The Mushroom Press Design Blog

There’s little that I loathe more than abandoning design.

It’s agony but you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to kill your darlings.

So the system for my little barbarian game (the game which was like 90% complete!) got taken out behind the shed and shot.

It wasn’t fun. Playtesting revealed huge flaws. A gigantic bias to over-challenge which took it from “success-first” to “guaranteed failure”.

It sucked.

So I had to start over. God I hate doing that.

The frustrating thing is that you go from that little green bar being right at the end to a new little green bar that’s stuck on 15%. Argh!

So that’s been eating design time this last couple of weeks. Once I changed the combat system everything had to change. Ugh. This project just became a D&D surrogate. Which means work with no pay. Again.

So here’s the updated document. It’s free, as planned. It’s not done, but it’s getting closer. Please take a copy and send somefeedback with my blessing.