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It looks like we’re not gonna make our (admittedly lofty) goal by the end of the campaign, but I’m not discouraged. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past month, it’s that people are really interested in the game, it’s just a matter of taking more time to get the word out to more people. I’ve also learned of manufacturers that are willing to do 500 copy minimum orders.
I wasn’t expecting my first crack at crowdfunding to be a successful one.The reason I wanted to start the campaign was because I wanted to tell people that I’m working on this and it looks like there are a number of people interested enough. I might have not gotten the funding I needed this month, but I plan on doing another campaign March of next year, as part of Backerkit’s Pocketopia collaboration event.
Dueling was probably the thing that changed the most throughout the process of developing this game. Did you know that the original prototype literally had players wail on each other with foam swords?
Foam Swords for Swords at Dusk
Obviously, the game back then was more of a physical activity with a board game attached to it, but I wanted to turn the game into a complete board game for wider distribution.
The thing I aimed for was something that was easy to do quickly, so I went for a themed sort of “rock paper scissors” system in which players would pick cards, and reveal them, but early playtesting showed that if you gave players a card game of rock, paper scissors, they will take all day figuring out their move.
The complicated Rock-paper-scissors version of Dueling
The version of dueling that is now didn’t come until much later– and it turns out changing the way duels worked was what was needed to break the game wide open.
I was very much inspired by Secret Hitler’s Policy tile mechanic. For those of you who haven’t played it, Secret Hitler’s core of the game comes from the interaction between two players: the President, a role that rotates around the table, and the Chancellor, a player who is nominated, then elected into the role.
That mechanic inspired the changes with privilege-- What if the privileged player had some sort of "Control" of the duel, with a little dash of random chance to keep things interesting? I ended up playtesting both changes to the dueling and privilege mechanics at the same time, and those two changes gave the game a new life.
Duels in their most simplified form now
Through playtesting, I figured out that involving just one more person in duels added a whole new way for people to test each other’s loyalty, all while making dueling much more interesting. That way, everyone gets a little more involved during downtime, because duels could actually give you an insight on more people, and it's another way to clue people in on someone's allegiances, and made the game a lot more fun to watch for non-dueling participants.
Along with this behind the scenes entry, I also want to announce I'll be doing another live Demo over in Brooklyn's Twenty Sided Store this Saturday, if you have time, come by and say hi! Here's a link to the event.
Privilege was the last mechanic that I added into the game, and for a while, it did all sorts of things. The main goal of Privilege was to introduce a “Role” without it being an actual “Role”, as well as add something that could be something more to talk about.
The idea of some passable token came about during a playtest right before PlayNYC, and it started off as something a little wilder: The original privilege still had it’s wound-healing power, but it also had the power to force two players to duel each other, which was a hit– mainly because it got people dueling sooner.
Swords at Dusk being played at PlayNYC
The reason I ended up tweaking privilege into its present state was partly because I couldn’t figure out a good term for the forced duel, and thematically, it would make more sense if there was a way for the privileged person to affect duels, not start them.
The mechanic evolved further into it's final version as I tweaked the dueling mechanics from a familiar “Rock Paper Scissors” to an even simpler, more flexible dueling system, which made people much less hesitant to challenge each other, because It turns out dueling just had to be really simple– a discovery I’ll post about tomorrow.
Classic social deduction games like Werewolf/Mafia have one key issue that keeps everyone from playing– lack of information. Many modern social deduction games have introduced systems and mechanics that allow hints of who might be on who’s side through loyalty testing. Every time I start playtesting Swords at Dusk, I've gotten used to the first round where everyone opens their eyes and everyone has no idea what to do.
Awkward silence as everyone surveys the damage
In order to avoid that awkward first round early on, I decided to have a “Seer” role to try and give the game some form of information; it like the obvious fix. However, giving perfect information to one person and hoping that information gets disseminated throughout the rest of the group is kind of a trap– not everyone is a good seer. I would venture to say that most of us suck at being Seer, and let’s be real, if there’s only one “Bad” guy in the group, what does the seer do with their power after they find the killer?
