Playtesting the Art of Band-Aids and Bullet Holes (ft. Sam Dunnewold)

Go check out Band-Aids and Bullet Holes on Kickstarter Now! 

Sam of Dice Exploder returns to the podcast to wrap up a conversation started in Season Two of Wait, Roll That Again's Designing Fight or Fright series about his latest game. 

That game, a John Wick inspired deckbuilding rpg is on Kickstarter now, and Sam has learned a lot about playtesting, art, and more!

Find Sam:

On Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/diceexploder.com

On his Podcast: https://diceexploder.com/

You can find out where to follow the show, and find my games, here: 

https://mixuppixels.com/

This Podcast is a part of KiwiRPG!
For information on Kēmu Whakatau o Aotearoa, see their website at kiwirpg.com

Thank you for listening! Please share this show with a friend, subscribe, and rate it on your favourite podcast app. 

Transcript

Alex 0:00

This is Ways Roll That Again. My name is Alex or Mix Up Pixels, and this is a tabletop role-playing game design documentary podcast. Today I'm talking to Sam Dunawald of Dice Exploder about his latest game and his first physical game Kickstarter, Band-Aids, and Bulletholes.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hi, my name is Sam Dunewald. I am the host of Dice Exploder, which is a mechanic of the week design podcast. So each week on the show, me and a friend break down uh one mechanic from a tabletop role-playing game and dive into what makes that mechanic work uh as much as we can about it. Every episode is just one mechanic, and that's kind of my thing. I love getting into the detail like that. And I'm a game designer too. I've done some other stuff. I'm a screenwriter, uh, but today I'm here to talk about band-aids and bullet holes, which I'll let you explain about it in whatever intro you're cutting back to right now.

Alex 0:54

Thank you, Sam, from the past. Bandaids and Bullet Holes is a deck-building RPG based on the stories like John Wick. You're gonna take a bunch of assassins wrapped up in a very complex sort of societal structure, and you're gonna ruin their life through powder kegs, these sort of missions where you pick one person and you're gonna make life hell for them, and they're gonna go get their revenge. I first played it back in 2024, and I actually brought Sam onto the podcast in designing Fight of Fright's second season to talk about his playtesting experience. Now, two years later, the game is done and crowdfunding, and I want to hear about how the rest of that experience went, what he learned, and what sort of stuff he brought to the table to play test that he didn't expect, like art. I would have never thought to play test the art, but we have a really interesting conversation about bringing those elements and how they affected play. I think this is such a cool conversation for anyone who's trying to do playtesting, trying to develop a project like this. And I think Sam's approach was really, really cool. So I hope you really enjoyed this episode of Waitroll That again. You can find all of Sam's information for the Kickstarter that is live right now in the show notes below. And you can also find where to follow the show. I'm gonna leave you to it and let you enjoy this episode because I just think this is such a cool conversation. Thank you to Sam for coming on. Enjoy this episode about band aids and bullet holes. Thank you for coming back on Wait Roll It Again because this isn't your first time here. We we actually spoke in the in the second season of my designing fight or fright bit way back in 2024. We spoke, and I released that at the beginning of 2025 because I was a slow, slow podcaster as I always am. But um, yeah, it's really great to have you back on the show. And I'm super excited. It's a pleasure to yeah, well, I'm excited to see how Band-Aids and Bullet Holes has sort of developed since then because it has changed a lot, and you're, you know, I think it's just it's in a really cool place and it's launching on Kickstarter, which is very exciting. And also a big step, I think, to take a game that you I don't know. Did you just start with the intention of this is going to be a game that I take to crowdfunding?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, I think I knew really early on that I had something really special here and this was gonna be big. I actually tried to do a Kickstarter last year. Well, I mean, gosh, I I have been building up to this for a long time. I did a couple of Kickstarters for Dice Exploder to just kind of learn how Kickstarters work. I did Dice Forager, which I did not do a crowdfunding campaign for, um, which was a sort of design memoir I put out a couple of years ago with some of my my early games in it and notes on them. And I just did that like through pre-orders and like linking it in various Discords that I'm in, and especially the Dice Exploder community, did an episode about it and I, you know, we sold 80 out of a hundred of those or something. Um and then last year I tried to do a Kickstarter for uh a deck of cards game, and instead, right as I was about to start the Kickstarter, I sold a screenplay based on the premise. And my my screenwriting managers were like, don't do that Kickstarter. Um and I was like, I okay, whatever. We'll we'll come back and do that another time. But I've been like, all of those things were like building up to Bandits of Bullet Holes is like a card-based game. I think it's a little bit of a bigger thing. I really just think this game is incredible. I always have, um I've I've known that this was something I felt was special, and I wanted to build up the experience of doing those other things so that I knew how to tackle a project as big as this, because this is primarily I think of as a box set. It's it's using a standard deck of playing cards, um, uh, but there are like a few custom cards, there's a few other things, there's some boards, like it really you can print all that crap at home and just get the book if you want. Um, but it's really a box set.

