Already Thinking Expansion

Hi, Friends!

While we’re playtesting Fablefall (which you can join in on by clicking the link to our discord and joining in the fun there), I’m also working on where the game will go after its release. I have a good idea where the expansion will head. and that direction issss ………. co-op. Want to fight against an evil empire with your friends? I love this idea. There’s not many co-op war games (a couple are team-based but I’m not sure I’d count those).

I’ve playtested an early version, and it’s soooooo fun. But so far it’s easy. I need to make it much more difficult. I really enjoy the base game, but I’m a sucker for a co-op experience. I find my self wishing I could play it more while waste deep in getting the base game ready for the Kickstarter!

Along with a co-op mode, there will be two new forces and new factions for the base game. It’s really exciting. I’d love to talk more about it, but alas. We need to get the base game funded first. So spread the word!

The Naming of Fablefall

Hi Friends,

We realize there are a few games and media out there with “Fall” in the title. Spyfall, Dreamfall, Daggerfall, Titanfall, Voidfall, Windfall, Moonfall, etc. And I certainly considered changing the name of Fablefall simply because of this. But ultimately its a cool name, really fits the vibes of what we’re trying to achieve, and wasn’t already taken. Hopefully by the time it comes out there will be a bit of a break in “-fall” media titles.

My first pass at designing this system was themed Sci Fi. And because of that, my first ideas for titles were things like “Empires of the Void” (which was taken), “Space Faction Menace,” “Celestial Realms,” or “Stellar Battle.” Not great.

After we settled on a theme, stories and conflicts, we went back to naming. And with some help of the amazing Adam Lauver, we landed on Fablefall. We quickly google searched for the title in use already, and we came up with nothing other than I think the title of a D&D session. And I think Fable Falls is the name of where Tales of Tanorio is set, a game which I’ve not yet played but it says it on their wiki, so I’ll trust them.

Naming things is hard. And it’s a bit of an art. As you’re attempting to find something that sounds fun and marketable you need to balance accuracy to theme and a connection to your game. It needs to capture vibes and relay some expectations to those hearing about it. Fablefall is cool, but if it were a child’s party game where you’re trying to match pairs of caterpillars to flowers, it really wouldn’t work. Nor would our game work with a name like “Ready or not, let’s FABLE!” or “Oops, All Fables" or “Undaunted: Fablefall” … wait that sounds friggin’ awesome. Get at me Osprey games =)

Anyway, I just wanted to drop this in here because I wanted people to be aware that we’re aware. And after weighing the pros and cons, we’re pretty okay with it. I hope you don;t mind another “-fall” game. =)

On Track

Hi Friends,

Yesterday we had a great 10+hour long Twitch Stream raising some money for art and advertising ahead of our Kickstarter campaign later in 2024. I want to thank the Helpful Goat community for being so amazing and supportive of this wild endeavor. You can join that community by clicking the discord icon at the top of the screen. And you can sign up for the Fablefall newsletter that will let you know major events in the process of creating Fablefall.

Thanks!

Panda Game Manufacturing

While Tabletop Simulator is cool, we want to publish a physical game.

Being new to this experience, we were not looking for the cheapest manufacturer nor the nearest nor the quickest. We were looking for someone to partner with to make the game. Panda Game Manufacturing is a Canadian company with their main production facility in China. And they. Are. Amazing. From my first question to our representative, I could tell that they were knowledgeable and kind. Our rep, Sarah, was not only making me feel excited about my own game, but also giving me tips and tricks that I hadn’t (even couldn’t have) known. Working with them is making this process so much easier. I had felt like the missing piece to our design team was the actual knowledge of someone who has published and shipped a physical game. And here they are. they have premade logos for us, they have templates, they gave me tips to tell the artists, they helped us understand how many cards we should shoot for, and the overall price estimates for the game.

Thanks to Panda Game Manufacturing (not a paid advertisement btw), we feel on top of an incredibly complicated process. Will we make mistakes? Sure, everyone does. Do we now have another set of trained eyes on our decisions? Yes.

Finding Our Artists

We knew early on that our theme lent itself to some amazing and fun art! That meant that we needed a great artist. Now, the tricky part. How could we find an artist within our budget that we trusted and knew could reach our vision. Whew.

So we did like we do in many situations - we created a spreadsheet! And on this particular spreadsheet we laid out artists - names, contact info, portfolios, our own personal rating, and then a notes section (Had they done games before? Had they worked with us?). We narrowed the search down and contacted a few artists to see if they were available, interested, and able to do good work within our limited pre-crowdfunding budget.

Luckily, an artist we had used prior to create a piece from our podcast, Goats and Dragons, was interested. Crooked Nose Arts! We had first found them on Facebook and had considered them initially for a TTRPG game design. We hired them to do a piece (that’s friggin’ rad), and they were professional and amazing. And this time around, while there were artists on the list who were more experienced and worked in games, we really enjoyed this person and their style. We pride ourselves at finding talent and just nice genuine people to work with.

We also knew a graphic designer who was amazing and a part of our community already! Meg & Egg! they were so very very kind to give us a bit of a friend discount for their exceptional work. And both of our artists made up the bulk of the visuals you see on the website and in the game. We couldn’t do this (nor should we) without them!

