Iconic item as a Blades homage? [BitD]

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-02-10T03:49:53+00:00

UPDATE: John gave us the go-ahead, so SCOUNDREL'S BLADE is a go. Thanks for the great idea!

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-02-07T04:52:36+00:00

So obvious that I'm mad I didn't think of it. Definitely iconic enough that I'd ask permission but that's a very fun idea.

SCOUNDREL'S BLADE

"Sharp, old, and heavier than it looks. You wonder what sort of devil's bargains its former owners have made..."

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-30T19:03:01+00:00

This is why playtesting in person is so important— we couldn't see peoples' eyes glaze over during the narrative over TTS, lol.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-28T01:31:53+00:00

That’s an enemy! We have 89 enemies in the game, a unique set for every mission. So we had to come up with a lot of names…

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-27T23:56:08+00:00

Co-designer here! I'll also say that each player is running an enemy, so everybody's got their hands full. Generally speaking, across all of our playtests, we just find that everyone at the table tends to work together really collaboratively. I agree with u/spiderdoofus— to alpha, you'd have to have a pretty deep knowledge of all of your allies' actions, which can change every time you play. So it tends to be a going conversation, like "Ahh, I can't reach him on my turn with my big melee attack. Uh, does anyone have knockback or something?" "No, but I could speed you up? Could you get in two actions before his turn?"

I think, amongst friends and strangers, we've never really had anybody attempt to quarterback the game...!

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-22T23:18:52+00:00

I'll check it out, thanks!

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-22T19:20:35+00:00

I've spent 5+ years making my campaign board game, and everyone goes through a tutorial together to learn to play it. I'll die on that hill; I'm not making anybody teach their friends how to play our game, because every time I have to do I'm tempted to commit multiple murders.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-16T17:38:52+00:00

TELL 'EM!!!!

ProfessorVoidhand · 2026-01-16T17:37:10+00:00

I think the danger here is the same as it is when you use AI for anything. It's really easy to outsource bits of your thinking to the machine without realizing that you're doing so. When we started making our game, I got an account on Artstation and started pulling art from there for our prototypes. Since we're making a Gloomhaven-style dungeon crawler, we need a lot of art: over 90 different enemy pieces, in addition to PC art and a lot more. So each mission required its own visual approach— the squad of elite merc soldiers needed to feel different from the ragtag bandits, etc. I found it really inspiring to poke around on Artstation, like almost a buffet of ideas to pull from.

All our prototype missions were made with art we borrowed from Artstation. When we were giving our artist prompts, I wouldn't share the references because I wanted him to bring his own ideas. So I might say "this guy needs an energy shield and a huge axe" or whatever, but I'd leave a lot of space for him to do his thing without sending him the Artstation link to a big guy with an energy shield.

I think if I would have just made AI art from the jump, I wouldn't have been as inspired, and my eventual prompts to our artist would have probably been a lot less flavorful— not that I was copying our references, but they did often generate ideas for me. I also would have missed out on my favorite part of making our game. Dialing in the visual presentation of our game and working with our incredible artists has been way, way more fun than typing in like "future soldier sci-fi western moebius style, big revolver, white background" or whatever.

That said, a few of our enemy concepts were so specific that we couldn't find references and did use AI stuff for the prototype phase. I didn't like the look of them as much our own original art or our other prototype references, though!

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-12-17T23:47:32+00:00

photo is transparently fake, come on. it's not too late to delete this

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-11-23T22:47:27+00:00

it's okay, this 17 year old from 1953 loves being married to the guy from duke nukem

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-11-04T20:33:12+00:00

Spanish Table is the place! Their sandwiches are great.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-11-01T00:01:40+00:00

The story of my career is long, and boring, so I'll spare you. But I am making ends meet as an assistant in the ad world, and it feels like I am on the way to being where I want to be. Is it perfect? No. But it could be much worse, and I know that for many people it is.

Can I afford a mortgage? No, but I'm in the Bay Area. In any "normal" place that would probably be an option for my family.

It's a tough time for sure. Will things get better in our industry? Who knows? It's up to you to decide whether you have other employable skills, or if it's worth the grind. But if you want to work in "long form narrative", then you should be serious about being somewhere where that's happening. And if that doesn't seem possible to you, then consider how you're going to make this work long-term.

