Update #33: It's All Coming Together

Note: This is a copy of Update #33 from my Kickstarter campaign.

This may be the most colorful photo we've ever posted of Emperor's New Clothes. Game Salute said they're still waiting on the actual boxes—apparently those have taken the longest—but they do have most everything else: the ROOS bits and the TROO bits, cards, tuckboxes, dice, boards, tiles, sand timers… Some of these components only come in the larger sets, so depending on which version you backed you'll be getting some combination of these. (And, of course, each copy of the game comes with the invisible fleece, which is up at the top of the photo.)

 And here's a closer look at the sticker sheet: all backers at the $5 and up level get one of these, even if you didn't get the game itself. The three logo stickers are for the front and sides of the box (if you want your box to have a logo) or, you know, you could put it on your bumper. The dice stickers are there in case you want to use real, visible numbers for the dice-rolling, but I encourage you to try it out without them at least once. There are also some wolf and sheep stickers that can be used to play The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Oh, and that sticker in the lower left is for you to write the age, number of players, and game length to put on the box—if you're designing your own game you can customize it to your liking!

 A Story from XOXO Fest 

While I know a story is a poor substitute for having the actual game in your hands, I hope it's at least an appropriate continuation of the campaign. At the end of September, I had the chance to participate in XOXO Fest's tabletop night. I took my prototype of Emperor's New Clothes, hoping I could persuade a few people to try it out despite the presence of other crowd-pleasers like Cards Against Humanity, Werewolf, Dungeon Roll, Story War, Relic Expedition, and Machine of Death. But I grabbed a table, set out my blank white components, and waited for somebody to take the bait.

Since I had a limited amount of time, I gave a very brief overview of the Kickstarter campaign to those who weren't familiar with it, telling them about the ROOS but then skipping to the explanation so we could sit down and play. Many people were quite open to the idea, and even if they didn't quite get what was going on at first, eventually they got the hang of it and were coming up with fun action cards on their own. I explained that the rules I use provide a structure within which you're free to improvise, but if you use my complete rules there are limits on what you can make up. The dice have specific possible faces; the role cards have pre-determined scoring rules; the resource cubes represent three specific things. However, you only have to use as much of my rule set as you need in order to improvise a game. If the group agrees to use fewer of my rules in order to allow for more rules of their own creation, that's part of the idea.

One of the people who was really excited about the idea of a completely improvised game was Sandy Weisz. He said he wanted to come back later and try that, and I said he would be welcome. In the meantime, I played two rounds with various festival attendees (including Henry Smith, the designer of Spaceteam!). When the second game concluded, I left to go to the bathroom, and came back to find this:

Sandy (standing) had gathered a group of eight players to try the "pure improv" mode. The explanation he gave was that the only rule of the game was that all the rules had to be consistent with each other. They then proceeded to play an elaborate game that involved traveling between locations using bizarre vehicles, all made up on the spot, and the game lasted about an hour. Sandy said that he and Martin McClellan (the guy in the hat) are actually considering developing their idea into a game.
When that game wrapped up, a group of spectators approached and asked what was going on. Sandy spoke up, giving them his one rule: make up a game and keep all the rules consistent. Then they sat down and played a completely different game. 

This one was a party game of some sort—they played cards and rolled dice, but every so often everyone had to touch their noses or the table, or both. (By the way, that's Chris Darden in the background playing Dungeon Roll.) And then when they were done, a third group came over and made up yet another game.

I'd had the idea that a set of blank components could inspire creative play, but this was really the first time I saw it in action, with so many people collaborating on impromptu game design. This is what I hope happens when you finally get your own copy: that it leads to these unpredictable, delightful experiences.

Game Mechanic Ideas: Poor Decision-Making

I love the idea of Daniel Solis' blog. Among other things, he often posts game ideas that he's come up with, whether he's designing a game based on it or not. It's also a different approach to what you do with game ideas: rather than trying to keep them secret, he just posts them on the internet where anyone can see them, and if you can use a mechanic, great.

I've found that I simply don't have room in my life at the moment to spend a lot of time prototyping and playtesting games. Any time I have for playing games is usually devoted to games I need to play for review, and with the massive growth of Kickstarter board game publishing, chances are that I've got some prototype or demo copy that somebody has sent me and I've only got a few weeks to try it and write it up.

I've got a notebook where I jot down some ideas, but I thought maybe a blog would work just as well, and possibly even get me some feedback. Or provide somebody else with ideas they can use.

So today's idea is about poor decision-making. I've actually got some ideas about a game based on being a dad, where the kids run around the house trying to accomplish their own goals while not setting off dad's rage meter. You know, edutainment. I won't get into those details here, but I was thinking about the fact that when people (and kids especially) are tired or hungry they start to lose their ability to make rational decisions. How could you model this in a game?

Well, my game included the ability to pick from a set of actions, things you could do while interacting with the other kids: ask politely, yell, grab, hit, trade, tattle. I thought maybe these could be arranged in a way such that if your hungry/tired meter is high, then you start losing cards. First to go is "ask politely," of course, but then I could either arrange the rest in some sort of order or else say that you just lose one at random. Pretty soon, if you still haven't eaten or taken a nap, your decisions are completely random.

I wonder if there are any games out there that model this sort of impaired reasoning capacity and, if so, how it's done.

Update #31: Making the Rounds

Note: This is a copy of Update #31 from my Kickstarter campaign. There were a few updates between #27 and this one that basically stated things were delayed and still in process.

Making the Rounds: Gen Con, PAX, and XOXO Fest

Well, while we're all waiting for production and shipping news, I thought I'd share a few stories about teaching Emperor's New Clothes and a little more of the ideas behind it.

I was fortunate enough to go to Gen Con and PAX Prime last month, where I was able to meet a lot of people in person, play a bunch of great games, and have some really fun conversations. While I'd been hoping that I'd have a finished copy of Emperor's New Clothes to take to these shows, that didn't happen, so I took my prototype copy with me and managed to play a few times when I wasn't walking around gawking at all the other shiny stuff everywhere.

Whether people had seen the Kickstarter or not, they did tend to give me skeptical looks when I first got out my pile of blank cards and dice and pile of white cubes. However, once we started playing, most of the folks I taught ended up enjoying the game. I love introducing new players to the game because it's particularly fun to see the sorts of cards they'll make up as they play them, and how they manage the memory portions of the game. But I also really love the conversations that I have after playing the game. My hope was to get people thinking about game design and play, and that definitely happens.

The box itself will come with a blank "rulebook"—stapled glossy paper that fits in with the whole ROOS story, and a prop you can use when you want to be a rules lawyer during play. However, I've also got my version of the rules listed on my website. Right now you'll find rules for two games: Emperor's New Clothes and The Boy Who Cried Wolf (which requires three marked dice). I plan to add other rule sets here as backers submit them, so that you can see what other people are doing with their game sets. 

My goal with the rules is to provide just enough structure for people to play a game. If you choose, you can just take the box of components, sans rules, and come up with whatever you want with your fellow gamers. Or, if you need a nudge in some direction, you can start with my basic order of play: Draft Roles, Roll Dice, Reveal Roles, Score Points. Still not enough? Then follow my instructions for what specifically is on each die, what the three types of resources are, and the list of roles. And if you want even more, I've given detailed scoring rules for each of the 14 roles included, assuming you want to use my list. The only thing I haven't spelled out is the action cards, although I've given a few examples of cards you could play. 

What I've found is that when I'm teaching the game I generally set the types of resources, what's on each die, and a few of the roles. However, I've had some friends teach the game with even less spelled out: in those games there have been people playing the Professor or the Doppelganger. Sometimes the resources include fabric, or wood, or food, rather than my list of gold, dignity, and gullibility. Sometimes there are more than three types of resources. 

What happens over the course of play is that the actions that players take and the things they make up set precedents for the rest of the game. Whoever's first to move their scoring marker on the (blank) scoring track determines things like where the track starts and how far apart the spaces are. If somebody rolls a 5 on a die because I haven't explained that they have only 1s and 2s, then from now on that die has a 5 on it—and necessarily has one fewer of something else. Each player's decisions collapses the possibility tree a little more, until by the end of the game nearly everything has been defined. 

