Version 2.0


  • Text restructured and clarified!
  • New art and graphic design!
  • 260 words!!

Files

Messerspiel v2.0.pdf 4 MB
Feb 28, 2021

Get Messerspiel

Download NowName your own price

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Lovely work, Oz. Elegantly minimal. The stress die roll to resist an outcome is particularly good. Eventually it becomes impossible to evade bad fortune, and bad luck becomes almost certain - unless one takes down time to recover dice in the pool.

Yeah it’s a ‘death spiral’. At first you feel comfortable but eventually every risk comes at a cost.

I'm curious about the change from 1.0 -> 2.0. In 1.0 you roll the stress die when the character pushes themself. In 2.0 it's when they're under stress. 1.0 is more of a proactive choice by the character, 2.0 is more reactive. Thoughts?

I feel like ‘pushing yourself’ is a bit… loosely defined (it’s Blades in the Dark jargon), and means a player can easily avoid the ‘death spiral’ by simply never pushing and never resisting.

In the new text the extra dice derives from the fiction directly, and comes with unavoidable consequence.

Which is closer to my initial intent anyway.

Though I think I’ll reword ‘in control’ to ‘has the upper hand’ as control and stress seem sort of mutually exclusive.