Reject Squad Design Blog

This week we tried to get a playtest together to test the changes we had made to the crisis cards we were developing. Instead, we got into an in-depth discussion which caused us to change the direction we were taking the crisis round. Because we couldn't find a group to playtest with this week, we decided to start examining several different board games of all shapes and sizes to see what their rulebooks looked like, how they were constructed, and what kinds of layouts they used. We were in the middle of this examination when a friend of ours, who had played Reject Squad more than a year ago, came over and asked us about how the development was going. We explained how it was going to him, which precipitated a lengthy discussion about how we were organizing things, what our ultimate goals for the game were, and what type of demographic we were targeting. He helped us re-examine a problem we had earlier identified - that the crisis feels almost like a completely different game fr...

What?! What happened to November?! Apologies for the lack of updates last month. I'll try to use this post to quickly sum up the basics of what's been happening for the last month: Testing with only the talent scout being able to ask questions felt fine. Often, compelling enough heroes will generate greater discussion, but keeping the questioning in the hands of one person greatly helps the pacing of he hero creation phase Testing with players being unable to speak during the crisis round was also successful. This is a social game, and we don't exactly like  that you can't talk during this round. However, this is almost the only way to keep people from giving away who they think should tackle each task. We also like that it leaves all the story details concerning the task and how it's completed to whoever actually gets elected to solve  it. And, people can still chat between tasks, at least. Specifically last week, we did the following: We made the decis...

We weren't able to get a playtest together on the 15th, but Billy did have a great idea for how to change our pass/fail cards. We were considering adapting them into three roles, but his solution was much simpler: just have everyone vote for who they think should complete the task. The winner of the vote narrates how the task was handled, and if there is no majority, the task is failed. The winner of the most recent task is not eligible to do the current task. We liked this a lot because it was simple, it was quick, it required no extra materials (you could really just point to who you thought should do the task) and it still required people to be on the same page about all of their different powers. On the 25th we were able to get two playtests in, with this system. I have a lot of notes on these, but in short: As we began to note during GenCon, it's difficult to keep track of who everybody is. Especially in larger games For 4-player games, we should consider having the ...

On October 11th we conducted the first playtest we'd done in quite a while. The biggest thing we wanted to look at for this test was the crisis resolution system we'd been talking about for so long. The results of the test taught us a lot of new things and reminded us of a lot of old things: Because you never pick up your cards, you learn more and more about each other's remaining hand as time goes on. This makes the final task a foregone conclusion. We knew about this in advance, but it was good to see it in real life too. One of the players at the table had the expectation that the bulk of the crisis round would involve coming up with a plan to fight the opposition The "no-talking" rule is still stepping on people's fun. As we spoke with our testers, the idea of replacing the pass/fail cards with something less binary came up. We really liked the idea of turning them into role cards, such as "Lead" "Support" and "Hang Back....

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...

Hi all! Sorry for the lack of updates. Sometimes we get busy and don't meet for a while. On Sept. 20th, we continued to work on how we envision the new crisis system working. We know we want to have some beginning tasks to kick the story off with a more concrete direction for players to take the story in. We brainstormed a few up and realized that their structure included: A name A flavorful quote (which we may eventually replace the name with) A description An immediate thing to do So, for example: Name: Prison Break Quote: "They're making a break for it!" Description: The opposition is breaking someone important out of a high-security prison. Immediate task: The team has to find a way into that prison! We created several of these tasks, and decided we would try to create a few more before our next meeting. As we brainstormed these, we realized that there was a sixth element that was really great for these beginning tasks: a question for the group...

This week we looked back at our notes from GenCon and talked through what we liked and what we'd like to change about Crises. Crisis resolution works very, very differently from hero creation, which is both a good and a bad thing. The good is obviously that it adds variety to Reject Squad, but the learning curve of jumping into the Crisis is something we may have to mitigate a bit. Crises definitely need more narrative structure. It's great that players can construct stories from an opposition, a location, and 3-5 random task cards, but sometimes the random task cards aren't so easy to pull a story out of. We discussed the possibility creating specific starting, middle, and ending task cards which would help every crisis have an obvious uh... beginning, middle, and end. We really want to include the cast-off heroes (the ones deemed too-powerful in 4+ player games and the ones that were simply unused in 3 player games) as villains for the crises. We also came up with ...