Alex 4:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

But there's something else you just said that was interesting to me too, which was the game has changed so much since you last played it. And it's funny to hear that because like it hasn't for me. Like, like I think on the well, on the one hand, like there are like hearing you say it, I'm like, damn, a lot has changed in this game. Like, you are absolutely right. But I think that all the stuff that has changed is all the sort of texture, it's all this like refining of details since you played, um, where the original, the like the heart, the core of the game felt like it was there since the very first play test. And that core thing really has not changed very much. Um, and that I mean, yeah, that's why I've had faith in the thing the whole time.

Alex 5:26

Yeah, I I think maybe my my perception of dramatic change, of course, I think the core of the game, as I read through the the version that that you provided now, um, and I think the version that's going to crowdfunding, it's so recognizably the same game that I played way back in early 2024. But I I really have enjoyed whenever you've talked about this game, how you've your approach to it has been refined by other inspirations, by um new things that are happening in the space, um, by choosing to try and make it this sort of box set thing, because I know that also that's an interesting consideration with the state of the world. I know that we've had off-air conversations back and forth where it's like, I want to do this as a box set, but I can't because of stupid trade stuff and manufacturing. And then all that sort of stuff has happened along the side, which makes me think of this real journey. Maybe it's maybe it's easier to see the journey when you're looking back on it, I guess. But also, yeah, how other things have come in and inspired that. I don't know. It's it's really cool. And I'm really, really excited um to see as people can get it in their hands, you know. It's it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And the other thing I'd add to your list of things that uh has really changed the game was playtesting. Uh boy, have I done a lot of playtesting over the past few years. And, you know, I I think again, like the early playtesting, maybe we're we were getting some larger changes, but the core has really survived all that playtesting. So it really has just been three years of dialing in the details. Like I there are been play tests where I've walked away being like, the game is done. Except I think that sentence needs to have a couple words changed in it on that move. You know, like really like detail-oriented stuff. And then sometimes that stuff has like a really big impact on the next group of people that plays the game. So I it's been uh such an education in how important. I mean, it's the thing. Like sometimes playtesting is important and sometimes it's not. It depends on your goal for the game, but how much playtesting can reveal about your game and the details of your game if you let it.

Alex 7:25

Back on that episode of Designing Fight or Fright, we spoke really at length about Boomtown playtesting and how he was feeling about this sort of process. But that server isn't the only place that Sam chose to play test band-aids and bullet holes. Instead, he found a local community that was really, really great for him.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

The real big place that I play tested this game was in person at a every other week uh one-shots meetup at the local game store in Burbank, California. It's Geeky Tease. If you're in Burbank and you're listening, check it out every other Monday night. And people can just show up and bring, you know, people want to run games, they pitch games. Last week I pitched uh Genya's Wonder Tales, played a couple of rounds of that. That was like great. But this has really become like my first gaming group, and it's regularly pulls in 20, 25, maybe even 30 people, like five to six tables uh a week. It's people pitching all kinds of stuff, you know. Someone ran Delta Green last time, and there's always someone running a silly game about animals getting up to mischief, and um, I'm running whatever my fucking thing is, and um my Jason Warningstar game or a Sam Donald game that's in playtest. Um and uh a good list.

