Retrospective+ future

In this game, I attempted to blend the Lumen ruleset with the player-vs-player aspect of Vis-a-vis. During the development, I cut back most of the Lumen systems to make the game rules easier to understand, as through my playtesting I found that the systems made it cumbersome to play, and even more of a drag to read. Because of the way I wanted a gamemaster to be omitted, or at the very least optional, making the ruleset and game mechanics simple and easy to read was my priority. As a result, the game is easy to pick up, but lacks in gameplay variety. I tried to implement more options through the stat-specific actions, but that lacked the punch of proper ability systems, and an actual weapon roster. The stats are also fairly skewed, as I didn’t have time to properly playtest a variety of playstyles. I think if I were to create another interaction of the game, I’d try to balance the stats a bit more, and maybe increase the amount of recipes that could potentially be gotten. 

As written in my previous devlogs, a lot of my process work was on shaving the complex Lumen system down to fit into my silly pvp game. The clocks were simultaneously an underutilised and overcomplicated part of the game. If I were to edit it further, I’d swap out the ‘Health’ system into a clock as well, with slices that can be filled by opponents dealing damage to you, and unfilled by performing certain actions. The number of slices would also be able to be changed based on certain actions, effectively adding an armour mechanic (which was cut during the earliest iteration of the game) without making each game lasting too long. I might decide to have the health of each contestant be adjustable to an extent, for extra character customization to provide more in terms of playstyle variety, which the current version lacks. Another thing that I want to add is a bit more flavour text, in the form of a map. The use would be optional of course, but I’ve found that people who aren’t too familiar with the roleplay aspect of things may find it difficult to picture how each player is situated in the kitchen space. This would actually make the game a bit easier to get into, as it makes things easier to visualise, adds intrigue to an otherwise fairly silly concept, and also makes the ‘Trap’ ability easier to understand.

Something that I want to avoid is corralling the player into any specific playstyle, but I also want to avoid overwhelming them with options. In Austin Walker’s article, ‘Breath of the Wild’ is the Zelda Adventure I've Always Wanted, he details the way the gameplay is enhanced by the game giving you all you need to progress through the world pretty early out of the gate. This lets the player explore and learn about the mechanics fairly naturally, and lets them fully explore all that the game has to offer. (Walker) While it might feel like quite a stretch to apply this sort of philosophy to a tabletop game about killing people in a cooking competition, hear me out. I want to make sure that the player understands that in this game, they can do pretty much anything that they want to. They’ve got a stat block, a recipe, and the Lumen system of assigning each action a different stat based on the player’s description of it. The players may try to play the game out as a normal cooking competition for a while, but that’s where the randomised recipes come in. It’s designed to be random and unfair, and the players have all the tools needed to even the playing ground. Upon the death of their contestant, the player can remake their stat block and try new methods to disrupt everyone else and secure a victory. Use your opponent's strategies against them. Create your new contestant specifically to get back at the player who killed your previous character. This open endedness that is created by the PVP format, and the rules and mechanics I’ve picked out are designed for ease of access and hopefully, the same sense of possibility that the design principle in Walker’s article talks about.

In conclusion, while I am still pretty happy with the current form that my TTRPG is in, I feel like it could be streamlined further, both for ease of access and more gameplay options and opportunities. 

Bonus: There are some images attached of a beta-version of the scrapped classes system, which was basically replaced 1-to-1 with the stats! I was also messing with the artstyle of the game at the time, hence the incoherence.

The final image is of another iteraction, an example character that was re-used for the beta of my other game, Cold Cuts, but was scrapped there too. The rest of the images can be found in the currect game rule pdf, and are images of theoretical gameplay scenes!