YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A BOAT
Note for physical backers: I've done all the back pages for the last three months, and they're with Producer Chant (who I believe you've met) so they're on the way towards being printed out and shipped to you. Here's a preview:
Anyway. On with the show.
I, like all of you I imagine, grew up watching pirated movies. (For a while I sold bootleg music CDs at school until the deputy head cracked down on the whole affair.) Whenever you got your hands on a proper DVD, it came bundled with a) superfluous additional features and b) a fun anti-piracy warning from several US organisations. I've linked it at the top of the post as apparently you can't embed YouTube videos halfway through, but you already know what it is because you've seen it at least twenty times.
This warning was great because it made pirating films as exciting as stealing a car, and accompanied it with a surprisingly exciting soundtrack. It only ever encouraged me to do it. It also spawned the excellent phrase "YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR," which if I'm honest I believed to be part of the original film.
It was that phrase which sparked this game: what if you could download a car? Would that be interesting? What would go wrong with the car? Why are you downloading cars?
(I have all my one page ideas in the shower these days. I've trained myself to immediately have three concurrent, often conflicting ideas every time I walk into the bathroom.)
I ended up spinning out the pirate theme a bit more, and replaced CAR with BOAT which loses some of the zeitgeist appeal but has a weird ring to it, which I like. That piracy theme also fuelled the "GOING INAUSPICIOUS" mechanic: you pick a number between one and six, and if you ever roll it on either of your dice, you're at increasing disadvantage until you succeed or fail spectacularly.
This is because Chris and I have been doing research for Salt, our upcoming sequel to Spire and Heart which is set entirely on the open waves, and crumbs if pirates weren't a superstitious bunch. I guess it comes from living such a precarious lifestyle, and also for something to do while you're on you're thirtieth uninterrupted day of travel. I read that pirates don't allow whistling on board ship because it sounds "like a storm" and might summon one, and while it's a nice conceit I can't help but think the Bosun was just tired of the crew whistling all the time and needed an excuse.
The 2D6-looking-for-sevens mechanic which underpins the game is solely due to the fact that I played Trench Crusade a couple of weeks ago and had a lovely time with it. It's the new hotness amongst the crustier end of the miniatures scene: couple of years ago it was Turnip28, but having a dedicated illustrator (Mike Franchina, a man who is rightly too expensive and too busy to work for me) and a veteran games designer (Tuomas "Mr Mordheim" Pirinen) at the helm gave them what they needed to capture our imaginations.
To compare, I wrote the Turnip28 campaign rules, which I was paid for but which never saw the light of day, so I can't presume they were much good. It did result in this joke though, where it is possible to have your general die and not really impact your campaign very much:
That's all for now. I've been busy rewriting Royal Blood (and making it roughly twice as long as it was back in 2016) for the rerelease with Mana Project, and also finishing Hollows for the eighth and possibly penultimate time as we roll into editing, and also part-running a business I guess, and and and. Lots to do. Off to Play Bologna the week after next, so if you're around and you want me to sign something then come find me.
(Oh! And we're doing Pyrkon again! We got invited back, so we're bringing half the fucking company with us. Gonna eat my bodyweight in dumplings)
Stay beautiful,
Gx
Comments (1)
This is making me think I should download a boat.... that cant be right.