Since the start of the year, I’ve been diving into Evil Hat work, specifically getting into the weeds of game development, which isn’t technically my role as project manager, but now that I have more time, it’s possible to do! The work is tough and slow, but very rewarding. This is an account of the work I’m doing on our current projects:
Dagger Isles
After the playtest we decided to focus the play in Dagger Isles to be that of liberators and revolutionaries breaking the yoke of imperial colonialism. That’s meant redoing the crews, changing the the factions, and shifting the focus of the game from crime for profit to crime for freedom. I’ve been working with Pam Punzalan and John Harper to develop new crews, create empire sheets (to show the strengths of the empire, the damage it’s done…and it’s vulnerability), and revisions based on the playtest feedback!
Umdaar
We made a TON of edits after Umdaar went to layout… but then realized we needed to get the draft back into text form to finish the work. So we’ve retroactively applied the PDF changes to the text. Amanda Valentine and I have been applying the changes and now we’re ready to dive back into the text!
Tiān Dēng
Since the playtest the dev and lore teams (Banana Chan, Sen-Foong Lim, Calvin Wong Tze Loon, Hong Di-Anne, Sophie Lagacé, and me) revamped the game to refocused from “do gigs to get out of debt” to “do gigs to secure a retirement and take of your god ship in it’s final days.” I’m loving the work we’ve done, which has been a revamp of the boons and curses, the moves, the gig rewards, advancement, and the frame of the game. It’s a lot, but I can’t wait to see more aunties and grampas flying the stars and sending off their ancestors to the heavens.
Project Perseus
I connected with John Leboeuf-Little and we started talking about the places where Perseus development was getting stuck. We’ve dived into the cities and the factions together and I’m exited to keep working away at this Spies vs. Supernatural game!
Tomb Raider
More of an ongoing project, I’ve been working with Rae Nedjadi and Josh Hittie to playtest in the Mavericks team playbook, the Time Tightly Spiraled adventure, seek the tomb mechanics, the tomb phase, as well as revamping the Moves, Intuition, and Core Rules chapters. It’s a monstrous project but it’s also so fun to see it moving forward and to playtest together.
Blades ’68
Okay, it’s not like Tim needs any help with this game, but I just love it so much, that I can’t help but play it and share ideas. Before the playtest draft I had a lot of feedback, but now that it’s out in the open, I’ve mostly been responding to feedback in the Discord server with ideas of how to apply changes. We also ran a playtest game, which was a delight…and I’m working with Tim on a new faction for the game as well!