Plate … Playtesting

I teach philosophy, humanities, cinema studies, and game studies at the University of Colorado. And I often talk to my students about not assuming that the meaning an author or artist gives for their own work is the one and only, divine, perfect meaning of a piece. And while I go into the deconstructionist ideas of Barthes and DeMan, I almost always also try to explain it like this: the artist is too close to their own work at times to see it for what it is. And I promise this has to do with my topic today - playtesting. Playtesting is such an important aspect of Game Design. Like … I’m not sure there’s a more important one. You can have beautiful art; you can throw a bunch of money into manufacturing; you can hire lots of reviewers to check out the game, but if it’s not good - at its core, good - then you have a very expensive weight on one’s already overcrowded bookshelf. The designer is also far too close to the game to know what’s working and what’s not. In their head they not only have the rules of the game, they also have the intentions of the game (these do not always match), they also have all of the non-rules - the things that didn’t work, the rules that were unbalanced, the exceptions to the rules, the brave little aspects of the game that are not yet fully fleshed out. And all of this, swimming in one mind, is like a thick sweater you’ve pulled over your head and gotten stuck. You can no longer objectively see your own game.

That’s where my playtesters come in! We will list them all in the published game, but they have been invaluable. I trust their opinions and none of them are simply trying to say good things simply because they are afraid to say the bad. These are the type of people you want playtesting the game. I have one individual to thank more than others. Elyse! They have been so amazing in this process. Not only have they played the game nearly as much as I have, they understand the vision, are brilliant with rules and mechanics, and have been a sounding board for me to pitch ideas and thoughts and bounce inspirations off of - which is how I work best.

So, what have we found in our playtest iterations? We’ve found lots of ambiguous language on rules. And we’ve been clearing that up. We’ve found out the most fun aspects of the game and what has seemed too complicated thus detracting from that fun. But mostly (and anyone who tries to make an asymmetric game will vouch for this), balance. With about 12 (I’m also playtesting the first expansion which will add 8 more) factions to balance and four different general ways of getting points, it is a struggle. However, each side in the conflict has won, and each faction has been played. No one quite felt out of it for the whole game, and that’s almost more important than actual balance, is the feel of balance. Does everyone always feel like they have a shot? I hate games where I feel entirely out of the running (even if I still have a chance to come back). This doesn’t feel fun to me. Along with this, I’ve also understood that “perceived winning” during the game, is not the same as actually winning in an Asymmetric Euro Game. That is to say, just because “Order” is ahead in points, does not mean they are positioned well to win, and if players perceive a threat they may all pounce on Order while Myth is blatantly gaining ground quickly and building an excellent force of power. But I also know, that knowledge comes with playing the game.

Overall, I’m incredibly happy with how fun the game is (even in its current iteration). It feels balanced and like your choices matter. There is little “luck” in the game and so everything feels earned! And even if I lose (which as of this writing has been every single game so far) I still feel like I could do better next time. I love games that teach you how to be good at them over time. Our next steps with playtesting are to do more blind playtesting, and have our Lead Playtester play games without me present at all. We’re dedicated to making this game solid and balanced and fun! And we’ll keep playing and fixing until these are where we want them to be.

Once Upon a Time

When Galway and I began Helpful Goat Gaming, we were first envisioning this endeavor as a Game Design Firm of some sort. We had this idea that we would stream games, grow an audience, and create games. However, we became so enamored with our own community that Game Design took a back seat to the rigors of running a discord full of amazing people and streaming games and creating podcasts. While Game Design remained a passion of ours, that itch was often scratched by creating Role Playing Campaigns with amazing worlds full of stories. And yet, we’ve been slowly toiling with projects for which we have a great passion (Adam would roll his eyes at my use of syntax here =). Fablefall was just such a product and it was only within the last year that I’d progressed that design to a place where I suddenly realized we had an incredibly fun and engaging game on our hands. And it was time to do something about it.

So I began to build prototypes in Tabletop Simulator. And I subjected my friends to it. And of course, like in all early play testing, I found the game to be fairly broken. However, through all the weird rule clarifications and severely unbalanced powers, we had a blast playing it. The game has since gone through at least 24 iterations of the rules and balancing. And there is still tweaking to do, but WOO, it is fun!

Oddly enough, the game, in my mind, began as a Science Fiction/Futuristic theme. I wanted it to be the next Twilight Imperium! However, the stirring theme of narrative and story felt more … foundational to the experience. Rather than looking ahead at the limits of humans (something sci fi excels at), it felt better to root the theme in our origins (something fantasy excels at). I remember once the mechanics of the game seemed right, I put a poll up in our Helpful Goat Discord. I asked which theme the community thought seemed interesting for a war game whose central idea focused on stories. The choices I gave, if I remember correctly, were 1) Steampunk, 2) Sci Fi, 3) Willy Wonka/Candyland, 4) High Fantasy, etc. And it was my good friend and fellow founder of Helpful Goat that suggested that we make it a dream-like world of imagination which encompassed all of these. And thus the theme of our game, a land of imagination, was born. This was now Fablefall.