Designer Diary #24 – Choice and Consequence
Hey everyone, Anne here! As Sig mentioned in his latest video, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag of a week around here. While life threw some curveballs, Sig was still hard at work on the SigTrent Games front, even if it felt a little slower than usual.
One of the big things he was focused on was getting the playtest document for Shotgun Fantasy ready for you all. He’s been pouring over the core fantasy rules, making sure everything is clear and that you can actually build those classic fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric type characters within the system. He even spent time thinking about how you could throw those characters into existing adventures, like a classic D&D module or even an Everyday Heroes scenario – the “fish out of water” concept sounded pretty fun!
Beyond just the document, Sig was actually playtesting Shotgun Fantasy himself with his regular GM (not that Brian from Evil Genius Games!). This led to a really interesting tweak to the magic user archetype. His character, a modern person in a fantasy world trying to learn magic, felt like the initial spell list for a novice magic user wasn’t impactful enough. So, he came up with the idea of allowing magic users to pick one spell from a slightly broader list (as long as it’s not too powerful) to feel more personalized. He even used his character’s fascination with “mage hand” as inspiration! It’s these kinds of real-play insights that make the game development process so cool to watch.
He also mentioned that he’s got a bunch of old, smaller adventures kicking around and wants to tune one up to be compatible with Shotgun Fantasy. That’s something I know he enjoys – taking existing ideas and adapting them to new systems. It takes time and creative energy, which was definitely stretched thin this week with everything else going on.
So, while the outward progress might have seemed slow, there was definitely behind-the-scenes work happening. Between writing, playtesting, and tweaking rules, Sig was still very much in game designer mode. It’s just that “life” decided to throw in some extra challenges this time around, from my tech issues (graphics card failure! ugh) to his unexpected sunburn-induced brain fog and those incredibly long work shifts.
Thanks for being such a supportive community. It means the world to both of us!
– Anne
Also More links for today:
- Follow on Sigfried Plays Games on Facebook
- Grab your Hero Sheets!
- Anne’s Twitch Channel
- Click here to hop into our Discord!
