Monthly Archives: February 2018

SF Concept Cards – When is “Done” Done?

Posted on by February 26, 2018
“Perfect” and “Done” are opposites.

At Artemis Games we can be perfectionists to a fault. We hate releasing anything with identifiable flaws – and yet as everyone knows “only God is perfect”: There are claims for many religious artistic traditions, from Islamic geometry to Amish quilting, that they deliberately include imperfections to avoid blasphemy. 1)Of course that’s not even slightly true. Few people will deliberately introduce an error into their work, and of those who do none of them do it because they think they’re better than God and don’t want to upset Him. It’s a training technique for some recovering perfectionists, and a trick for many contractors, to introduce an error and never fix it.
A perfectionist will be forced to accept that searching out every error is futile, as they already know where one is (likely a tiny one) and aren’t allowed to fix it.
A contractor on the other hand does it because they know the client wants to give input – by including an obvious error for the client to fix they can avoid more difficult editing when they’re confident their product is good.

We’re not God, we don’t even actually have Artemis on the team (although we do like her, partly on account of the inherent contradiction her being the goddess of both childbirth and virginity) – so perfection isn’t an option for us.

That means we have to have a way of deciding when something is sufficiently good, rather than perfectly good. We have to have (high) standards, but also ways of accepting our limitations, and our imperfections2)Which there are many of, with three out of four of us having chronic health issues yet still putting out a product.

So how do we set the bar? How do we let go, and say it’s done? With the Jigsaw Fantasy project we’ve used the deadline approach – it’s done on the release date, end of story3)well, not quite – we’re allowed to go back and improve things post-release, as it’s purely digital and we’ve been learning to make that work – ensuring that

There are a number of facets to how to make that principle work for us, but two of them are key:

1) We need to know exactly how long it will take to finish the work – and double it to include time for problems and polish. This generally means that we need to have done about half the work before we set the deadline, or (in the case of regular projects) before we can be sure which options are ready to go.

2) There must be a set size to the project. We’ve done things with stretch goals expanding them before, but that will always make deadlines wrong, and if the deadline is wrong we no longer have a release point!

But that’s for our writing work; Jigsaw Fantasy and Concept Cards. For the game design side of things, such as Clash of Blades, we still don’t know when to call “done” done – writing for us is as much writing as polishing, but good game design is all about the polishing; I could design three unique new games in three minutes, but they’d all be terrible.

So when is “done” done?

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References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Of course that’s not even slightly true. Few people will deliberately introduce an error into their work, and of those who do none of them do it because they think they’re better than God and don’t want to upset Him. It’s a training technique for some recovering perfectionists, and a trick for many contractors, to introduce an error and never fix it.
A perfectionist will be forced to accept that searching out every error is futile, as they already know where one is (likely a tiny one) and aren’t allowed to fix it.
A contractor on the other hand does it because they know the client wants to give input – by including an obvious error for the client to fix they can avoid more difficult editing when they’re confident their product is good.
2. ↑ Which there are many of, with three out of four of us having chronic health issues
3. ↑ well, not quite – we’re allowed to go back and improve things post-release, as it’s purely digital

SF Concept Cards – Pushing Back the Kickstarter

Posted on by February 19, 2018

Our previous kickstarters have had unexpected delays after they finished, this time we’re hoping to get them out of the way beforehand.

We’ve learned over the years that it’s better to launch late and deliver on time than to launch early and deliver late: and unfortunately we’re in a space where we’re making that choice this week.

Art for the Science Fiction Concept Cards suit symbols was meant to be all in at this point, so we could launch on Tuesday confident that we had what we need, but unfortunately both artists fell ill, causing significant delays, and so we only have one of the five suit symbols we need at minimum: a clubs representing the connections of a planet:

We don’t want to take any chances with regards to delivering on time, so we’re pushing back the launch back and working with the artists to plan a new schedule. Once that’s done we can let you know the new launch date – which is likely to be in mid-march.

