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?