its true, they pretty much do in games. Rules also scare me a little bit, i like the freeform-ness of open play, the messiness of the meandering worlds we've created up until now, the idea of being firm abut what a player can and can't do, and having to stick to that is the most intimidating part of making a game, for me at least.
These rules are wrapped so tightly in the theme and narrative of the world, so as to hopefully become obvious, and be absolutely intuitive actions that the players expect to undertake as their characters. So in that sense they're becoming quite easy to get down onto paper, and also the more i tinker and build and finesse them more it becomes crucial for me to stop layering and layering mechanics and remember that crucial to this whole event is the experience itself.
When thinking about them it occurred to me that the addition of the group pot of money in the middle (a suitcase full of cash) has now become the prevalent mechanic of the game, in a world where everything costs money and there's lots to solve what are you going to chose to do, and who will convince the others that they need the money the most... sort of like that reality TV show the Bunker, only with a satirical third world theme and no real money. But unexpectedly the game has become a game of economic bartering and fast paced negotiation, whereas it previously in my mind at least owed more to an old Avalon Hill board game. I like this new flavor, mainly because it emerged organically out of conversations between Victoria and myself, and out of the lack of a successful resource mechanic in the game. And after all money is everything, especially in the third world. In this version the money is only being spent on the Agency's operations, but in a future iteration i would like a way for the money to flow through everything, and increase the possibility for inter agency corruption, but let's focus on a first rule set then dream up a second one.
look out for a first draft here
B.
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