Goals

My first goal with this game was to combine the simplicity of Sexy Battle Wizards and Lasers & Feelings. It seemed organic as they both tend to top out at 3 dice with bonuses possible. I also wanted to take numbers out of it entirely. To take the RPG famously with 1 stat, and make it numberless entirely. 

My second goal was to set up the qualitative experience system. The idea of the experience system comes from Lasers and Feelings simple "if you're an expert." I find the idea of qualitative rather than quantitative experience points more elegant/less clumsy. As characters grow into their story, their actual historical experience comes into play to aid them.

My third goal was to expand the Sins of Vertex/Vertexverse universe a bit more by adding more grounded gameplay. I wanted rescue missions to be more prevalent though the mission list may not necessarily reflect that. At one point I wanted a longer list with more disasters like storms, fires, and meteor showers but I liked the leanness of the booklet design and leaned into it.

My fourth goal was to get the clocks in. Clocks are amazing tools I think and I wanted to add them in. On Twitter, I mused about how to make an investigation system for a horror/fantasy game like Call of Cthulhu. This is obviously where Blades in the Dark came in with competing clocks of "Solve a Problem" and "Problem happens."

My next project might be another in this series with The Last Mages of Amatsu, which will be heavily magic focussed as you can imagine. Or I might go into a non-European fantasy setting with a different system, maybe something Lady Blackbird-ish or Knave-ish. Maybe both? Or a Lovecraftian-styled RPG set in Trinidad and Tobago featuring all the different jumbies in our folklore.