: Figure out what the opposition's plan is, and thwart them.
We also discussed, from a more pulled-back perspective, what these tasks will look like in play. From a bird's-eye view, our crisis system is still following a similar scheme as it was before: reveal the opposition, the location, and then the tasks required to solve the problem. Allow players to gauge which of their rejects would be best for each task, but limit their planning. If all tasks are complete, the crisis is solved. But for this version specifically, we mulled over whether we should even have our beginning tasks be "tasks" at all. Maybe they should just be informational. Maybe they should be broken up into two cards and one is revealed at the start of the task, the other at the end. There are a lot of ways we can take this, but the thing we know we need to do is start testing again with this system, and see what it feels like when it's in the hands of our players.

Oh, and finally, I came back with the notes I took after speaking with that friend of mine. Without going too deep into it, we had a lot of knowledge dropped on us all at once (thanks again, friend of mine! You know who you are!). For now, we want to focus on keeping eyes out for upcomming UnPub and Protospiel events, and doing lots of research on board game development blogs. We'll work our way out from there. 

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