Alex 8:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

And like it's been such a great group, but it is also like once the people trusted me to run a good game, um, it was perfect for playtesting because I could bring something. I I think I would not have felt good about bringing something really early on and being like, hey, does all these people who wanted to show up uh on Monday night to have some fun, like want to devote their time to helping me fix my broken game? Like, I don't think that would have flown super well. But because Band Aids and Bullet Holes was working like quite well very early on, it was very easy to show up and be like, hey, who wants to play test this John Whit game? I got a good pitch for it. Here's the thing, it's already playing well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then uh play it. And um, I I don't know, I've probably played it a dozen times there over three years, maybe more than that. And um, you're always getting a new group of people to try it out. And then because the game was working, all the old people were like, this game's great, and like telling other people to like play it if they get the chance. Um, I'm hoping some of those people come out and support the game now too. Um, but I learned so much from there. Like it was just such a such a great resource for getting people to the table to actually play the game in whatever form it's in. That's really the hard part of play testing is the scheduling even more than like any sort of RPG scheduling stuff, but like get people to do a play test. What a what a gift every time you're able to get those people together. And um, and it was so nice to to have a resource for that.

Alex 10:01

Something in in my own personal hobby and time playing RPGs, we ran a convention last year here in Vienna, um, a little indie convention. Everyone was playing games. We defined indie games as anything that wasn't DD because it was a new thing. Yeah, you know, we just we just threw it together with a little artist alley and stuff, and now we're running a monthly playtesting event starting in May, which I'm really excited for.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yeah.

Alex 10:25

Um because of that exact same thing. I want to get people together who who want to try out games, who who people who have games that they haven't been able to get to a table because maybe they're they don't have a group who's interested in that sort of stuff and do that sort of we're calling it play storming, you know, it's like it's all about just bringing things together and and trying it in sort of a regular fashion, um, and hopefully playing with different people every time. So I think yeah, it's it's so valuable and it's something that I've not really been able to have in the past. And so just hearing about how influential it was for you, it's really, really cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Yeah.

Alex 10:58

Um yeah. And so back, I guess, to the to the server. So that was set up kind of very early on in your journey with band-aids and bullet holes.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah, you know, I thought I thought it was pretty far along in my journey with band-aids and bullet holes, but it turned out to be pretty early on.

Alex 11:13

Yeah, yeah, I guess so, yeah. An extended uh extended process. So how how has that gone? Because I know last time we talked about it, it was more about, well, there are differences between you and Jay Dragon, because Jay has a much bigger sort of initial audience to pull from. And for you, it was kind of having a place to push people towards and then being able to put things in the in there to say, like, hey, I've thought of this. What do you all think? And then someone would just say, Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah, that's really what it has become. Like, I don't think anyone other than certainly no one other than me has like organized a game out of that server. And what I found was that when I play tested with people and they were excited to keep up the game, I would send them the link to that server and then they would show up and lurk. And like, yeah, it was great to then like when I had a question about the game, I'd be able to throw it in there. And it became essentially like a group chat for like me and the like two or three other friends that I, you know, are primarily like Dice Exploder server friends or people I'm already talking to in DMs, but I could just like shove my thoughts about bandits and bullet holes in this one place where all of them could reply. You know, it's just the group chat. And then yeah, I was I was always curious when like someone who had never spoken before and joined the server like 18 months ago would be like, oh, that's cool. Like like none of those people would like show up and be like, here's my like feedback on the question that you're asking about. But when I started like sharing art and stuff, it was clear that they'd been around and like keeping up with it, like essentially the whole time. Uh and that that that makes it feel almost like a um, you know, the pre pre-Kickstarter launch email list, right? Like once the game is live, I'll be able to go in there and be like, the game's fucking live. Like, you know, everyone who's in here like enjoyed it at some point, go check it out. It was so good to be able to just like get my three or four like closest RPG friends to just kick the tires and an idea with me for a while. And like that's that's really what you need between play tests, right? You need half an hour of I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about that, what do you think about this? Yeah, okay, great, let's try that out. And I I mean, this is really like every time I feel like I'm giving feedback to anyone, they're like, What do you think about this? I'm thinking about this thing, and then they, you know, make some changes and they're like, Do you think this will work? And I'm like, I don't know, you have to get that to the table now. Like, I know you only did 20 or 30 minutes of work here, but like there is no more work to be done until you get it to the table. Um, and the the server let me do that 20 or 30 minutes of work really conveniently. Um, and so I I really liked the server, you know. I am now considering, like, hey, once the Kickstarter launches, if I have more people interested in actually playing the game, um it should I be opening that server up and like publicizing that server, like put it on the backer page or something like that, and and see if it can become a place for people to try out the game, um, at least for the duration of the campaign. But you know, to just kind of conclude our thoughts about uh the Boomtown playtest thing, one of the things that Jay put forth in her original article about doing that was this is supposed to be a temporary server that shuts down at the end of uh the the development cycle of the game. And I still plan to do that with this server. I don't know that this is a game that wants or needs like a long-term community hub. Um maybe I could create such a thing, but I don't know. I have my hands full community managing the Dice Splitter server already. I don't know. But I need another one of those, you know. So I I do think that we are are coming up on the the end of its life, even as um it has continued to be this this great group chat for me.

