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.
