Wednesday Rants: March 2016 Edition

Greetings Fellow Readers! Welcome to another round of random ranting. I have an extremely important thing to discuss to kick thing off. So let's being.


[Arcana Magi Memorial Vol. 4 and Vol. 6 Problem]

For those of you who read the Vol.6-c.3, you may have noticed something familiar in the final scene...

...and the answer is yes, I did copy past the opening scene in Volume 4 and pasted it to the final scene in Vol.6-c.3.

The reason why I did this, I'll have to put into context first a quick thing in the past. If you have read any of my 'Thoughts on Writing' or earlier 'Rants' from years ago, (the articles are still here) I've made very clear that 'Arcana Magi' is more of my training story to experiment, learn and improve on writing. That has never changed to this day. So 2 years ago, in Vol.4, I decided to try the storytelling approach of opening with a future-sight, then roll back the story "3Weeks Earlier". What I did not expect was how long it would take me to get that opening point. I just reached it in Vol.6, plus a lot of time has past in-story. Not only that, but over these past 2 years as I continued writing, I felt the whole "3 Weeks Earlier" mechanic was not very good as a method of storytelling, plus I sacrificed a very powerful scene very early. I should have built towards what was in Vol.6-c.3 organically.

So, I have decided that when I do the rewrites later this year, I am going to remove that scene from Vol.4 all together, and for now, have that scene sit where it belongs. This is a good learning experience for me and I learned that it is better for me to build towards a powerful scene instead of trying to be flowery and cute with it.

I apologize for the inconvenience. 

[Arcana Magi Game]

The Arcana Magi Deck Building Game is currently in proof of concept stages now. The original plan for the game's design was not fun to play with and I had to scrap it before I blew my brain apart. Originally it was going to be a pure Co-op game with an "A.I." opponent but after playing some Deck Building Games with this type of mechanic as part of my research, I felt it did not fit into 'Arcana Magi' the way I envisioned it. So I am now redesigning the game to be versus Deck Building Game with up to 4 players. However, the ideas I have for the game mechanics - and the sheer size of the game - has prompted me to develop a different deck building game using a couple of 'Arcana Magi's' game mechanics. Keep in mind that I am using over 6 seasons worth of stories into this game and make sure it all fits into the context of the story as well. This other deck building I am working will serve as a base template and learning tool to improve upon Arcana Magi and make it the deck building game that I want it to be. It's not that major of a setback, but the deck building game genre is a very dense pool publishing wise. There are tons of this stuff and only a select few are considered really big. I want 'Arcana Magi' to set itself apart from the Dominion and Star Realm clones and be its own unique game.

[Splatterbomb™]

No you may have noticed in the 'NEWS and NOTES' that there is no T-Shirts being released this month. Well the game's card lore has changed. There are Items and Characters but their titles are adapting to the growing changes of the cards as I near the end of development. The "End Game' where the final round takes place and a winner is decided has gained momentum, but there is always a small snag that is keeping it from being a complete game. The problem is that game ends with Player 1 always winning 99% of the time. So the cards where the Items and Character are used in, keep changing as a result. So I decided to but stay on the T-Shirts until the cards are perfected and the prints can reflect what is on the cards. Chances are that when that is all done, I will be updating the shirt prit to reflect the new changes. It may not be much, but the context is what is changing drastically.

Also, there will be another NYC-Playtest Session this Saturday at Brooklyn Game Lab in Brooklyn New York for those of you interested in playtesting tabletop games currently in development. I will be bringing Splatterbomb and the new deck building game I am working.

Make sure to swing over to iTunes or Amazon.com and grab yourself a copy of 'Peanut Butter Jelly [Splatterbomb™ Theme]'.


So that is all I have on my mind right now.

Thank you for listening to my rants.

Until next time...

See ya.