This is particularly true of the role selection. Although at the start you pass around cards and pretend to choose roles by each taking a card, the real role selection happens later. When the first player announces that she's the Emperor, suddenly it means that all of the other players (who may have thought they were the Emperor) must choose a different role on the spot. For me, this is where a lot of the real strategy in the game appears: how do you select a role that maximizes your score and minimizes somebody else's, based on the resources everyone gathered before they actually knew what roles they were?

At both Gen Con and PAX I also played a few rounds of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. This is a bluffing game along the lines of Liar's Dice, in which you take turns being the Boy, trying to trick the other shepherds. The (visible) dice determine whether or not a wolf comes, but you don't reveal until the other players have decided whether to come to your aid. Guess wrong, and you'll lose sheep. Guess correctly, and your sheep are safe—and you might even gain sheep as a reward. I've still been tweaking the rules a little based on playing with different numbers of players, but it's a quick game that I've really enjoyed playing as well.

One last thing: If you happen to be attending XOXO Fest this coming weekend, come see me at the Tabletop event on Saturday evening. I'll be there to demo and talk about Emperor's New Clothes for a few hours alongside other game designers with their games and prototypes. You can see the full lineup here.

I'll be there toward the beginning of the evening starting around 7pm, but parenting duties prevent me from staying until 1am!

Update #27: Hoke's Blog, Dice Stickers, and Delayed Designer's Diary

This is a copy of Update #27 from the Kickstarter campaign.

Update from Jonathan Liu, Designer

Hello, Backers!

Right now I'm waiting for Game Salute to get the initial survey together, but I thought you might want a little update. So here's a peek at the stickers for the dice, plus a lost Designer Diary entry that got missed during the last week.

In the preliminary survey, you'll be able to tell us whether you had any add-ons, whether you want the white (ROOS) bits or the colored (TROO) bits, what size T-shirt, and that sort of thing. You'll have one more chance for more add-ons or additional copies of the game at this point. (As a reminder, the Create-a-Game Kit will be available from Game Salute later but it won't include the sticker sheet and items may vary slightly; the Emperor's New Clothes version is available exclusively through the Kickstarter campaign and won't be sold in stores afterward.)

Dice stickers!

So, here's a look at the designs for the dice stickers:

These icons were designed by Heiko Günther, one of the designers interviewed in Update #12. The green fig leaf is for Dignity, the red jester hat is Gullibility, and the gold coin is Gold. The Wolf and Sheep icons are for the other mini-game, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. (The actual dice are less rounded than the rendering here, but you get the idea.)

As explained before, the stickers for Emperor's New Clothes are optional—I prefer playing with the blank dice, but I really love these icons, too. Since we decided to use color on the stickers, the TROO-bits option will come with colors to match these: green, red, and yellow (rather than white, black, and yellow).

To play The Boy Who Cried Wolf, you will need to use at least 3 dice for wolves; the Sheep die could be optional because I've got some variant rules in which you will bid the number of sheep at risk, but I'll get to that later. The game could also be played with standard six-sided dice, since the Swindler-level compact game includes 4 dice and you'd have to decide between stickering the dice for Emperor's New Clothes or The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

NOTE: The Designer Diary entry below was actually written up for the last week of the Kickstarter campaign and was supposed to be posted with Update #20, but between PAX East and the camping trip we had some dropped signals and it never got posted… and I didn't even realize it until just last week. So, of course, this is a pre-reveal update but it still communicates my feelings about expectations and execution.

Designer Diary: Great Expectations (or, Executing the Emperor)

I have a good friend who was sick for a long time and was unable to travel or have much face-to-face interaction. So he started what he called his Hypothetical Birthday Party, where he emailed friends from near and far, asking them to attend his party by writing descriptions and sending photos of what they would bring to his party. Being hypothetical, you could bring anything you wanted, no matter how difficult to prepare or impossible to procure. Although these parties weren't "real" in the sense that you couldn't physically partake of all of the fantastic dishes and drinks contributed by all the party-goers, they've become a tradition that many of us look forward to. My friend was able to have a non-hypothetical birthday party this year, but he still held the hypothetical one too, and it was well-attended. The question that arose is whether the real could possibly live up to the imagined.

Whether it's a birthday party or board game or book or movie, there can be a difference between your expectations and the reality. In some cases the reality ends up exceeding expectations, which is always awesome. However, when you're making something, particularly something creative, there's almost always a gap: the reality falls short of your expectations.

Why is that?

Well, to put it simply: you can imagine perfection, but that's pretty dang hard to achieve. It's why people are so often disappointed in the movie after they've read the book and already pictured what everything and everyone looks like. It's why video game graphics, no matter how powerful consoles get, will never beat the resolution of a text adventure game.

Years ago I read a book called Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It's about creating art, mostly in the traditional sense, but I think the lessons apply to nearly any creative process. The book talks about this gap between ideas and execution, and argues that not only does the gap exist, but that it SHOULD. Because if everything you make turns out exactly the way you imagined it, then you're limiting your imagination to what you know you are already capable of. Artists and creators should be pushing the limits of what they can do. We should be testing boundaries, trying new things, taking risks. That's how you grow. And it's also how you make "mistakes" that actually lead you in new, exciting directions.
Here are just a few quotes from the book that really stuck with me:

• Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.

• Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.

• People who need certainly in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous. What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy of how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way.

• That moment of completion is also, inevitably, a moment of loss—the loss of all the other forms the imagined piece might have taken. The irony here is that the piece you make is always one step removed from what you imagined, or what else you can imagine, or what you're right on the edge of being able to imagine.

So that leads me back around to executing my Kickstarter project. When I first started working on Emperor's New Clothes, I had a vision of what it would look like, how it would play, even how the Kickstarter campaign itself would look. I thought about the cards, the logo, the cover art, the gameplay, the story.

Parts of it turned out the way I imagined, other parts fell short, and still others surprised me. Of course, Emperor's New Clothes is not a singular vision: I started the ball rolling, but to make it a reality I needed to share my vision with all of the other people involved: the artists and designers and folks at Game Salute. But everyone pictures things a little differently—what I see in my head may not be exactly what you see. Until we all become telepathic, there will always be something lost in translation—but that also means that each person brings their own unique vision to the project and that can lead to very cool results.

And last but not least—arguably MOST important—is YOU! What is art if it is not observed? What is a game if it isn't played? What is a Kickstarter project without backers? By backing the project and giving feedback and arguing about it on Twitter and BoardGameGeek, all of you have shaped Emperor's New Clothes as well. It isn't something that popped fully formed out of my head, but something that has evolved and shifted thanks to you. Whatever the end result of the Kickstarter campaign itself, I'm grateful for that. It's been terrific (and terrifying) to see my idea take shape this month.

It's hard for me to know whether Emperor's New Clothes, in the end, will live up to your expectations. With so many different people, everyone has a slightly different vision of how things should turn out. No matter what I reveal at the end of this week, I expect that some of you will be delighted and some of you will be disappointed. But I hope you'll love it. I hope that you will be as excited about and as proud of Emperor's New Clothes as I am, because I think you and I have created something pretty magical together.

Of course, that's MY expectation. What are yours?

Update #26: Thank You!

Note: This is a copy of Update #26 from my Kickstarter campaign. The campaign closed at 9pm PST April 1, with a final count of 280 backers and $6,330 in funding.  

THANK YOU!

We did it! Despite the big drop in pledges over the weekend after my "Pulling Back the Curtain" update, we still managed to regain a few backers and pledges toward the end, and Emperor's New Clothes will be a reality. I think it's a fitting birthday present for the man who provided the inspiration: Hans Christian Andersen. He turns 208 today, and his birthday is also celebrated as International Children's Book Day, so take a moment today to read some stories to your children—or to your inner child!

So what's next?

I'll be sorting out a few details with Game Salute in the next couple of weeks and you'll get a survey asking for your shipping address. This is also where you'll be able to tell us what add-ons you pledged for, if any, and whether you want the ROOS (white) bits or TROO (colored) bits.

Since I'm unable to post updates directly to the Kickstarter page, you won't be hearing from me regularly after this, aside from short updates about production and shipping (which may come from Game Salute). To keep up with the latest news about Hoke's Games, follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/hokesgames) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/HokesGames). I do hope that as you receive your copies of the game, you'll share photos, videos, and stories of yourselves playing Emperor's New Clothes. Plus, I would love to see what new games you come up, and I will try to have something set up in order to submit your rules so that other people can try them out.

