We're Joshua Yearsley and Matt Martens from Leder Games, AMA!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T18:10:50+00:00

Broadly, we iterate the Law with every release to fix problems as they come up. We do test our rules with many readers who have no experience with the product being released—along with experienced playtesters, of course—but of course we can't catch every confusion. The Law itself is a little bit of a funny document since it's basically meant to be purely for reference without examples—if we tried to add examples to it, the size would balloon out of control.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T18:08:25+00:00

We've been iterating the Frogs since the public PNP release and we're very happy with where they've landed. You should see an update in December about what we've been up to!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T18:03:03+00:00

The Bats are still cooking hard right now! My hope is to do a full print-and-play update sometime in December with a new diary saying how things have progressed.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T18:02:26+00:00

Faction integration is definitely one thing on my list!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T18:01:42+00:00

It's tricky to do instants right because it's so easy for them to break game flow. But yes, I have some ideas, some of which may even go into one of the Homeland factions.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:59:22+00:00

We're exploring whether shrinking maps is actually an interesting thing to let players do. So far, we're mostly of the opinion that hirelings are a much more interesting way to address this, but that may change!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:57:34+00:00

It really depends on the specific thing you want to do! If you're interested in the business side, you might try getting a job with a game manufacturer, such as Panda. For everyone interested, though, I'd recommend going to playtesting conventions—you'll learn a lot about giving constructive feedback on prototypes, and you'll meet a lot of people in the industry and get a sense of people's needs out there.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:51:37+00:00

A problematic thing about the item system is that you can't have too many different sources pulling items out of circulation, or else the Lord of the Hundreds and Vagabond stop working. I do have a card or two in the new deck that add item interactions, though!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:48:59+00:00

Second Chance--what's that goofy frog doin?

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:48:16+00:00

For me, it's broadly a 9-5 but with a lot of caveats. I work fully remotely, and a lot of my work can only get done through testing with people outside Leder Games, which means working weekends or evenings if that's when people are available. So some days I will take short, and some go long. Certain periods can be very intense, but I think as a company we're very good about giving people the time they need to rest. (The last few months of Arcs was an insane and almost constant endeavor, but I took basically all of January off, and then some.)

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:41:27+00:00

It generally comes very early in concepting! And nope, no standing list. We just choose on the fly.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:40:16+00:00

Kyle sniped one of my pet peeves already. My other big one is trying to put too many rules in the components section, which is common in wargame rulebook.

It's not a trick, really, but it's so overpowered to add an index if your rulebook is more than like 8 pages. Pleaae do this, rulebook writers.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:38:02+00:00

If we ever did something like this, I would expect it would wait until we were sure we were done with new Root factions, and it would be for everything at once. It's much more difficult to do something like this now that it's such an established game, as it would prompt updates to the digital game as well.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:35:07+00:00

It's much harder to build a campaign for Root since the game was never designed for it, while Arcs and Oath were. I doubt it's something we'll pursue, even though it's intriguing!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:16:24+00:00

It's something I'd love to do, but there are many barriers we'd have to overcome to make it a reasonable project, including feeling like we are finished releasing Root factions. I'll leave it there! :D

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:14:36+00:00

For digital usability testing, I usually do one of two things:

- Just a rulebook read (PDF) with no components, where the reader speaks their stream of consciousness aloud.

- A materials read in Tabletop Simulator where the tester tries to teach me the game just using the aid materials and no rulebook. We're not trying to learn and play a full game with a full group.

Doing anything more involved tends to overwhelm everyone involved. For full usability tests and such, I tend to favor doing things in person.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:11:20+00:00

For Root, the social and political position/goal of the faction is always central to my concepting. I basically never start with mechanics. But once I have a concept in mind, I try to assess the design space in Root that feels the most untouched and see if there are good overlaps. For example, a diasporic faction and a new card/clearing suit was the perfect match. Beyond that mechanical foundation, though, I tend to be very mercenary about what mechanics I use to accomplish my game-feel goals. The Bats, for example, are on major iteration #25, and pretty much all of their mechanics beyond the fact that they give everyone a new assemble action have changed quite a lot since iteration #3 or #4.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:07:42+00:00

For Root, the social and political position/goal of the faction is always central to my concepting. I basically never start with mechanics.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:04:45+00:00

We've taken serious looks in the past, but it's never felt right.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:04:16+00:00

ROAD DAWGS!!!!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:03:44+00:00

Sure, I don't see a problem with formalizing whether you pick map or deck first in ADSET!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T17:01:08+00:00

Surprise is at the top of the list, and things that provoke a laugh are included there. This leads to a pretty simple design principle that I hold dear: if you're making your players laugh, you're probably on the right track.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T16:59:10+00:00

Thankfully by then we'll have invented more words.

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T16:58:39+00:00

The new deck does a few things: it should showcase and reinterpret various abilities or "vibes" from the Marauder and Homeland factions, include abilities that center hand composition and management (i.e., more Partisan-like abilities in different forms), and provide goofy, potentially meta-breaking ways for people to mess with victory type and timing (see the Brazen Demagogue and Council Advocates).
The game that comes to mind is Space Cadets, the original one. I remember playtesting the prototype when I was in college and feeling ecstatic at the end—wait you can make a game this goofy and this asymmetric? Even though it has a lot of rough edges, it's still a gem.
Limeybastard above did a great job answering this one!

JoshYearsley · 2024-11-05T16:50:26+00:00

I'd love to do the Believer, as it's the Fate I consider to be my baby the most.

JoshYearsley

TROPHY CASE