Hey folks,
Recently as I was finishing off the latest version of my Blades hack I realized I wasn’t happy with what I had. I rolled up some characters and a crew and didn’t like any of the choices I had made in redesigning the playbooks.
So I redesigned everything, and lo and behold the game looked a lot like it did in a previous version, and it was so much better. The rules weren’t bending over backwards to accommodate my changes, everything was simpler and sleeker and I was excited to playtest the game. In fact some of the changes I wanted were already in Blades in the Dark as suggested tweaks: Poor Beginnings and Tier Tied to Lifestyle. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?
I was reminded of these great videos John Harper and Andrew Gillis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGyUKlXVbY&t=110s where they talk about the design history of Blades and dead ends, designs that never saw the light of day, never playtested, but were still valuable in the design process.
So I’m curious fellow hackers, what have some of your design dead ends been? Have you had any? Do you think you’re in the middle of one right now?