At some point, I decided that this was not a bad thing, because as soon as the wounds start stacking up, everyone starts talking, so I decided to embrace the awkward silence as a part of the genre, and at the end of the day, nobody remembers the first round of Mafia, they remember the twists and turns that come after hurting a few people.
But I do wonder, when faced with an awkward first round of any social deduction game, what's your first move? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Thank you so much to all 20 of you, who saw this game and decided to give it a chance. It might not seem like a lot of folks in comparison to my extremely optimistic goal, but whenever I wake up and check on the campaign, seeing a new name that I don't recognize is the best feeling. It means that you all took enough of a liking to my project to invest in it, and that's what's been keeping me going the past week or so as I obsessively the project page while on break between teaching classes.
So thank you. Here's to celebrating more milestones before the campaign ends!
More post-mortem-y stuff coming before the end of the week this week.
Hey folks, apologies for not updating yesterday like I promised, the semester's started and yesterday was my first day of teaching and all the running around getting things set up wiped me out.
First off, the answer to last update's answer is that there are only 3 roles because it was easiest to test three roles in a game that's 4 or more players. Every roles gets an equal amount of testing, and it's a lot easier to adjust any interactions between roles without upsetting the balance too much on other roles.
More importantly though, if you're in the New York City area, I'm hosting a demo of Swords at Dusk over at Hex and Co. East Sunday evening. It's free to play Swords at Dusk, but it'll cost you if you decide to hang around and play other board games as well. I'll be providing free teatime refreshments for anyone who comes by.
RSVP on Partiful so I can figure out how much tea I should brew!
I didn’t know about Blood on the Clocktower when I started making Swords at Dusk. Actually, I never played Blood on the Clocktower until like, this summer. However, very much like that game, I started out twisting the original Werewolf formula the way many designers start modifying that style of game– making a whole lotta roles with special powers and watching them bounce off each other.
Role reference card from an earlier version of SaD
While brainstorming all these cool roles and seeing them in action was fun, it was hard to keep track of them all, Even for me, and I made the thing. Obviously, something needed to change; So in the next iteration, I cherrypicked the best performing (and personal favorite) mechanics from all these roles, and ended mixing them together into the three roles you see today:
The Killer has more or less stayed the same since the game was made.
The Admirer took the Storyteller's Shame, but otherwise has remained the same.
The Noble has the "Dramatic reveal" that the Coward had, and I added the Wallflower's win condition. A lot of times, the Fool role often stuck players in that "Critical decision" scenario I wanted to play out with The Detective, and I figured it would be easier and more flexible just to make
I chose these three because the most interesting stories often involved certain roles over others. Over time, I would see many different ways to play each role, and start weeding out mechanics or roles that felt like they weren't adding anything. At the end, cutting and combining these roles allowed my game to be easier to pick up, and that having a bunch of "special" roles wasn't needed to keep a social deduction game interesting.
SaD being played at Come out and Play After Dark 2019, notice how everyone is struggling to read all the roles in the dark
However, early on in playtesting I discovered why I should cut back on "special" roles in the game, and it's the main reason there’s only three special roles in the game, what do you think that reason might be?
Curious about what "Stars" and "Clovers" the prototype card mentions? Think I should've kept one of my original roles? Let me know in the comments!
If you don't want to wait until next week for the answer, backers get the answer right away...
It looks like my crowdfund was unpublished, so if you're seeing this, don't panic! It should be fixed quickly.
Edit: Having received the update email, I realize how panic-inducing the headline is. Don't worry, I'm not in trouble, I may have accidentally enrolled this project in a beta thing, but that beta thing rescheduled my project's date, but I've emailed Backerkit and hopefully they'll resolve this quickly.
Over the course of the campaign, I’d like to take the opportunity to do a sort of “Post-mortem” of Swords at Dusk. Swords at Dusk has been a prototype I’ve been working on and off for the past four years, and over that time, I’ve compiled a bunch of notes and documentation of what the game looked and played like throughout its development, and throughout this crowdfunding campaign, I’ll share with you my experience making the game, as well as explain how the game works now.
Twice a week during the campaign I will send updates with little peeks behind the curtain and document the on and off development of the game throughout its various iterations. I will also update you on any upcoming demo events coming up if you're in the New York area.
