Play time

This post is late as things go, but it's something I wanted very much to remember.

Up until recently, we had a lot of discussions about what the world of our game is like and how the game progresses in a general sense, but not many about the particulars. We knew we had battles and what they were about, but we didn't know what they were like or how they worked. Nate had the idea to get together for some play time so we could start sussing these things out.

the early battlefield

Nate and Annie just so happen to own a copy of Descent, which just so happens to be an amazing set of toys for mocking up dungeon scenes. We gathered characters and monsters from our game with random stats, matched those characters with vaguely representative Descent pieces, put together a map we liked, and slowly started going through the motions of a battle, without much of any idea what we were doing except that heroes and monsters took turns.

Surprisingly, it wasn't very fun. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy myself, but playing a game is very, very different from making up rules for a game and trying to balance them as you go along. I don't think any of us quite expected how much it would feel like hard work. We beat two, maybe three enemies over the course of the exercise and didn't make it past the second chamber in our map. It was a grueling, unsatisfying pace of play.

the last stand

When we finally called it quits, though, we had a large number of resolutions and ideas about how battles progressed, how the content of a single turn should be balanced, what kind of chances different things should have at success, and a basis of how magic and teamwork work in our universe. Annie put together probably two full pages of detailed notes from the things we jotted down along the way. It was, in my opinion, a huge success.

Another success was getting all four of us together to talk and brainstorm for a long period at once. Usually it's a smaller set of us at a time, and due to other commitments I hadn't been able to get in the trenches much yet at all. It also reminded me of how important it is to a collaboration to have shared space and experiences beyond just discussion and access to information. 

even monsters need hugs

Creating something together that's metaphorically related to your project is one of the best things you can do to get people on the same page and invested in what they're doing in the early stages of development. Also, it helps make it an actual collaboration, instead of just a collective effort. After that day I certainly felt a lot more like I was helping to make and guide the game instead of just contributing to it.