It's truly been a fantastic experience and I'm incredibly thrilled for all of you who stuck it out to the end. But, of course, it's just the beginning!

Jonathan H. Liu
Swindler, Emperor, and Child

Photo: HCA statue in New York City's Central Park by Dismas, used under Creative Commons license.

Update #25: Happy April Fool's Day! Ask Me Anything

Note: This is a copy of Update #25 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Happy April Fool's Day

Sorry, I just realized that many of you were waiting for something funny on April Fool's Day and then I went and posted a serious update. So, rather than bombarding you with a list of online April Fool's jokes, I'll just show you one that I think is particularly pertinent for Kickstarter board game fans: BoardGameGeek.com has transformed itself into GeekStarter today, a place where you can pledge GeekGold to support projects. There are a lot of meta projects, including one to change GeekStarter back to BoardGameGeek.

There's even an (unauthorized) Emperor's New Clothes app!

Not to be outdone, I figured I'd better launch my own GeekStarter project page as well. If it succeeds, I'll retroactively go back in time and launch a Kickstarter campaign for Emperor's New Clothes.

Reddit AMA

I figured today is as appropriate a day as any to run a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) for a project like mine. I'll be taking and answering questions for a couple of hours, so if you want some honest, sincere answers about the project, now's the time to do it!

Here's the link to the Reddit AMA. I'll check in periodically for the next couple of hours, until about 2pm Pacific Time. Ask Me Anything!

Update #24: The Last Hurrah

Note: This is a copy of Update #22 from my Kickstarter campaign. 
 

The Last Hurrah
Every board game (or any other creation, for that matter) begins with this: something that nobody else can see. It's a vision that exists solely in the mind, and part of the goal of creating is transmitting that vision to other people, getting it out of your head and into the heads of others. Whether that's through pictures or words or actions or some sort of physical object or a melody, that last step of the process is always the hardest.

You can draw and paint and design and write and think about your project by yourself, but at some point art of any sort is meant to be observed. A game isn't a game until somebody plays it. The magic of a book really takes place when somebody reads it. But handing over control—giving other people a choice about what to do with what you've created—is always a scary thing.

Emperor's New Clothes began with this vision: a box of blank white cards and boards and wooden bits, and people sitting around playing it. I had seen pictures of printer's proofs from other Kickstarter projects. I'd also been to a few game day events where I'd wander around, looking at what other people were playing, trying to decide what I wanted to try. I imagined a game that invited scrutiny, one that made people wonder "What is that?"

I imagined a game that didn't just include a small group of people playing it, but one that drew in even more people and engaged them. Even as somebody who is very comfortable playing any type of board game, I'm not always comfortable approaching a game in progress to ask about it. Most gamers don't intend to shut other people out while they're playing a game, but we can unintentionally give off a "don't bother me right now" vibe when we're really engaged in a game. I wondered if there could be a game that encouraged people to approach players, one that started conversations instead of shutting them out.

That was the initial spark of my idea. Sure, it was a bit half-baked. The game as it is now isn't entirely the same thing as it was when I first approached Game Salute, or when I wrote a letter to send out to reviewers and blogs, or when I asked artists if they wanted to sign onto a crazy project. Once I made it public, it was no longer solely my creation: other people introduced ideas and added to it. Some things I liked, and some I didn't, but it wasn't entirely within my control anymore.

If I were to do it all over again, I'd still run the campaign. I probably would have picked a better time to do it. I'd write all my updates ahead of time, and not run it when I had a camping trip planned in the middle of it or at the same time as a major shift for GeekDad. I would have thought more about the fact that people would be dropping into the project on day 1, and day 5, and day 17—that not everyone was following the same threads at the same time. I would have spent more time playing the game with people and less time talking about playing the game.

I won't know until the end of the day whether enough people stick around for the big finale. I won't pretend that I'm not disappointed if we drop below funding, but in the end, I'm proud of what we've accomplished together. We made something out of nothing this month.

At the end of this month, my wife and I will be welcoming our third child to the world. It has nothing to do with Emperor's New Clothes, and everything to do with it. I know that at the end of the month my world will be filled with smiles and cooing and dirty diapers and rocking. Things like Kickstarter and writing for GeekDad just won't matter as much at that point. I wanted to wrap up this project on April 1 not just for the significance of the date, but so that I'd be done with some time to spare.

Whatever else you get out of this Kickstarter campaign, whether you're a backer or you're just here for the schadenfreude, this is what I hope stays with you: You can see things that nobody else can see … yet. Figure out what they are, and then share them with the rest of us*. You never know what might happen.

*Including Game Salute: Dan Yarrington has said he'd love to see game submissions made using the Create Your Own Game Kit.

Update #23: "What's the use of stories that aren't even true?"

Note: This is a copy of Update #22 from my Kickstarter campaign. 
 

Stretch Goals Update

As you've probably noticed, we lost backers after my announcement yesterday. For those of you still along for the ride, I had one specific announcement about the stretch goals involved. All of the role cards will remain unlocked: the Jester, Mother, Imperial Court, Townsfolk, and the bonus Troll (in the Kickstarter-themed version) are all explained in the rules posted yesterday. Of course, there is no artwork associated with them but you can use those when playing. In addition, the Pixel Lincoln themed version and the Kickstarter themed version are both "included" as well; just change the theme while you're playing while using the same mechanics and rules. The number of cards and components has already been updated in the Pledge Levels section on the home page to show specifically what you get in each package.

The more tangible stretch goals, the "TROO-bits" colored wooden pieces, and the PennyGems add-ons, we'll go ahead and unlock. The TROO-bits will just be an option you can select when the backer surveys are sent out. The PennyGems are an add-on ($20 per sheet in USA, $25 per sheet everywhere else), and the T-shirts are also an add-on. The one remaining stretch goal, Double The Fun, is still set at 500 backers at the $25 level or higher because that's really the point at which we can move to bulk ordering.

"What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" - Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie

I did see this question on BoardGameGeek that I thought was worth addressing: With all of this "pretending" to play a game, why bother using real cards and dice and bits at all? Why not just sit at an empty table and pretend to play a game?

That's a great question, actually. The answer is that physical objects help us make believe. When my kids are playing with a stick, it's no longer just a stick: it's a sword, or an oar, or a magic staff, or whatever. Why can't they just pretend to have a staff without actually holding a stick? Well, they could, but the physical stick facilitates the imaginative play. You could play Emperor's New Clothes with no physical objects whatsoever, but it means that you're relying entirely on memory for every part of the game, rather than just select parts of the game. The physical cards help you keep track of how many cards you've played, how many dice you're rolling, how many of each resource cube you have. Certainly, there is still a great deal of memory and improvisation involved, but with actual physical pieces there is a little bit less.

The other piece of make believe is the way that abstractions allow for broader interpretation. A stick can be just about anything stick-shaped. But once you start getting a more defined object, like a baseball bat or a plastic sword, it's harder to imagine that as something else. And once you get extremely specific—a replica of Harry Potter's wand, for instance—then it is no longer a generic stick that can be just about anything, and becomes very much one specific thing. That's great if you're playing as Harry Potter, but not as great if you want to pretend you have a crowbar or a dagger.

One of the things I wanted to explore was the suspension of disbelief. Kids are generally much better at this. They're ready to believe things, to see things that we (as adults) can no longer see. When I sat down to play Emperor's New Clothes with my kids, they're ready to go and have no trouble with it at all; it's usually the adults that need the explanation of how to make believe. This is what I've been told by other folks who have tried it out with adults and kids.

When you play a game, you're already suspending disbelief to some extent. I wanted to see how far I could push that and still play a game. For me, getting to a set of blank white components still works as a game, but removing the components altogether is a step too far. (Plus, hey, it's fun to roll real dice, even when they're entirely blank.) Apparently, from the number of pledges that we lost yesterday, the set of blank components is already a step too far for some.

Update #22: Peeling Back the Curtain

Note: This is a copy of Update #22 from my Kickstarter campaign. 