Alex 14:55

Yeah, it seems like uh an interesting sort of response to that original essay, right? Like here, I did this for three years, this is what I think, you know. Um, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Yeah, I should write that. Yeah, you should.

Alex 15:08

Good call. You totally should.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah.

Alex 15:11

I think that would be I think uh people who have I know I'm in one other playtesting server that I got invited to that is kind of doing a similar thing. And it's like, I don't know, does this work? It's really interesting to just kind of for me, it's almost a thought experiment. I am definitely a guilty lurker in most Discords that I'm in. Same. But yeah, I mean, that's what joining a Discord is for, right? Yeah, lurking. Just lurking. I I think as we said in the original sort of conversation we had about this, I can immediately see the value of just being able to quickly jot down an idea somewhere, just to have it somewhere, yeah, and then immediately have the validation of someone at least reading that idea and knowing that you've you've worked on something and something like that, or or responding.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, sometimes all you need is two emoji reacts for for you to feel good by yourself, you know.

Alex 15:57

Yeah, yeah. That's uh that's the the truth of being a game designer, isn't it? Um yeah, we live off emoji reacts and and people signing up to play test things. One of the things that has changed since I played this game is the visual side of stuff and especially the character art. Yeah, yeah. That is something that I think has generated quite a bit of excitement, at least from my perception, on blue sky, people reacting to this art. Uh, but this is art that you did yourself. So tell me about why you decided to do that and what that's been like.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Well, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was gonna do for the art for this game because I had a really clear picture in my head of what I wanted to look like. Um, if you haven't seen the art, uh I think it did a pretty good job of capturing that vision, so you can just kind of go look at it. Um, but it is like these black and white headshots of characters with one red detail on each of them. Uh so the color scheme is very reminiscent of like a deck of cards, but it also feels kind of noir-y. Um and I'd spent a bunch of time like just trying to go through other games with art to find some artists that I could commission to do the artwork for these characters that I I thought would do what I wanted them to do. Um and I even started working with uh a couple of people various times, and it just never quite worked out. And finally, um, I joined Over Under, uh, which was the big mothership mega game last fall in 2025. And in that, uh, this artist Kyle Farron, who is the uh formerly leader games, now sleeping giant. I want to say sleeping giant games, um it but has done the art for like root and arcs and all these other like improved board games. Um, Kyle set up shop in Over Under and just started doing character commissions or portraits for people uh for in-game currency and did like a hundred of these. And they became the like defining look of Overunder. And I had already been a big fan of Kyle's work, and I was looking at these portraits and I was like, that's what I want. I just want these portraits, but like for my game, like these are incredible. Then Kyle released them all into uh, I don't know, public domain, but he was like, here, you can just download all of them. Go nuts. And um, he also included a a PSD uh Photoshop document that had all of his brushes embedded in it. So I don't know if this is uh good form or not, but what I did was I took his brushes and started copying his style, um, which I think is just like what it means or is right. Like that's yeah, what I've done as a writer, that's what everyone does as a game designer. Everyone, yeah. But what I what I did was I sat down and I was like, um, you know, I I have more than no background in drawing. Like I took a bunch of art classes in high school and a couple in college, and I like to doodle little guys in notebooks and stuff like that. But I I just took Kyle's drawings and started not like tracing them or anything like that, but like, you know, drawing them in notebooks, redrawing them in notebooks, and then like trying to develop like a visual language for faces that felt comfortable to me and felt like a style that I was excited about. So I I definitely I think there are obvious differences between the style that I ended up with and what Kyle does. Uh, I still like Kyle's better than my own. Um, but um, but you know, I started by just being like, okay, I'm gonna draw exactly the face that he drew, and then I'm gonna be like, okay, what happens if I draw this character, but with this nose from this other character? And then what happens if I draw that character, but I'm gonna invent my own way of doing eyes for that character? Okay, cool. And like, you know, you just workshopping, remixing, uh changing up how to draw all these characters until I'm like drawing my own little characters. Um and I just spent two, three weeks just doing that every night, essentially. And um and then ended up with yeah, this this way of doing portraits that is like obviously reminiscent of Kyle, but I think um very much my own thing too. And it it so because Kyle is an artist who works in board games, um, I think he like the the Photoshop document of his that I uh let's say borrowed, um, was already set up to the right dimensions for printing uh artwork onto cards. And I also intend to print this artwork onto cards. So I think that's another reason that the particular artwork he was doing was like a good fit for me to sort of uh to develop a style based on. Um was be you know, they're they're for board game parts. Uh and I'm pretty happy with how it's gone. Uh I I'm really I just put out this meme this past week of like my 12 little character portraits um on overlaid over the Super Smash Bros. character select screen, which I think is like uh a vibe and like very fun and like a good joke, and also like this weird visceral argument for why uh stock characters is like a fun thing in in yeah role-playing games, and then and then also just like a a showcase for the art that I think looks really cool. Like it it looks cool to have them all there and be like, oh yeah, they're all very distinct figures.