Be Well

-Ste
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SF Concept Cards: Cardbacks and Backgrounds

Posted on by February 13, 2018

Two of the most important things about a card are how the back looks, and how the front looks.1)Technically that’s everything about a card – but in this case we’re thinking purely visual

So we’ve been putting some work into getting those aspects right – we’re not quite there yet, but we’re closing in.

For the fantasy line of Concept Cards we started with a very simple concept: That the characters were written on parchment: so the background was slightly yellow and lightly textured.

 

Fantasy Characters Background

Later fantasy decks had slightly more exotic, theme-tied backgrounds, but they strove to remain simple (with the exception of a few special cards, such as the elemental cards in epic decks)

 

Fantasy Treasure Background

The cardback came from Fiverr – after a number of false starts, we recieved something that looked simply excellent, so we used it.

Fantasy Cardback

 

While we like everything we made for fantasy, it’s obviously unsuitable for sci-fi. We so far haven’t found useable simple textures, so as seen previously we’re simply using coloured backgrounds. Meanwhile we’ve been working on cardbacks that keep the double-circle of the fantasy deck, but go in a more sci-fi direction. What we’ve got at the moment is nebulous:

A B
C

 

What do you think? Which do you prefer?

Which is your favourite of the cardback designs?

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References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Technically that’s everything about a card – but in this case we’re thinking purely visual

SF Concept Cards: The Other Two Decks

Posted on by February 5, 2018

Last week we showed you an unedited video of us playing with cards, and one of the planetary cards mentioned.

This week I think it’d be good to talk through a couple more cards – one from the Characters deck and one from the Locations.

First the Character. Why would you draw from the characters deck?
The most common reason is that the players decide they want to talk to a local, or someone travelling with them, or whoever – and you haven’t actually planned the details of that particular bit of background scenario.

Between sessions you might instead draw cards to plan your next adventure. While planets or station locations may be more common sources of adventure, the characters involved are what make a story truly gripping, so drawing a few of both is often the best idea.

So, on to the example:

We’ve flipped the secret because it’s easier than you flipping your monitor.

Roberta, even more so than most characters, is capable of turning up anywhere – possibly even showing up repeatedly on different planets.

My immediate interpretation is that she’s one of the characters that falls into the category of “NPC Adventurer”, someone who is likely to deal with problems rather than screaming and running away.

The value of her hearts makes it clear that while she has a meaningful desire something about it is lackluster – she wants to see everywhere, but not only is that impossible, she doesn’t even have a plan!

The value of her clubs suit (above average with a 7) tells us that she’s well-connected, despite the constant movement – she doesn’t stick around but the friends she leaves behinds are still friends, and new ones are a constant.

Her diamonds (profession) is “Whatever it Takes” gives a lot more depth to her character – she’s not a spoiled noble brat, she’s travelling on her own dime, on her own blood, sweat, and tears.

The spades describes her, while also reinforcing the fact that she’s self-mobile.

The secret is the key to building a whole plot around her – she wants to prove that she still has a soul, which is not an easy task in a science fiction world where souls may not even exist in the first place! If the players get interested you may find yourself leading them on a trail of mystics and priests, looking for someone who can actually prove that their spirituality is reality.

 

Now onto the Location. Again, you might draw this when planning a session, or you might draw it when your players decide to wander down another corridor or another street, and need somewhere interesting to walk into – somewhere other than the adventure that you’d originally planned.

You might get to point them back at the plot, or perhaps you’ll find the card gives you a whole new plot:

A high hearts in locations means that the place is host to important people – in this case an extremely competent law firm.

The spades and diamonds both reinforce that these are skilled lawyers – but not kind ones. Still, they might be useful for adventurous types like player characters, who break laws in order to do what’s necessary.

And even if the PCs don’t have enough money to pay them, the secret provides an obvious out: They’re in need of protection, just the sort of story the PCs are used to sorting!

 

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