I'm doing final-final-final draft edits this week. I'm also play testing a bunch. There are certain aspects of the game that I love, and certain aspects I'm unsure about. The 6d6 mapping of terrain and civilizations is a blast. Some of the industry rules feel a little too bookkeeper-ish. Some of the narrative rules seem tedious. I've created an "Additional Rules" section and have thrown a lot of the more crunchy rules in there, to separate the basic world building and story telling from the more advanced interpretation stuff, but it's hard to know how much of that to do. My instinct is to ditch all the optional stuff, and just keep the game simple and small. Some players like crunch and additional content, but I'm not really sure how much that content adds to the game, and how much it just convolutes the experience. Dunno. Lots of executive decisions to make this week.
FROZEN SORCERER & SCORCHED EARTH
Four Human kingdoms dot the central valley of a sprawling realm, connected by a network of ancient trading roads stretching the length of continent from chilly North Port at the top to Southerton at the bottom.
Riverdale, the large kingdom in the southeast, suffers. A expansive wasteland of scorched earth to the north prohibits sufficient industry for the kingdom’s size, resulting in a deficit state. No one knows the cause of the scorched earth, and all who have ventured there to investigate have suffered and died, but there is rumor of a sorcerer frozen in ice somewhere on glaciated slopes of the mountains to the south, possibly linked to the devastation.
Riverdale is militarizing and mobilizing. Southerton, its sister kingdom to the east, has constructed a defensive wall around its main citadel in preparation for the war that seems imminent. But that’s not Southerton’s only problem. A Sentient Fog has settled in Silent Bay and is rolling inland, consuming farmland north of the castle.
North Port has constructed a mighty wall and boasts a sea port, but the waters are infested with pirates, making seafaring very risky business. Fortunately the port’s relationship with the smaller keep to their southern border is harmonious. A mysterious shaman that lives in the farmlands between these two castles is said to be the keeper of tranquility in these northern parts for many centuries.
To the far east, in the Copper Mountains, two Dwarven civilizations have merged into a giant underground empire traversing the entire mountain range. A vast uninhabited forest separates the mining civilization from the human realm, so the Dwarves and humans are unaware of each other’s existence. All would be perfect for these industrious tunnelers, if not for a Dark menace sitting on the bottom of the sea directly offshore…festering, waiting…
Simple iconic version
shaded version of same map
Update: as I continued to play test today, I had a breakthrough. I'd been wrestling with a game mechanic I called "Deficits". The idea is that depending on the size of the civilization you role, you need to create a specific number of industry hexes adjacent to it: farmland (adjacent empty hex), logging (adjacent forest), grazing (adjacent hills), mining (adjacent mountains), and the total number of industry needs to equal its size, and if this is not possible, then that civilization is in a "deficit" state. This created a lot of bookkeeping, because other rules down the line could change the total industry value, leading to lots of erasing and re-calculating industry surplus and deficits. On top of that, deficits were calculated differently for each civilization type. In other words, this mechanic was tedious and boring.
Tonight, in a mad frenzy of thinking and editing, fueled by Jamaican rum, I completely eliminated the deficit mechanic and replaced it with a simple "Prosperity" mechanic. Instead of keeping track of penalties, I am now just keeping track of surplus in a way that is consistent across civ types. Prosperity comparison also facilitates a simple war mechanic between civilizations. And it replaces most of the "optional / advanced" rules. Ultimately I was able to completely eliminate the optional/advanced rules section, make the basic rules more engaging and easier to use.
It's easy to get locked into and enslaved by ideas that I've written down. I have to constantly remind myself that everything is negotiable when it comes to making art, and writing, and logic. I have to be willing to toss ideas.
The only purpose of this game is to facilitate the creative process. It's not a simulation. So any rule that's not fostering the map creation or the narrative writing is just getting in the way of "fun"...