Alex 21:16

They're very cohesive as well, though. They're like like you can really tell that you you developed a style, yeah. And I I I just love them. I think is it fair to say that Barf is uh the iconic character in this game? Because that that art is just fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah, that one um that one is uh very heavily, maybe uh um too heavily based on a photograph of uh a young famous actor uh who I will not reveal on air, but you can guess if you would like.

Alex 21:52

I I think I have a guess, maybe, but uh is is it Steve Buscemi? He's definitely Steve Buscemi. Yeah. It's I wish I would this is the only time where I wish that podcasting was a visual form. Yeah. Because I'm you know, video podcasting, we can go back and forth on whether or not that's real podcasting. But I just w it's not. But but I would love it if everyone who is listening to this could just immediately see Barf and and kind of get that. But yeah, just all the others, worm as well, fantastic. Like they're all just delightful. And you can imagine how much fun it would be to pick these up at a on a table and see them spread out. And like, whose life are we ruining today? You know, like I think it's it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

I think it's also, I mean, uh, something I'm really proud of is if you're at home and you're not looking at this artwork, but you're hearing the names Barf and Worm, you're already getting a pretty good sense of like what the vibe of the game is, too. Like there's the the names are evocative enough. Um, I've I keep trying to put back in a character named Moose. Um, I really like Moose as one of the names too. Just all these like, could that be someone's actual name? Probably not. It's probably a nickname, uh, but it's it's very evocative nickname. Yeah, I don't know. I I like the that that same sort of like here are some very loose vibes for you to interpret about a character thing that the art is doing, the names are also doing. And um that I've I've I've put a lot of time into that stuff.

Alex 23:22

And you kind of mentioned this when talking about the the um Smash Bros Yeah character select screen, but this game kind of feels like a real like flagpole, you know, let's talk about pre-generated characters. And you did the whole pre-gen character jam, anyways, I think, right? So like is that was that did you set out with that intention or was that something you discovered pretty yeah?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

