I’ve had a lot of time to brainstorm and less time to sit down and execute than I’d like, but hoping to get the next draft done and do some testing. Artwork’s proceeding a little slower than planned, may wind up using my roughs as placeholders, though frankly I kind of like how the roughs look better after seeing how the “sepia’d” line art sticks out too much against my backdrops. I’ll probably scale the size of the overhaul version’s cast back a little until I’ve tested things a bit, then I’ll go ahead and update the other classes.
Anyone have a chance to download and play yet? I’d love to hear from anyone who’s gotten to play the first edition before “committing” fully to the redesign. I did sort of ‘mock’ test it with the existing cards and it wasn’t too awful even *without* adjusting the cards to the format.
I played a while with a friend last week and it went over well enough that he decided to explore the dungeon a while longer even after collecting the ‘win the game’ item rather than booking it to the exit. Setup was quick, rules soaked in easy, and it was pretty easy to pick the cards back up afterward. The only real drawback I can think of is the dungeon can expand a fair amount and the need for counters. So far I’ve managed to keep things dice-less but I have to wonder after a certain number of accessories are already there, maybe including them to randomize battle a little couldn’t hurt. There’s kind of an annoying tendency for ‘brick walls’ to come up occasionally where the party is unable to damage or be damaged by enemies or opponents, and though the items are meant to be a ‘kicker’ to push you over that threshold, the current item set seems to lead to a lot of getting stuck with gear you can’t use. I think I may wind up trying to come up with less weapon types or something like abstracting swords axes and spears into just ‘blades’ or something.
I’ve been kicking around a shift to a lighter sort of tone since it’s meant to be a fun, pick-up-and-play-sort of thing and honestly the ‘lore’ is more something for me to keep in mind while fleshing out the item lists and such.
I’m still a little divided on whether to name characters or leave them to their classes, which sort of sprung from the notion of having color variants with slight differences to them. I called it “Card Tendency,” and rather than like a hard and fast rule it was meant to be a way for a player to tell at a glance what way their abilities skewed (Blues would be the all-round/average types, Reds would be more offense focused, Green more defensive, and yellow would be “tricky” characters with a gimmick like dealing more damage when wounded or other abstract benefits.)