[Spoiler Alert]

Please note: If you're new to this Kickstarter project and you would like the full experience, it's best if you go back, read the front page, and then read the Updates starting from the beginning. However, if you just can't stand all that blathering, this announcement will tell you explicitly what Emperor's New Clothes is and isn't.

 
Peeling Back the Curtain

A wise man once said: "You can please some of the people all of the time; you can please all of the people some of the time; but you can never please all of the people all of the time." Oh, wait: it's actually "fool," not "please." I'd always heard this attributed to P.T. Barnum, the great deceiver, but it turns out that it may in fact have been Honest Abe. (Not the Pixel version.)

Still, my version holds true, too: no matter what I say today, I doubt it will please everyone. But, like I've said from the beginning, my project isn't for everyone, and I don't mean that in an elitist, "this game is too good for you" sort of way, "real gamer" remarks notwithstanding. I mean that in a humble, realistic, "how could I possibly make a game that pleases everyone?" sort of way.

Now that I'm actually pulling back the curtain, it's a bit like pulling off a bandage. I'm tempted to peel it off a tiny bit at a time, but I know it's probably best (and least painful) to just give it a hard yank. But that's the thing: I love anticipation. Sometimes the anticipation of something is the best part of the experience, that delightful in-between moment when you know something's coming but you don't quite know what it is yet. In today's world of instant-everything, it's hard to get that sort of delayed gratification anymore. Kickstarter might be one of the best sources of it, in fact: you pay money and then wait for the results, unlike ordering something online with free two-day shipping. You have months to anticipate what's coming, to talk about it, to look forward to your purchase—it puts off the buyer's remorse that nearly inevitably comes after you actually receive something and add it to your collection.

All right, enough stalling.

First, what Emperor's New Clothes is NOT:

• a joke Kickstarter project.
• a scam.

The funding goal was set at an attainable value that will actually make feasible the delivery of a product. We will charge credit cards (if it funds). We will not be canceling this before it ends. We will deliver a physical, tangible product. We aren't taking the money and running.

Yes, there are a lot of jokes scattered throughout the project. They were meant to be obvious, the sort of thing that nobody would actually fall for. The ROOS ruse, Wysiayg ("What You See Is All You Get") Press, Hoke's Games hoax. I'm surprised nobody called me out for pledging to "kick back" with my profits or argued that John Kovalic isn't actually a muskrat. There is, sadly, no intangible invisible fleece—you wouldn't be able to find it once you set it down anyway.

But those jokes were meant to be the equivalent of jokes told during a lecture to loosen up the audience, rather than the main point. While some of you have been arguing for a month about whether or not showing a photo of white components is funny, I've been trying to have a (mostly) sincere discussion about the nature of play and imagination and games.

Now, what Emperor's New Clothes IS:

• a set of blank components (in white or color).
• a Create Your Own Game Kit.
• a meta game about a game in the form of a Kickstarter campaign (which you've already played).
• a game you can actually play.

It was also a social experiment about Kickstarter, a collection of essays about game design, a trial-run for me in running a Kickstarter campaign and working with Game Salute, and a lesson for me in unintended consequences.

First, the set of components: The components (cards, board, wooden bits, dice, box) are all real, but unprinted. You can see the current set of all the components on the main Kickstarter page, under the "Pledge Levels" section. We've updated those to include everything that is currently included.
There WILL be a printed sticker sheet in the box with the Emperor's New Clothes logo, so that you can decide whether you want to stick it on the box or keep the box blank, or use the box for whatever else you're doing. The sticker sheet may also include smaller logos for Hoke's Games, Game Salute, a "player number/play time/recommended age" sticker, and potentially some custom stickers to play my included mini-game, which I'll tell you about tomorrow. The optional PennyGems are real, though of course they are white. The optional T-shirt is real, too, and it is white with the Hoke's Games logo on the back. And the "Double Your Fun" goal is completely real: if we hit 500 backers at the $25 or higher level, we WILL double the pertinent components, making it a much better value for your dollar.

There is, as you have surely figured out by now, no such thing as Regulated Optical Operator Screenprinting. Mac Barnett (from the Wysiayg Press video) is in fact Mac Barnett, children's book author. Will Whedon from the American Association for the Advancement and Understanding of Gaming Humor (AAAUGH) is in fact Scott Brown who writes for Stage Dive on Vulture.com. John Kovalic is not actually a muskrat.

So why go to all this trouble to sell you a box of blank bits? Isn't this just a prank gift?
Well, sure, if you want to use this as a prank gift, you could do that. It'll last about as long as it took you to watch my Kickstarter pitch video and then scroll down to see the photos of the game. "Ha ha, Emperor's New Clothes, I get it." Or if you want to take it out and play a prank on some friends, pretending to play a game while others look on and try to figure out what's going on—that is another way to play it, a cooperative game in which the folks at the table are all acting as the Swindlers, and everyone else looking on ends up playing the Emperor or the Child. But we've already played that game, too: in the form of this very Kickstarter campaign.

For some people, the Create Your Own Game Kit is where the value lies. That's really where Game Salute's involvement comes in, because they're starting up a GameBits line of components. You can buy them piecemeal or in pre-packaged boxes, and the idea is that if you're a game designer this is just one more source of quality game components to use for prototyping. I'll admit that one of the inspirations for this project came from seeing all those production proofs from other Kickstarter projects, where they get a box of white components to see what the final quality of all the bits and cards and boards is. The first time I saw a photo of one of those, I really wanted one for myself. I figured maybe other people might want one as well. How many? I didn't know. That's what Kickstarter is for.

As far as Game Salute was concerned, this was a much more interesting way to launch this product line; for me, it meant that I didn't have to figure out how to set prices and deliver a hundred boxes out of my living room. But I would wager that the number of people who are actively designing games but don't have a source of prototyping components isn't that big. That's sort of a niche product.

That's where the real game comes in.

Part of the idea of Emperor's New Clothes is emergent behavior that arises from a few simple rules. Carcassonne, for instance, has a fairly small rule set (in the base game) but it can lead to a lot of deep strategies. By providing a basic structure (pick roles, roll dice, collect resources, get points) I allowed for a number of different behaviors. But on top of the rules of this "game" there is another layer of meta-rules: you pretend you can see what's going on. You can be a rules lawyer, but you don't say "that card doesn't say that." The theme is Emperor's New Clothes, so you're not going to play a card that involves sports cars or the zombies or Rick Astley. Things have to feel like they fit. Sure, in a game where the cards are blank, you could play a card and say "This card says I automatically win." But while that may win the "game," this is in fact a game that is more about the playing than the winning.

But even as I demonstrated the game, describing various characters and what they would do in the game, a game began to form. It was emergent behavior of a different sort: the way that people responded to the campaign affected the way I was running the campaign. By the time I went to PAX East to run demos of my game, I actually had a much more fully fleshed game—in my head, at least. When I taught the game, I knew what the three resources types were, what the dice looked like, what each of the 12 characters did and how they interacted with each other and scored points. I knew a good number of action/event cards, and the board itself was basically a simple scoring track. By explaining the game and playing it, I helped other players "see" what was on the cards and the board.
You'll get a blank glossy "rulebook" to use as part of the game, but I've also written out the rules I've been using, which you can download now as a PDF. Some people will be able to take the set of components and just run with it. Others will want a little structure, and some will want a lot. Here you can see you what I have (basic turn order, all 13 roles and their descriptions, etc.) and you can actually play it. You can decide if you want to write it out on the cards, or play with them blank. Or use a little bit of the structure I provide and throw away the rest.

Just take a look at the Undead Viking video review. We sent Lance a box of components with just a vague description of the game and its theme. That whole description with the Emperor moving on a track, and different types of townspeople, and the real-time lightning-round with the sand timer … that all came entirely from Lance's head, and it's brilliant! I want to codify it and play it and see if it works! (The Deluxe version will come with a sand-timer and I'll see if we can be sure to have some meeples so that you can play Lance's version.)

What I plan to do eventually is to set up a place where you can submit your own creations as well. I want to see videos or read session reports of people playing my version, or Lance's version, or their own versions. Will every game that everyone makes actually be fun? Probably not—but we'll have fun making them.

