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CDC: Second Playtest

Posted by Jason on June 25th, 2009 — in Uncategorized

I wrote up some observations on Carolina Death Crawl’s second go-round here.

More nitty-gritty: Over the course of the game, 11 disgrace, 9 kill, and 5 burn cards were used. It’s hard to imagine a burn-heavy game, so that may be a place where tweaking could take place.

The scores worked out well. The final showdown was 7 to 6.

Shanks’ card needs to be reworked a little. It presupposes something about his relationship and the timeline.

Adding tangible, perhaps mechanical reasons for them not to tear each other’s throats out would be good.

Adversity lays their cards face up, and I think they have to incorporate the card element after all.

I need to re-write the monologues; they are too friendly and make bad assumptions. In our game the last two guys split up, and the survivor was the deserter who had no interest in returning to New Bern. he ran off for Mexico with the former Governor’s daughter, the luscious Miss Bettie Toole.

Carolina Death Crawl Map

Posted by Jason on June 23rd, 2009 — in Uncategorized

I found CSA Major Jedediah Hotchkiss’ map of North Carolina and overlaid Potter’s raid (.pdf). I don’t think this will be the actual thing, but it was cool to play with a period map. Weirdly, Rocky Mount does not show up on maps from the Civil War. I used the clone tool to scrub the names of Tarboro, New Bern and Greenville and add a city on the Tar at Rocky Mount.

Carolina Death Crawl Rules

Posted by Jason on June 18th, 2009 — in Uncategorized

Here’s a copy of the rules as they stand. This was just an experiment to see if I could squeeze them all on one sheet of paper, and it looks like it will be possible. This is Garamond 12/12, so it ought to work in the hands of a talented graphic designer like Patrick. The second double-sided sheet, with all the great newspaper pulls, is probably a free download. Along with a nice map.

Carolina Death Crawl Cards

Posted by Jason on June 16th, 2009 — in Carolina Death Crawl, Design

I’m building Carolina Death Crawl around 18-up card printing, so three sheets and a deck of 54. Here’s the mockup for Go Play Northwest:
CDC01
You can see the rules sheet horning in – they fit on a single sheet of paper with some room to spare, so they’ll squeeze in a tuck box. Closer:
CDC02
Pretty cool. There will be five more cards – four are information on each of the towns you burn down in the prologue, providing both color and a way to sequence turns, with rules on the back. The fifth – card 54 – isn’t necessary for the game so I’m not sure what to do with it yet.

Fiasco: Now With More John Harper

Posted by Jason on June 13th, 2009 — in Check this out dude, Fiasco

John Harper’s doing the art for Fiasco, and he’s got a delightful Saul Bass vibe going on the interior work so far. It’s going to look great. The blocky, active aesthetic just dovetails perfectly with the game’s irreverent tone and dark, funny subject matter. The spot illos and interior decoration will look sort of like this:
Fiasco art sample
Each playset included in the game (there are four) will have a full page, full color illustration as well. Excited!