I yeah, I just I just think um I understand uh the the pros and cons of pre-generated stock characters versus creating your own characters at home, right? Like for some people, the whole reason they're engaging with the hobby is they want to create a little blorbo avatar for themselves and and play that out. And um, I have gotten a lot of joy from doing that over the years. Um, but it's not why I primarily engage with the hobby. Um, I'm kind of over it. And I also personally um derive the same joy out of taking someone else's existing stock character and interpreting it, right? Like in the same way that actors for centuries now have wanted to do their version of Hamlet. Um, I really love seeing what everyone's version of Barf is, you know? Like I think just because there is an existing platform or some starting point for the character doesn't mean that you can't bring your own sensibility, uh, expression, um, like self-expression or or take on the character to um to play. And I just love doing that because um the the stock characters for me then are also just allow you to get started playing quickly. Like for me, I am again. Some people, the joy of playing these games is the character creation process. And for me, the joy of playing these games is the drama between the characters and like getting to that part of play at the table. And so I love uh the way this game sort of gives you the characters, and then the character creation process is very, very light on modifying the characters at all, although there's a little bit of that. Um, but immediately you're putting them in relationship to each other, and that by itself starts really defining them really quickly. Like barf. If you put barf into the powder keg, is my term for like a scenario, right? So one of the powder kegs is called dead mentor. It's like there's a a mentor figure for two uh up-and-coming assassins who are kind of rivals with each other. The mentor ends up dead, and one of the uh students believes the other has committed the murder. And now those two people are gonna fight about it. So when you take Barf and you make him the dead mentor, that like says, Oh yeah, Barf is was older, 50s, 60s, something like that. And you know, near the end of his life, I'm already picturing the like hacking cough that he has after like years of chain smoking, and and maybe he was on his way out anyway. A guy with the name Barf, there's no way he was in great shape, you know. So uh so maybe it was more okay that he got murdered. But when you make Barf like the the student who murdered the mentor, suddenly, suddenly he's this like 23-year-old, like slimy piece of shit, like, you know, and he's gonna squirm his way out of anything and like I gotta track that guy down and like really show him what's for. And when you make him the the wronged student, the student who wants revenge, suddenly he's like this lovable sad sack, you know? Like he's he's like, yeah, we uh his name's Barf. Like that's unfortunate, but also like we know he's in the right, like we're emotionally siding with him, like we're we want him to do his best, even though uh, you know, he's in trouble here. And I love the way that he's still recognizably Barf in all of those situations, but um the way that the situation you put him in, the relationships that he has, and then finally, once you get to the table, the way Sam versus Alex picks him up and portrays him, all of those things like reveal all these different sides of who this guy might be. Um, yeah, that's my take on why stock characters are good.

Alex 27:46

No, I think it's cool. I think I don't I don't play enough games with that sort of approach, though I get a little bit of it. I'm running Paint the Town Red at the moment. And as a GM, you've got like this list of 24 characters who are just around in the city, and whenever players show up, you just pick a few of them and put them down. I like that a lot. Oh, that's great. Um yeah, no, it's a really cool approach to adventures.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

That's really how modules should work, in my opinion. Yeah. Like, right? Like I just want, I don't need like a table to generate NPCs, I just need a bunch of NPCs.

Alex 28:15

Yeah, the two games I've run most recently were Pay the Town Red, which has that sort of here are the NPCs, here's what's going on with them, here's some jobs, here's some relationships and resources they have. And then um I ran Ecomofos, which is more that randomly generate OSR style sort of thing. Both have their merits. I enjoy both of them, but I definitely think from a module perspective, I preferred they're just the stuff that I could just flip up and go, Oh yeah, this guy's here and he's causing a mess and he hates your guts.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yeah, I already like mentioned this a little bit, but uh just the benefit of these things to me, in addition to just like loving the way people bring takes to them, is how fast they let you get to the table. That like really being able to take these characters and just like put them out there, let's go. Like the the time from let's sit down to play the game to I am embodying the character of Barf can be 15 minutes, and like that's after like 15 minutes to get to the place where I have a choice of six different characters I can start embodying, you know. And in Lady Blackbird, it's even faster, right? Like in that game, yeah, you like the character motivations are baked right into the text. Like Lady Blackbird is uh noble in hiding, she's on the run, she's trying to track down her pirate boyfriend. Like, great, you're ready. You know, all you have to do is like read those two sentences and you're ready to play her. And I I think that stuff is just uh fantastic. Like, I just love getting into the character drama and then and then finding through the character drama what's my take gonna be on this blorbo, you know?