What You See Is All You Get

If all you choose to see is a bunch of blank components, then that is in fact "all you get." If you see it as a prank gift to give to your gamer friend, then that's all you get. But if you choose to see a game, then you will get a game. In fact, maybe the game that you see is better than the one that I see. Think about what you "saw" when you first came across this Kickstarter page and watched the videos and read the descriptions. Chances are, you "saw" something there. I challenge you to play that game.

Here's one interesting aspect of playing with blank cards, though, even with codified rules. When you're doing the role selection and rolling dice and grabbing resources, that's imaginary to some extent: nobody can see what you rolled. However, once you've taken resource cubes from the supply, people can see what you took, even if they're all white. There's some element of memory, but if you keep them in separate piles, people can glance over and see what you have. Then, when roles are revealed, things get pretty interesting. If somebody claims to be Emperor, then you know that you can't be Emperor—so you have to pick something else, even if your current set of resources would be great for the Emperor. Since there are specific scoring mechanics for each character, it is possible to win or lose at the game, by choosing the right role at the right time.

On top of that, though, you could also layer on a meta game in the form of achievements. I have a short list of achievements (which I will also release later, for free) that you could include, letting each person draw a few before the game begins. They might be things like "Have one die stolen" or "have three cards played on you by other players in one turn." They'll be things that you cannot control directly, and each time one of them occurs, you earn points in the meta game. It turns what started as an exercise in improv into a game of trying to get other players to perform certain actions within the scope of this game.

Just yesterday I was sent a link to Yoko Ono's "Play It By Trust" white chess set. It's sort of a high-brow art project, but at the same time it makes sense to me. I imagine there are chess masters who would be able to play this because they can hold all of the pieces and ownership in their head, whether they're white or not. They might even be able to play a game of chess with no actual pieces on the board whatsoever. But for people who don't know chess that well, it becomes a game of convincing the other player: arguing over whether a piece is yours or not before you can move it. It's no longer just chess, but it is still a game.

As a bonus for International TableTop Day, here's another game that you can play using the components from Emperor's New Clothes. It's called The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and it's a simple dice-rolling bluffing game I co-developed with Darrell Louder. Download the rules for The Boy Who Cried Wolf here. I also have an Emperor's New Clothes press-your-luck card game, but that wasn't really an essential part of this campaign and I wasn't sure whether or not to include it. I may throw that in later.

So why is Emperor's New Clothes worth backing?

Like I said, it's not for everyone. (Really, now, how often have you seen a Kickstarter campaign that tells you that?)

Not everyone wants a storytelling game or a Create Your Own Game Kit. Most people browsing Kickstarter tabletop games are looking for a conventional game, something that has art they can see and an inflexible rule set. That's what I'm usually looking for myself. But with things like Superfight! and Story Wars and Machine of Death, clearly there are people looking for something that involves more imagination and subjectivity, games with a lot of wiggle room.

Can you get all of these components yourself? Sure. Except for the stickers and the T-shirt, everything you see here is available elsewhere. You might even be able to cobble together your own set by cannibalizing existing games. With a little legwork, you can probably find all of the components we're including (or something similar) for a little bit less. However, if we hit that Double Your Fun stretch goal, then everyone benefits, because you'd get more components for the money than you could by buying them yourself. Now we all get to play another game called The Prisoner's Dilemma: if some people pull out funding and some people stay, then the people who stay don't get as good a deal and they may feel like they should've pulled out. But if everyone keeps their funding in, then it's a better deal for everyone.

But, as I said in my very first update, what you're buying isn't just a box of components, or a Create Your Own Game Kit, or even a weird meta game that I think you might enjoy actually playing. What you're buying is the story. I hope that I've given you an interesting experience this month, a rare instance of not being able to simply consult Google or Snopes to find out if something is real. It hasn't been just a one-man show: you have participated here in the comments, on BoardGameGeek and Twitter, by making up your own rules or arguing about whether or not there's anything there at all. As hokey as it sounds, the Kickstarter campaign has been a collaborative piece of performance art, one that won't cost you a dime unless you feel like spending it.

I've spent most of this month telling you a long story about a fantastic game. The price of the story is pay-what-you-want: I purposely made all of my updates public rather than backer-only. If you've enjoyed reading along, I'd love if you put a tip in the jar. If you liked it enough that you want a memento of the story, then that's what the physical game is.

It's a tangible artifact that serves as a souvenir of this tale—and one that I hope inspires you to play (and invent!) many more games.

Update #21: Meet the Artists: James Stowe & Jonathan Hill, Kickstarter-Themed Version

Note: This is a copy of Update #21 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Meet the Artists: James Stowe and Jonathan Hill

If you like RPGs and webcomics, have I got a site for you: SidekickQuests.com. James Stowe's online comic features a small band of sidekicks in your typical RPG fantasy world. What's fun is that occasionally there will be little indicators showing what the character "rolled" for a particular skill, which is then translated to how the action plays out in the comic, as in the sample page below:

On top of that, he's also been developing an actual RPG as well! So James has some experience in combining his illustrations and game design, skills that are also useful in a project like Emperor's New Clothes. Although Emperor's New Clothes is designed for older players, James' illustrations make me want to do a kid-friendly version, too. Well, maybe that can be my next project after I recover from this one.

Jonathan Hill is an illustrator and cartoonist. He illustrated Americus (written by MK Reed), which is about a small town and the controversy surrounding a fantasy fiction series. The story in Americus mirrors the real-life controversies around the Harry Potter series. For this graphic novel MK and Jonathan created their own heroine, Apathea Ravenchilde, and when characters read the books, Jonathan's illustrations bring the stories to life.

Although there are only small excerpts of Apathea Ravenchilde within the graphic novel, MK and Jonathan had developed a lot of the characters and settings anyway. So they created a guidebook to the world, making it look something like a D&D manual written as a textbook for adventurers. (I bought a copy. It's fantastic.) What I love about it is the lengths they went to in order to create an artifact from an imaginary world inside their imaginary world.

You can see more of Jonathan's work at his website OneOfTheJohns.com.

Kickstarter-themed Version

Yesterday I talked about expectations and execution, and the way Emperor's New Clothes is really a collaborative project, that it has evolved due to your input. So here's another themed version inspired by all of the dialogue surrounding Emperor's New Clothes.

Like the Pixel Lincoln crossover version, this is simply a reskinning of the game, with almost all the same gameplay (and one fun change). But as I've said before, simply changing the theme, without actually changing gameplay, can make a tremendous difference in how a game feels when you play it. It's hard to explain exactly why, but imagine playing Zombie Dice with just regular six-sided dice. You could do it, but it would be too abstract. My kids wouldn't like it, and I bet you'd never have a blockbuster hit.

So for this version of the game, instead of a vain Emperor and clothes nobody could see, the game reflects the Kickstarter campaign itself. You've got two Swindlers, myself and Game Salute, and instead of an outfit it's a board game. The Emperor has been replaced by Backers, and the Child will be played by Ken Grazier of Geek-Craft. (By the way, I did meet Ken in person at PAX East and we bonded over a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse. He presented me with a peace offering of custom buttons, and I gave him a set of ROOS PennyGems.)

Here are the rest of the characters:

• Jester = Kyle Scheele of Ridiculo.us
• Minister = BoardGameGeek
• Knight = Kickstarter
• Lady-in-Waiting = Amazon
• Seamstress = Game Reviewers
• Fisherman = Byron Campbell of NerdSpan
• Farmer = Non-Backers

You'll notice there's no Mother in this version, because nobody stopped Ken from posting the spoiler. Instead, we have the Troll: I won't name anyone in particular, but the troll is played by Internet trolls. Here's how he works: anyone who interacts with the Troll in any way (after the roles are revealed) loses 1 dignity, and the Troll scores 1 point for each dignity discarded this way.

You'll notice that this adds some interesting nuances to the game and although it's not a perfect analogy, it's a modern twist on the classic tale.

And what better artist for a Kickstarter-themed version than Adam Rebottaro of Greater Than Games, a company that has had tremendous success on Kickstarter? Adam is, of course, the artist for Sentinels of the Multiverse, a cooperative comic book superhero game which has run several successful campaigns for the base game and expansions. They also have the distinction of being the first project I've backed which delivered the reward before the estimated delivery date.

I met with the GTG guys at PAX last weekend and pitched them on my game, and although a Sentinels crossover wasn't in the cards, I think having Adam involved is still a pretty sweet deal.

