Hello! If you're reading this, you may remember back in August I announced that Wizardman Ivory, the second edition of Wizardman: Queer and Chaos, was slated for release at the end of the year.  You can probably guess from this update that this is no longer the case!

The most transparent answer is that the game's writing felt too weak for an idea too strong; I felt it necessary to go back, revise, and solidify the structure and description of the game so as to make sure the end result felt fully realized. I am still very proud of Wizardman: Queer and Chaos, but in retrospect, it is a rather weak design - its rather derivative, and not exactly cohesive in its inspirations. Wizardman Ivory is, I can firmly say, a massive improvement, one which overhauls Wizardman in its entirety to create a system which exudes tone and ties directly back into its environment and story. If the writing surrounding that design is not up to par, however, it hardly matters how good that design is!

Thus, I decided to essentially scrap a large portion of the first third of the game's text, and am still in the process of rethinking how best to approach it. This means that the game will certainly not be finished this month, as this will put a pause on the production of art assets.

Tabletop game design is an interesting beast. It is an act of shepherding; a game's writing and mechanics exist to provide a skeleton for a particular kind of story, and lead players towards a distinct play experience. Establish too much, and the game becomes Draconian - there's only room for one kind of story, and few are willing enough to cage themselves to engage with it. Establish too little, though, and the game loses identity.

The current working version of Wizardman Ivory was certainly a case of the former; interviews from playtesting evidenced that the opening section was far too dry, rigid, and established too much information that was not directly, thematically relevant to the rest of the game. When it was ignored, however, players would often turn the game into a traditional sword-and-sorcery, western medieval fantasy romp, entirely unbefitting of the game.

This created an issue; players wanted to ignore the opening entirely, but ignoring the opening led to a game that was far more Dungeons and Dragons than it was God of Small Things. Many designers may feel this is not the responsibility of the designer to correct; if a troupe is too lacking in imagination to produce a new kind of play experience separate from traditional mainstream games, the game is not for them. This is not a wrong outlook, but I do think that, as a designer, you can work to provide a means for players who are not naturally experimental to engage with the kind of game experience you're looking to produce.

So, yeah. Wizardman Ivory is gonna be a little while longer. Hopefully, nobody is mourning the wait; the game will be much better for it. As I continue to pour over games from Burning Wheel to Basement Fucker (side note - I implore you to play this game), I feel myself becoming more and more solid in my approach towards this game. Have a good day, and please, wish me luck.

- Braden

PS: As a bonus for making it this far, take a look at the version of the wizardic character sheets used during playtesting (incredibly WIP, and already outdated)!