Alex 29:43

Yeah, I I I love it. So you did the art for the for the characters. What how did that make you go back and look at the game now that you had these things visually represented? Did it change how you were thinking about certain things? Or were you just like, yeah, this is this is they they they're perfectly married now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

You know, it didn't, yeah. I mean, first of all, I felt uh relief and pride that I had pulled this off and that the art felt right. Um, but then I was like, well, you gotta play test everything, right? You gotta play test the art. Um and what happened playtesting the art was uh you print out all these character cards, and what I'd had before was like half-letter sheets of paper or like um cards with random images I'd found on the internet, or like stock images, or like symbolic images in a couple of cases, stuff that I'd pulled from random people's uh portfolios. And people, players treated the characters a particular way. They had like a certain preference order for kind of across groups. There were like fan favorite characters, right? People really liked it, thought Barf was a funny name and played with him a lot. And there was a character called Gabriella uh or Gabrielle, I can't even remember because I renamed her. Um, but uh she was very popular in her form as a uh a picture of Kate Blanchette in a white suit. Uh people really responded to that. You know, there were there are favorite characters uh that people always picked to play with. And then I put the art in, and the which fan which characters were fan favorites completely changed. Uh and I found that fascinating and it like completely understandable, right? That people would be like, oh yeah, the art is different now. I like I responded different art, you know. Um there's one character who got played quite frequently. Um, his name was Bill. Uh, and his his thing is that he has a punchable face and endless cash reserves, right? I designed him to be the sort of like, if you just want like a rich guy to go beat up as your villain, like here he is. Like some people don't want to like get into like like uh uh shades of gray conflict, right? So if you really just want to go beat that guy up, his name's Billiam. And something about Billy's art from how he originally was in the playtest cards to how he is now. Like, I don't think I've seen Billy get played in six months. Like I've played this a lot of the times, like people just don't pick that guy up anymore. And I still think that he like is serving an important function in the game, as I just described, but the artwork just transformed how people thought about him. And I've I just find that really interesting.

Alex 32:21

Um I think that's such an interesting thing to try and grapple with. And maybe as you go on and if you make more games where you where your art has a central focus to see to see that again, you know. I think it would be really interesting to to hear about how other people experience that once they've introduced art to certain things. How does it change how things are played at the table? I think that's a really interesting sort of research question.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah, I mean it's playtesting. It's play testing.

Alex 32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Um, and I I there were a couple of characters where I had to throw out the art because I really wanted the characters to get uh used more frequently and um and do new art. Barf was one of those. I I created this guy who um I I still like the art, like the art is pretty good, but he doesn't look like a guy named Barf enough, you know. And people were picking him, but like less frequently than they had been. Um, and I was like, this simply will not do. Like his name is Barf. Everyone knows that Barf is the best name in this game. That's why I'm using him as an example through this whole episode. Um, but so I threw out the whole art and did this Steve Buscemi art instead. And uh people started picking him again. And then I also I had like an old woman character that I really wanted to use. And the art for her was it was interesting, but it wasn't like grabby in the way that I wanted it to be. And that character um went from picked essentially every game to never picked, uh, much like Billiam had been. Um, but I cared more about like I really wanted to have a old timer, like an obvious old timer who was around to be like a a parental figure. Like one of her calling cards was uh patronizing gaze or like a pitying look kind of went back and forth. But like I felt like that particular brand of mentor figure was someone I wanted to just have in the pile of stock characters. So I just redid the art like five or six times until I found something that I was happy with, and that then playtesting revealed people would actually pick.

Alex 34:22

Wow, that's really interesting. I I think playtesting the art is is a huge takeaway for me from this because visual design matters. Yeah, and it's like it's it's like UX design, but totally not nerdy, you know. Or I guess nerdier, maybe. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Yeah, Avery Alder is always talking about um play test, like don't write the text of your game. Start by writing the play sheets and then play test the play sheets, and you gotta do that first. And I think that is that's how I wrote band-aids and bullet holes. I think it's really important to do that for um a lot of reasons, like just the the stuff. Most people aren't gonna read your game, but everyone is gonna look at your play sheets, you know. You gotta you gotta make sure that the play sheets are doing what you want them to do. So, and like that'll also tell you a lot of like what's important about your your game, what can you throw out about your game? What do you need to remind people of that you are not reminding them on the play sheets? What is on the play sheets that people don't care about? And and then I see playtesting the art as very much an extension of that of like but what just playtesting what are the components that are going to be in front of people at the table? That's important.

Alex 35:25

That's the sound bite of the episode, I think.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

I think um make sure it gets a trigger.

Alex 35:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Too Avery.