As with the Pixel Lincoln version, there is no extra cost involved with this version; when you get your backer survey after the campaign closes, simply pick the Kickstarter version option.

Update #19/20: Meet the Artist: Gene Luen Yang, Poll: ROOS and TROO Bits

Note: This is a copy of Update #19 & 20 from my Kickstarter campaign. Due to an error, the first part got posted but not the second, and Kickstarter doesn't allow you to edit updates after half an hour has passed. So the second part got posted as Update #20.

Meet the Artist: Gene Luen Yang

Gene Luen Yang is a writer and cartoonist whose comic books often (but not always) deal with Asian American identity. He's won a couple of Eisner Awards and has both illustrated his own comics and written comics illustrated by other artists. Later this year he's publishing a two-part work called Boxers & Saints which looks at the Boxer Rebellion from both sides: the protagonists in one book end up being the antagonists in the other. I thought that was a fascinating way to tell a story, one that offers multiple perspectives and interpretations of a common experience.

Gene's illustrations are more stylized and the bold lines and graphic qualities are almost iconic, which makes them great for a board game. Gene also has fun putting his own spin on iconic characters, as you can see from these Chinese opera versions of Captain American and Iron Man.

One comic that Gene wrote (but didn't illustrate) that really struck a chord with me was The Eternal Smile, a collection of three interconnected stories illustrated by Derek Kirk Kim. The third one, "Urgent Request," is about a young woman named Janet who strikes up a romance with a Nigerian prince over the internet. While it seems at first that it's going to be some sort of cautionary tale about internet scams. Gene manages to make into something so much more, a hearfelt story about the power of make believe.

For more about Gene, you can visit his website GeneYang.com.

Poll: ROOS and TROO Bits

Hi, we're getting closer to our "Double Your Fun" stretch goal where we double the number of most of the components (not the boards, for instance) in each game. One backer made a good point: he would like to try Emperor's New Clothes with a wide range of players and asked if, when the components are doubled, if he could get one set of ROOS bits and one set of Typical Regulated Operator Optical (TROO), conventionally colored bits.

I checked in with Game Salute, and it would be tricky to have a bunch of different options if we hit that Double level, if some people wanted all ROOS bits and some wanted TROO bits and some wanted half and half. The easiest solution would be for everyone to get half and half: in fact, that would mean that you get exactly what you're pledging for right now, plus a free set of the other type of bits at no extra cost. But I'm wondering if there are a lot of backers who would prefer to have all of their bits either conventionally colored or ROOS. If it seems like a majority of people want all of one type, then we'd go with just those two options at the end, without a half-and-half option.
The disadvantage to having half-and-half, of course, is that you still run into the same issues of running out of resource cubes and having to make do with other markers, or else mixing up your ROOS and TROO bits. (In which case you'll probably need to rely on a non-gamer to help you sort those apart.)

We are also considering offering extra packs of Bits as an add-on, so you can just increase your pledge and throw in either ROOS or TROO bits along with the PennyGems and T-shirts. Game Salute will provide more details about this before the final funding is complete, but that way even if we don't hit the Double Your Fun goal you'll still be able to get both types of bits without having to pledge for two copies of the game.

Speaking of which, if you are interested in getting multiple copies of the game, this works the same was as the add-ons. Simply hit the "Manage Your Pledge" button and increase your pledge amount by whichever version of the game you'd like to add. For instance, if you're currently backing at THE EMPEROR early bird level for $70 but you'd like to add on a copy of the compact version, increase your pledge to $95 ($70 for the deluxe, $25 for the compact) and leave your reward level selection at THE EMPEROR. If you've already pledged for at least one copy of the game, we'll honor the early bird prices for the add-ons even if those early bird slots fill up.

So, which would you prefer in your box: all the same type of bits, or half and half? Let us know in the comments!

Update #18: Meet the Artist: Lee Moyer, A Note About the Art, Designer Diary: Great Expectations

Note: This is a copy of Update #18 from my Kickstarter campaign. A few updates, including this one, were written the weekend before because I was going to be camping during the last week of the campaign. I realized as I was posting these copies that the Designer Diary for this date (at the bottom) actually never got posted.

Meet the Artist: Lee Moyer

Lee Moyer is, simply put, amazing. He's been doing digital art since 1989, back when the only computer I'd used myself was an Apple II, and his portfolio includes major corporate clients, posters, comics, roleplaying games, and even a Kickstarter-funded board game called The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, which is how I first came across his work. (Yes, I'm very late to the party. Thanks for having me.) I met him in person at PAX while he was promoting The 13th Age. He's quite versatile and a look at his portfolio will show you that he's accomplished in a wide range of styles.

Above are two of Lee's pieces—on the left, a poster for the Northwest Children's Theater presentation of "Art" by Yasmina Reza; on the right, Alice in Wonderland from his 2013 Literary Pin-up Calendar.

I approached Lee about Emperor's New Clothes on a whim; I really admired his artwork and hoped that my coverage of Doom had softened him up a little bit. But I needn't have worried: Lee's an incredibly approachable guy, very friendly, and was enthusiastic about my game. We spent a few hours kicking around ideas and he gave me some great advice. Unfortunately because of time constraints we weren't able to have him design the logo but I'm still very pleased to have Lee involved in other parts of the project.

After his own Kickstarter, Lee also wrote a white paper about Kickstarter that I personally found informative and have referenced on occasion. Visit LeeMoyer.com for some samples of his work, and click the "Journal" link for his blog.

A Note About the Art

A few of you have expressed that the number of artists we've got working on the project is a little overwhelming. I know how you feel! It can be hard to get everything I need from everybody on a strict schedule, but all of these folks have been fantastic and (for the most part) on time with their submissions. That's also why I wanted to have things completed ahead of time, so that from day one you could see the results right away rather than having to wait for final artwork before you make a decision about pledging.

As you've already surmised, the cover art was a collaboration for which all of the artists contributed equally according to the specifications I sent them, and the end product didn't require too much tweaking to arrive at its final form—it's essentially the same as what appears on the game board, though of course the cover doesn't have a scoring track on it. If you take a closer look at pages 5-12 of the Print-and-Play files, you'll notice that the artist's name is included on each card for which they provided the illustration. That way if you have a favorite card you can easily tell who's responsible for what you see.

Designer Diary: Great Expectations (or, Executing the Emperor)

I have a good friend who was sick for a long time and was unable to travel or have much face-to-face interaction. So he started what he called his Hypothetical Birthday Party, where he emailed friends from near and far, asking them to attend his party by writing descriptions and sending photos of what they would bring to his party. Being hypothetical, you could bring anything you wanted, no matter how difficult to prepare or impossible to procure. Although these parties weren't "real" in the sense that you couldn't physically partake of all of the fantastic dishes and drinks contributed by all the party-goers, they've become a tradition that many of us look forward to. My friend was able to have a non-hypothetical birthday party this year, but he still held the hypothetical one too, and it was well-attended. The question that arose is whether the real could possibly live up to the imagined.

Whether it's a birthday party or board game or book or movie, there can be a difference between your expectations and the reality. In some cases the reality ends up exceeding expectations, which is always awesome. However, when you're making something, particularly something creative, there's almost always a gap: the reality falls short of your expectations.

Why is that?

Well, to put it simply: you can imagine perfection, but that's pretty dang hard to achieve. It's why people are so often disappointed in the movie after they've read the book and already pictured what everything and everyone looks like. It's why video game graphics, no matter how powerful consoles get, will never beat the resolution of a text adventure game.

Years ago I read a book called Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It's about creating art, mostly in the traditional sense, but I think the lessons apply to nearly any creative process. The book talks about this gap between ideas and execution, and argues that not only does the gap exist, but that it should. Because if everything you make turns out exactly the way you imagined it, then you're limiting your imagination to what you know you are already capable of. Artists and creators should be pushing the limits of what they can do. We should be testing boundaries, trying new things, taking risks. That's how you grow. And it's also how you make "mistakes" that actually lead you in new, exciting directions.

Here are just a few quotes from the book that really stuck with me:

Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.

Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.

People who need certainly in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous. What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy of how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way.

