Trying to Fix It? Maybe Just Nix It.

After some play testing of one of our developing games, one of the game cards had created a few edge case what-happens-ifs that had to be accounted for in the “beyond the basics” rules section.

It was a fun mechanic - the play testers liked playing it - but was it really worth so much potential confusion? We’d “handled” it, but who really wants to dig that deep into rules in the middle of a game? (This isn’t D&D - this is a casual party game. Ain’t nobody got time fuh’dat.)

As we considered getting rid of this card and realized we’d be able to remove three known (so far) edge case Q&A sets, the path was clear. This card, as fun as it could be to play, was too high-maintenance. It had to go.

In this case, we only started to consider getting rid of it because we had another card we thought might be a fun twist, and we wanted to be cautious about adding too many different mechanics, so we began to examine them all.

From this, we’ve learned (even if we don’t have something that might be better): If it’s creating confusion, and we’re doing a lot of work to fix it, the solution might just be to nix it!