“Oooh, what’s that smell?” I thought, pulling Way of the Agent from the larder. It had gone a bit stale.

Last month, I started on a game called Hell for Leather for Nathan Paoletta’s Two Games, One Name competition. I didn’t know how deeply I was going to surrender to the design process. Ideas were distilled through gauzes of critique, until eventually there dribbled something clear and glistening. A game. A real, finished[1] game. Skipping away from that realisation, I headed back to the old camp, where I’d left Way of the Agent to rest. But as soon as I picked up the notes, as soon as I scanned the mock-up character sheets and document layouts, I knew there was something amiss. Way of the Agent had become corrupted, as though there was tumour there, and I hadn’t been able to see it until now.

In Way of the Agent, I’d been mashing old concepts together, in old fashioned ways, to try and achieve something new. That is not to say that it wasn’t fun or interesting. Not at all, but there were relics of old ideas in there that were preventing me from branching into new ideas. Like the 21 Arts (a skill system), which added some interesting flavour, but was essentially holding back the design.

This is all very abstract, so I’ll start to close it up. In short, it’s back to the drawing board. I’ve got a new direction for WotA, and it’s going to be neat. Inspired by Rob Donoghue’s post on Rich Dice, I’ve come up with a solution to several of my old problems, and it feels ace. There’ll be another post on that tomorrow.

So this is WotA 1, the new beginning. No more dull podcasts, no more dull ideas. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve got a lot to learn. Everything that goes on, I’ll record it here, in this open, bloggy style.

Thanks for reading.