That moment of completion is also, inevitably, a moment of loss—the loss of all the other forms the imagined piece might have taken. The irony here is that the piece you make is always one step removed from what you imagined, or what else you can imagine, or what you're right on the edge of being able to imagine.

So that leads me back around to executing my Kickstarter project. When I first started working on Emperor's New Clothes, I had a vision of what it would look like, how it would play, even how the Kickstarter campaign itself would look. I thought about the cards, the logo, the cover art, the gameplay, the story.

Parts of it turned out the way I imagined, other parts fell short, and still others surprised me. Of course, Emperor's New Clothes is not a singular vision: I started the ball rolling, but to make it a reality I needed to share my vision with all of the other people you see listed in the credits section, the artists and designers and folks at Game Salute. But everyone pictures things a little differently—what I see in my head may not be exactly what you see. Until we all become telepathic, there will always be something lost in translation—but that also means that each person brings their own unique vision to the project and that can lead to very cool results.

And last but not least —arguably most important—is you! What is art if it is not observed? What is a game if it isn't played? What is a Kickstarter project without backers? By backing the project and giving feedback and arguing about it on Twitter and BoardGameGeek, all of you have shaped Emperor's New Clothes as well. It isn't something that popped fully formed out of my head, but something that has evolved and shifted thanks to you. Whatever the end result of the Kickstarter campaign itself, I'm grateful for that. It's been terrific (and terrifying) to see my idea take shape this month.

It's hard for me to know whether Emperor's New Clothes, in the end, will live up to your expectations. With so many different people, everyone has a slightly different vision of how things should turn out. No matter what I reveal at the end of this week, I expect that some of you will be delighted and some of you will be disappointed. But I hope you'll love it. I hope that you will be as excited about and as proud of Emperor's New Clothes as I am, because I think you and I have created something pretty magical together.

Of course, that's my expectation. What are yours?

Update #17: Post PAX, Meet the Artists: Laura Lee Gulledge & Avery Monsen, Special Pixel Lincoln Announcement, Kickstarter Exclusives

Note: This is a copy of Update #17 from my Kickstarter campaign. 

Hey, everyone! Sorry for the radio silence, but I've been at PAX East this past weekend with the Game Salute folks and it's hard to post updates when you can't get a computer with wifi during a gaming convention. I had a great time showing off Emperor's New Clothes. Thanks to all the folks who stopped by to check out the game or chatted with me about it! It was a lot of fun to show people my prototype in person, and I got a lot of good feedback. Every time I played the game it felt a little different and I even made a few minor tweaks here and there to help balance the roles.

You may have noticed that our funding level dropped again over the weekend. I put in a comment about it in the Comments section on Thursday but wanted to address it here also. I checked in with Game Salute and it was another large pledge who pulled out, and I think it caused a chain reaction with several other backers deciding to cancel or reduce pledges as well. I asked Game Salute to look over all of the pledges again to see if there were any more that look like they were obviously spoof pledges, and it looks like the others are probably legitimate, with the exception of the remaining $500 Narcissist pledge, which may or may not be real. (Of course, there could be any number of other pledges at smaller levels that may cancel before the end, but those are impossible to identify.)

It does mean we've dropped below some of the stretch goals, but I'm hoping we can pick up some steam in this last week to get those PennyGems and the TROO bits option. Stay tuned! Spread the word!

Meet the Artists: Laura Lee Gulledge & Avery Monsen

Laura Lee Gulledge was introduced to me by another artist. I hadn't seen her work before but I had come across her name in connection with her upcoming graphic novel, Will & Whit. When I looked through her gallery, I really loved the way she played with ideas and some of her images really stuck with me, like these here. You can find out more about her work at her website.

She also has a brilliant comic called Sealed which is all about Tupperware. No, seriously. Laura Lee strikes this balance between mockery and admiration of the plastic lifestyle, which her mom sold when she was growing up. I find myself in a similar position, wanting to offer both critique and praise for things like the board game industry, so I appreciate her skill in navigating that narrow path. (Note to parents: the comic is cheerful and fun but has a very small amount of sexual content that may not be appropriate for kids.)

Laura Lee says: "I grew up in an avid board-game-playing family, so I find this a fun concept. It sounds like something that the Improv Everywhere guys would possibly be interested in playing." (Which is an awesome idea—if I had a publicist, I'd put them on that right now.)

Avery Monsen is an actor and a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, a sketch comedy team in New York. More pertinent to this project, he's responsible for the drawings of dinosaurs, milk jugs, sheep, and socks in the best-selling All My Friends Are Dead, a book of morbid humor. (And of course there's the sequel All My Friends Are Still Dead, and an unrelated book titled I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York.)

I loved the non-plussed expressions so many of his characters have, and I think you'll agree we put that to great use in our game. Sure, the Emperor is naked and he's been humiliated in front of all of his subjects, but the parade continues on. You can see more of Avery's work at his website AveryMonsen.com.

Special Belated Goof-Off Day Announcement

We hit 1,000 Likes on Facebook! So we have a special post-PAX announcement: a Pixel Lincoln Theme Crossover Thing! Last Friday, March 22 was National Goof-Off Day, so I'm told, and it was also the start of PAX East … and a beautiful partnership.

One of the things that has happened with a lot of Kickstarter projects is crossovers. Sentinels of Multiverse and Devastation of Indines, Machine of Death and Story Wars, Pixel Lincoln and Boss Monster … it's a lot of fun when characters from one game show up in another one. I was hoping to do more crossovers but for many of the games the timing didn't work out and we never managed to make all the arrangements. But at PAX East I met Jason Tagmire from Pixel Lincoln and showed him my game. I played a round with him, his brother George, and Marty Cobb (who did the artwork for Pixel Lincoln). They all really loved the game, so we're gonna dress up Pixel Lincoln in the Emperor's New Clothes!

In case you don't already know what Pixel Lincoln is, it's a 16-bit side-scrolling adventure deck-building card game, starring our 16th President fighting off bad guys using meat-based weapons like a chicken cannon, like the one you see below. (Here's my GeekDad review of the game.) It's currently in production and is expected to release this summer.

We're not rewriting any rules or anything here—it's a simple character replacement with all of the mechanics remaining the same—but I do think that changing the theme can often change the feel of a game significantly. (Remember what I said about storytelling?) Yes, it's a bit bizarre putting our 16-bit 16th President into a classic story about some fine threads and a couple of con men, but I think it makes as much sense as Lincoln fighting luchadores and puking turtles with a trusty beardarang. (We've just replaced the role cards; the action/event cards will stay the same.) Despite being at PAX, Marty and I were able to finalize all of the artwork that will be used for this version of the game.

Here's how the characters will map out:

Emperor = Pixel Lincoln
2 Swindlers = Luchadores
Child = Totally T-Rex
Mother = Rose
Jester = Booth
Minister = Laser Shark
Knight = Sir Cares-A-Lot
Lady-in-Waiting = Bandatron
Seamstress = Foxgirl2005
Fisherman = Hip Hop Alien
Farmer = Puking Turtle

When you fill out your backer survey at the close of the campaign, just choose the Pixel Lincoln option and you'll be able to play the game using this cast of characters instead of the classic characters. The Pixel Lincoln cards will be printed with the same ROOS technology as the standard set, so you can expect the same level of detail that you've seen on all of the cards already. (Note: Pixel Emperor Lincoln's New Clothes may not be the final title but it sounds pretty awesome, right?)

The original Pixel Lincoln Kickstarter campaign is over, but Jason is currently running another campaign for the Pixel Lincoln Bicycle Playing Cards—and if you missed out the first time, there are reward levels here that include the whole deck-building game as well. Check it out!

Kickstarter Exclusives

Now, I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of exclusive content—things that are added to a game that can only be obtained in the Kickstarter campaign but not later. For a completist, it means that if you missed the campaign then you will never be able to own the "complete" game. On the other hand, I do understand that it's nice for Kickstarter backers to get something extra. Well, in discussing our project with Game Salute and Wysiayg Press, we came to the difficult decision to do a very limited print run of Emperor's New Clothes. Most of the money from the campaign is going toward fulfilling rewards and the Kickstarter and Amazon fees. Wysiayg isn't actually making any money off this project: they're just willing to let us use the ROOS printing and we only pay what it costs them. And of course we're not making any money on the fleeces either; those are just a big thank you to all you awesome backers.

