Where It Started 

Aldsworth, 1811 started out, as many games do, as a joke. I'd been developing Desperation in Roll20 for Bully Pulpit Games in the early days of the pandemic, and I wondered what a Tale of Desperation could look like without the death and cannibalism. I also just love hacking games and putting my own weird spin on them. I put the idea down for a year or two, but picked it up again in early 2024 when I went to a little gathering of folks I knew would be a soft landing for a janky, undercooked playtest. It was pretty rough, but I loved it. 

V0.2

The very first version I showed to friends had something like 19 characters, which was way too many. Designing the game, I realized that Desperation's 'out' cards would have to either take out two characters at a time, if they married each other, or players could have a character marry an NPC, who we don't care about because the story isn't about them. This definitely had the effect of the dwindling pile of eligibles, but starting with so many characters was overwhelming and you ended up not getting to know any of them very well. This version also included a rule where only women characters could 'say' what was on season cards, since it was difficult to write prompts that could apply to both men and women from multiple levels of society. This led to the game breaking in unfun ways like drawing a card that talked about a character who'd already been married off and having only one character to choose from when the last prompt was drawn. 

This version definitely didn't do what I wanted it to, but I still liked the idea, so I went back to the drawing board.

Losing Out Cards

I realized that although Jason Morningstar's two Desperation games both have 'out' cards that remove characters from the story players are telling, Bully Pulpit Games describes Desperation as one where "players decide who said what's on the card" and I could keep that part while cutting the 'out' cards.  Not losing 2 characters at a time meant I didn't need so many characters, so I literally killed some of my darlings and went down to 13 characters and 9 locations. I rewrote cards to include moving characters from location to location to evoke the Regency countryside feeling of having very limited options. 

I playtested v0.3 at Big Bad Con in 2024 and it went very well, except the ending card that I'd written completely failed to have the impact I'd intended. My very good friend Sidney explained why and it was very helpful, except it felt like I was back to square one on the ending and I had no idea how to end it when I'd already decided that I didn't want make it "you marry for love."

The 2024 US election happened and I didn't touch the game for several months, but I knew I'd get going on it again.

V0.4

I'd seen that the previous version didn't feel like the characters had real stakes in why they might absolutely need to get married ASAP, so I cut a character and a few locations to add Obligations in- 5 cards that establish how a character is obligated to act against their own heart. You decide who gets which Obligation, and then you have to cart that card around with them when you move the character during the game. I think it worked pretty well! I'm going to tweak a few of the cards so that they don't overlap so much and possibly include rules text saying a character can have multiple, but I feel pretty good about where the first test of Obligations landed. 

The new ending card landed a little shy of where I was aiming, but this time it went in the right direction, so I'm planning tweaks to it for the next version rather than just a rewrite. I'll also probably add some kind of epilogue phase since the ending card targets 2 characters and feels pretty abrupt if it's the last word on all the characters. 

Prototyping

During work on the last couple of versions, I've been ordering sample cards and boxes from a few places to look at options for when I make the physical game. I landed on Eco Herbage cardstock from MakePlayingCards.com with a Magnetic Box and I'm completely in love with the result (naturally both the cardstock and packaging is on the higher end of costing).  

PlayingCards.io

I set up v0.4 for online playtesting in PCIO, a new-to-me interface that I think I like better than Roll20! If you'd like to take it out for a spin, all you need to do is download the .pcio file from the game page, go to https://playingcards.io/import, select the file and everything should be set up like this:

I would love to hear about it if you play! Contact info is in the rules document.

If You've Read This Far- Thanks!

I didn't intend for this update to get so long, but it turns out working on a game for over a year means I have a lot to say about it.