The Mushroom Press Design Blog

The Origins of Brahamanda!!!

When we first formed a team, our project was different. We were originally all gathered together by the great David Ramirez to do a revamping of the Legends of the Wulin rules set. He envisioned a “rules light” version of the game that would help introduce new players.

Our project shaped up really nicely. We started by identifying points of the game where the complexity was a detriment rather than a boon, and worked on ironing those spots out with simpler alternatives.

We soon realized that merely doing a stripped-down version of the game to introduce it was going to result in problems. Players were going to run into the problems we were fixing when they “graduated” to the full game!

So our project burgeoned out of its original scope. We began to re-design Legends of the Wulin.
During this time, the infamous scandal that brought down Eos transpired. Legends was, at least in any official or commercial sense, done for.

David, dauntless, wanted to make sure that the work we had done wasn’t completely lost. He shared with us his idea for a new wuxia game; one set in a sci-fi universe based on a mix of Hindu and Chinese myths. It caught everyone’s imaginations and our work took on a new direction.

These were the origins of the project we’re currently bringing to life. It’s been dubbed “Brahamanda!!!”

I’m the head designer of the system. Most of my posts therefore are going to describe the mechanical side of the development. Make no mistake though, the setting is being co-written by David and it is fantastic, evocative and cool. Where I can I’ll dropping some info about that too.