What this means, though, is that we are only making as many copies of Emperor's New Clothes as we need to fulfill rewards, plus some additional copies to send to press for reviews and maybe a couple for giveaways. We aren't planning to have extras for stores, online or off, so if you're interested in a finished copy of the game, this is your only guaranteed way to buy it. (If the game turns out to be much more popular after it is actually shipped, then I guess we can revisit the idea, but I don't know if it will still be at the same price.)

I know there are some people who really want their friendly local game store to benefit and so they're reluctant to pledge through Kickstarter. If that's you, then please check out the Springboard Local Support option. If you have your game store sign up, then you can pledge here, have the game shipped to your local store for pickup, and your store gets a credit just as if you bought it from them. Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything extra! You just fill out the option for Springboard Local Support when you fill out your backer survey when the campaign closes.

Update #16: Meet the Artist: Adam Rex & Chuck Gamble, Designer Diary: Believing Is Seeing, You Got Fleeced!

Note: This is a copy of Update #16 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Meet the Artists: Adam Rex and Chuck Gamble

We've got several more artists to introduce and I realize I'm running out of time, so we're doubling up today!

Adam Rex is a man of many talents. He has illustrated many books with other authors, including Neil Gaiman and Mac Barnett, plus he's written and illustrated several books of his own. One of my current favorites is the Cold Cereal Saga, which is about a breakfast cereal company that is stealing glamour from magical beasts and putting it into their cereal for nefarious purposes. It's all about things that are more than what they appear to be. But this isn't a new subject for Adam; one of his early picture books, Guess Again? is a playful guessing game for kids that continually turns the tables on their expectations, and it leaves my kids in stitches. (Um, not literally.)

Of working on Emperor's New Clothes, Adam says: "This is a return to form for me—I used to make my living doing art for card games, so I was so happy to get back to that after years at the children's book grind that I turned out some of my best work in any medium." You can find out more about Adam at his website AdamRex.com.

Chuck "Lucky Radish" Gamble has been cartooning and illustrating and animating for a long time for things from TV to computer games to websites to publications. Although much of his work has been for kids' stuff, he also works on projects for grown-ups—like Emperor's New Clothes. I first met Chuck because of his iOS app Slideamajig, which was later updated and expanded into Mixamajig. It's basically a mix-and-match app that has all of these goofy characters that you can swipe around to mix up their heads, torsos, legs, and headgear—or you can even put a photo of your own face in there to play dress up.

There's no mix-and-match feature in Emperor's New Clothes (maybe a future expansion for kids?), but for a game that really requires humor to work, I knew that Chuck could inject some silliness into the proceedings, as you can tell from the cover art. Although Chuck isn't known for his art for tabletop games, I knew his character designs skills would be quite handy in a game with so many characters. You can see more of Chuck's work at LuckyRadish.Tumblr.com.

Designer Diary: Believing Is Seeing

Obviously the visual gimmick of the ROOS is a big part of Emperor's New Clothes—it's what people are talking about the most in conversations I've seen online, so at any rate my attempts to start conversations about game design and Kickstarter and the nature of play have felt somewhat derailed. I suppose a lot of that is the novelty of it: maybe once the novelty wears off, people will want to talk to me about all the other aspects of the game, the things that I'm really passionate about.

One of the things about building a game around The Emperor's New Clothes is deciding how to interpret the story. Obviously I've added some more characters that weren't explicitly in the story, but I tried to make them characters that could have fit in a longer version of the story—although they're not in the original telling, they should feel like they fit in that world, that they wouldn't be out of place. But to really have the gameplay match the feel of the story, I had to ask myself what it felt like to be these characters: the Emperor, the Swindlers, the Minister, the townspeople, the Child. I had to see myself in their shoes, think about their motivations, and then decide how to put that into my game.

The most interesting thing to me is that the story doesn't have a moral. I already mentioned that before, but Hans Christian Andersen leaves that up to the reader to decide. Is it a cautionary tale about flattery, like Aesop's fable about the crow and the fox? Is it a lesson about speaking up despite having an unpopular opinion? Is it about putting on a brave face even after you've been publicly humiliated?

In most cases the Child is seen as wise, for speaking up and saying what everyone is thinking, for seeing through the ruse. "Out of the mouths of babes" and so on. However, there's another way to look at it as well, the way I know my children can say tactless things in public because they're still learning etiquette, the way you don't point at somebody's comb-over or shout across the room that somebody's fly is open. As adults, we see, but we pretend not to see—not always because we've been duped, but because of an unspoken agreement to make believe.

It's an interesting contrast to other fairy tales and classic stories. Children are often the heroes of the story—and if there's more than one child, then it's the youngest that gets things right. It's often the child who sees things as they really are (which doesn't necessarily mean just what is visible to the naked eye), who believes in the things that the adults have outgrown, who claps for Tinker Bell and notices the witch and listens carefully for the things that haven't been said. Children don't just make believe; they believe, and in stories it's that belief that helps them see.

Playing games is a lot like that. When we play a game, we choose to believe that an orange wooden cube is actually a Fighter, that the floor is hot lava, that we are in grave danger from a small plastic zombie. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman use the term "the magic circle" (borrowed from Johan Huizinga) to describe this space where a game takes place, in which special rules apply. Within this magic circle, we see what we believe to be there, and together we create a reality that is not "objectively" true. As Salen and Zimmerman put it, "the term magic circle is appropriate because there is in fact something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins."

Another great visual example of this idea of "believing is seeing" is in the movie Hook, which takes some liberties in its adaptation of Peter Pan. One of the project backers actually pointed this out to me, because I hadn't seen it before. About an hour into the movie, there's a scene in which the grown-up Peter is sitting down to a feast with the Lost Boys … but when they uncover all the dishes, they look empty. All of the kids dig in and start slurping and chomping, while Peter sits there, starving and baffled. An argument ensues, during which Peter scoops up a bit of nothing and flings it with his spoon—and a blob of colorful ice cream hits a kid in the face. When he looks down, the feast is spread before him and he's finally able to dig in. It is when Peter decides to play along that he is rewarded with the riches that were sitting in front of him the whole time.

I think too often we tell kids "don't be silly!" Certainly there are times when silliness is more appropriate than others. But when it comes to playing games, I think it's important to be a little silly, to choose to believe in something that isn't real. Maybe somebody should have told the Child in The Emperor's New Clothes that sometimes, it's okay to be silly.

You Got Fleeced!

So along those lines, to help increase our exposure, we're throwing in this stretch goal just because! I know a lot of you have been expecting this announcement since watching that initial video so I apologize for stringing you along, but here it is: the Emperor's New Fleece!

I know, we've got the T-shirt available already for those of you who like the box cover art, but sometimes you want something a little more subtle, and I think our fleece is an excellent solution. The one I'm wearing in the Kickstarter pitch video is a one-off, but we've been working with the same folks who created ThinkGeek's Interactive Portal T-shirt. They've done some unbelievable work with fabric technology. While our fleece is not as technically fancy as the Portal T-shirt, I think it's one that fans of Emperor's New Clothes will absolutely love.

The fleece is so lightweight it feels like there's nothing there at all, so you can start wearing it as soon as it arrives in August, even if you live in Florida. Unlike traditional polar fleece, ours is made of a material that is ultra-compact and crushable, making it easy to include in your reward package without upgrading to a larger box (and therefore increasing shipping costs). In keeping with the story, the formula is akin to what's described in the classic story, and I think it's just as stunning in fleece form as it would as a complete suit with train.

Best of all, it's FREE! That's right. We're taking a risk by announcing this now, but as long as we stay above our base funding level, we're going to include one of these with every reward level at $25 or higher.

Oh, and did I mention it's the fleece totally transparent? No, it won't make you invisible—I admit, that would be much cooler, but we can't throw that in for free—but I think you'll agree that even making just the fleece itself invisible is quite a trick. Since it may be hard for you to get a good look at the fleece in the pitch video while I'm moving around, Casey McKinnon graciously agreed to model the fleece for us:

You may recognize Casey from her appearance on TableTop, playing Dixit with Wil Wheaton & Co., or from one of her many web series, most recently A Comicbook Orange. You can find out more about Casey at her website CaseyMcKinnon.com.