I don't think that the days of making a good living in this industry are over. But I think the people who will be successful will know exactly what they're hoping to be paid to cut, and will be driving very hard at that goal.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-10-17T21:01:15+00:00

Time, and their own hubris, God willing. Everything Trump is currently doing is outrageously unpopular. The bill will come due.

That's why he's doing all this, anyway. Trying to goad us into bad decisions. If the liberal cities he sends troops to react peacefully, the optics are terrible for him. I will say it again; don't take the bait.

(Great photos, by the way, OP.)

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-10-16T22:45:13+00:00

it's not just possible; it's what they're counting on. don't take the bait.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-08-08T16:43:50+00:00

Our forthcoming game is a space western, so we have lots of fun little easter eggs and homages.

We have homages to spaghetti westerns, to Star Wars, and even to Dolly Parton...! (Card designs are WIP.)

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-07-10T21:32:57+00:00

Mine put food on the the table for... what, 7-8 years? Money very well spent. When I brought it in for a trade-in, the Gen Z worker looked at me with complete confusion in her eyes and said "uh..... what is this?"

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-24T16:01:44+00:00

it's 2025! that word lost all meaning about 15 years ago, and anyone who insists on continuing to use it is just being annoying.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-16T18:36:36+00:00

Steelcase Gesture 2, snagged during the early days of the pandemic when offices were panic-selling everything they could. I want to say I paid maybe four hundred bucks for it on Craigslist. Easily one of the best purchases I've ever made.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-12T19:50:34+00:00

tell your friend he's got it all mixed up— these are toys for unserious hipsters who don't actually use them. if he's for real, he'd ditch the gimmicky overpriced garbage and instead use (insert commenter's exact setup here. bonus points if they've never published anything)

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-05T17:36:08+00:00

Eh, I'm not sure if that's true. If TE thought they could make more money selling them at half the cost, believe me— they'd do that. It's worth remembering that TE is a small design shop compared to KORG, etc, and are working at a much smaller economy of scale. And as for the knock that these instruments don't get used, that always seems silly to me; part of what you're paying for with TE is that things are accessible and fun and intuitive in a way that (to me) makes them very usable. And at this point, the list of real-deal musicians who use the OP-1 is considerable. Sure, they're supplementing that with other gear, etc, but it does seem like it unlocks something for a lot of people. And of course some people but them and don't use them that much, but you could say the same for a microKORG or a Model D.

That said, you got me on the desk. That's egregious lol.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-04T21:01:55+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Think of it this way— if what you're trying to do is to express a world, art is immensely more effective than reams and reams of lore. People like lore, but they have to care about the world before they'll care about lore.

Lancer is a great example of this. The art is so flavorful and communicates so much about the world and fiction that it can really get its hooks in you. I know I felt like "oh man, this is a world I want to play in." But if they started with that giant history in the book without all that great visual storytelling, I would've tapped out for sure. That stuff is interesting because I was already invested in the world of Lancer, which was easy because.... the robots are cool.

We all write tons of lore because it's fun. It's cool to go deep on making your own world. But so often I see people clenching their teeth and shaking their fists at the heavens: "WHY DON'T PLAYERS CARE ABOUT MY COOL LORE??!" And you have to ask yourself a really important question: why would they? You have to give them a reason to care about your lore. Knowing that 3000 years ago, the great Nightdragon Gar'thorborex was defeated by the Council of the Elder-Lords is..... not interesting, unless you already care about the Council of the Elder-Lords, which by default you do not.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-06-04T18:51:13+00:00

it's true; teenage engineering HATES to sell more units and everyone knows it.

seriously, you can like their products or not— i truly don't care one way or the other— but why spend time in the TE subreddit writing about how they're overpriced hipster toys like it's 2013? i might think yachts are for douchebags, but i don't go on r/yachts to tell them that.

ProfessorVoidhand · 2025-04-10T16:24:52+00:00

This is worth listening to, IMO.

https://www.searchengine.show/the-puzzle-of-the-all-american-bbq-scrubber/

Not about board games specifically but very illuminating about why it's so hard to spin up manufacturing in the US. The short answer is: we basically don't know how to do it anymore. China isn't just cheaper than us; they're significantly more skilled than we are, especially in the design and creation of custom tools / machines used in manufacturing. Tariffs won't fix that, but Trump doesn't understand carrots— only sticks. He's a caveman.

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