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Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 6: Oaths and Visions (Victory Part 1)

Back when I was working on Root, I was often asked what victory meant in terms of the game. Partly this was the design's fault. Root uses generic victory points. The first player to 30 points wins. This metric is pretty convenient and also allows players to easily understand the current game state at a glance. But, it also hid some of the game's thematic framework. What was a victory point supposed to actually mean?

Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 5: Cards and Continuity

In the first diary I posted, I mentioned the centrality of cards to the design of Oath. Most of my games feature cares prominently, but none are anything like Oath.

Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 4: A Map That Remembers

Last week I mentioned how I didn't want to first build a game and then bolt on a suite of legacy mechanisms. If I was going to build a robust game that changed based on the decisions of the players, the game design needed to be built from the ground up to adapt to those choices.

Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 3 - Frames and Folly

When I started to build Oath, I had a very limited sense of what I wanted the game to be like. I really can't overstate this point. Most of my other projects brim with specificity, even early in the design. Oath was different. I knew that I wanted a game to tell something like a multi-generational story and I wanted that story guided by the decisions of the players.

Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 2: Origins, Expanded

Last week I mentioned how the origins of Oath were complicated, spanning many years and many influences. In fact, for a long time it wasn't clear that my work on this material would even coalesce into a game

Designer/Developer Diary, Oath

Oath | Designer Diary 1: What's all this, then?

I've been working on Oath off-and-on since Root was in development. Like Root, the origins of the project are complex and go back several years. I'll be detailing the design as well as its thematic and mechanical antecedents (and arguments) in posts over the next few months