Alex 35:34

Yeah, no, I know Avery Avery deserves the the credit for that because it's it's great advice. I love the fuck with this game section. I thought that was that was an awesome like little surprise towards the end. Um, where it's I think that's just for me, that felt like the end of a discussion of an episode of Dice Explorer where you and your co-host might be like, Yeah, this mechanic works, but what if it was like this? Yeah, yeah. Maybe when it comes when it's in my game, I preferred to try it do this. And like I think just the whole tradition, and maybe it's because I also recently did that episode with Zach about Orbital Blues Month and game jams and these, you know, letting other people play with the tools of your game. Yeah, I love the idea of just give just explicitly giving the per them the permission. This is a you know, a structure, a a set of procedures, take it and change it, and this is how you could change it. Yeah, and giving the permission to them. I just thought was so cool. And I can definitely for me, it felt like it was really related to Dice Exploder, uh, but also because it's related to you and how you approach game design as well, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's just my version of the advanced fuckery section of Apocalypse World, which I mean, that game is like my game design Bible. Um, I think uh the fuck with this game section of band-aids and bullet holes was people have different takes on like, do you need to call out, should you call out explicitly in your game text, like rule zero kind of you can fuck with this game kinds of stuff. I think generally I come down on the side of like you don't need to tell people that. Like people don't want to fuck with your game. I think maybe we'll be better off if you aren't opening that door for them. I like for me, when someone is like the right way to play this game is to fuck with this game, I become overwhelmed. Like, I don't know how to do that. I just want to play your game, man. Like, I you know the people who want to fuck with your game are gonna like do it anyway. So like they don't need your permission. Um, but what I like uh what I like about the advanced fuckery section of Apocalypse World is that I think they are saying, no, no, no, no, you you actually do have to fuck with the game. Like the like the the way that you play Apocalypse World is by eventually making custom moves. Uh even early on, you should be thinking about making custom moves. I think that that's a really inspiring part of that game, but also a very overwhelming part for me. Like that is that is something that I've really had to build up over years of playing the game. Um, and in bandits and bullet holes, that's not true. Like, I I don't think band-aids and bullet holes wants fucking with the game to be a core part of the game. Um, but I put and I I wouldn't include this section at all if it weren't for the fact that I'm like, yeah, I had like these 12 other ideas of things you could do with the game, and I wanted to tell you about them, but I didn't have anywhere else to put them. So here they are. And I guess while we're here, here's the call to action. Like I like you you can mess with in the game and hack it if you want. Um, and so I I think like in the context of a like a bucket full of ideas of what to do with the game, like I like it a little bit more. Um maybe that's something coming out of Dice Explitter is the specific examples uh refrain that I have over there of like just give me a specific example. Um that's and that's what I really love about the advanced talker section of Apocalypse World 2 is just how many good examples there are in there of like stuff that you might do. So I I hope that it is providing that service, but I also yeah, I don't know, it's optional.

Alex 39:10

So yeah, thank you, Sam, uh, for this, for sharing your insights about playtesting and how everything is shaped by art and getting things to the table. I think it's a really, really good thing to for game designers to internalize, get things to the table, get it to the table as much as possible, and have fun doing it. For real.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yeah, thanks so much for having me back, Alex.

Alex 39:30

Yeah, an absolute pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of Weight Roll It Again. I'm really, really happy with this conversation and really happy with all the episodes I've done this year. I think they've each focused on a different part of the game design process, and I think we as game designers can learn a lot from our fellow designers. Uh, so I'm happy to have brought those conversations to you. I'm gonna take a little bit of a break until the next episode as I try to figure out my computer and also the direction I want to keep bringing the show in. I'm having a blast talking about game design, but I'm missing a little bit of doing the game design, like I did in designing Fight or Fright seasons one or two. So maybe I need to go back to doing that. I'm not sure. I'm writing about it on the Mix Up Pixels blog, where you can find that and all sorts of Mix Up Pixel stuff linked down below. You can also find all of Sam's details and this Kickstarter, which is currently live down below. I hope you check it out. It is such a fantastic game. There's all sorts of digital tools to play it as well. Band-Aids and Bullet Holes is such a fun just experience, and I hope you get to have it. And maybe it makes you think about how Sam actually designed it. So thanks for listening to Wait Roll It Again. I will see you in the very near future. Keep designing games.