A Minor Update and some Future Planning

We Found Each Other In The Bottom of the Ninth is pretty good! It's way better than expected, and I'm so proud of it. Between the Infinite Cities game and the upcoming Blaseball Cares stream, I'm so happy people are having fun with it. If you are reading this - thank you!

I've made a semi-minor update based on recent experiences that I'm pushing out now, to smooth some rough edges before more people see it from the stream. But I also have a lot of future plans I wanted to explore, if I have the energy and focus. This game might have legs, I don't know yet!

The Minor Update:

• The "Last Chosen Player" mechanic is gone! RIV. It worked great for creating dramatic moments, and made sure every bad thing was laser targeted for maximum relevance and drama. Sadly, it also was confusing - you had to track something that was both ambiguous and happened maybe ten or fifteen minutes ago. Events which used it now each have their own unique targeting criteria which should hopefully produce just as much drama, although the loss of the mechanic does get rid of some of the horror and fear that comes from drawing new cards. Hopefully it's just as good!
• The word “Player” now refers to the in-game characters specifically. The actual people playing the game now use a new term, “writer”. I’m not the hugest fan of special terms to refer to game roles, but in Blaseball “Player” is already an overloaded term so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• I’ve added a pronoun column to the playersheet. Writers now create a pronoun when they create a character. This drifts away a bit from the initial vision of players as blank slates and writers with diverse headcannons, but logistically speaking being able to talk about players in a straightforward manner is (hopefully) worth it.
• Framing scenes is less explicitly collaborative. It's never worked as intended, and seems to always be best when the person framing the scene has a strong starting idea. When people don't, they tend to create links or add descriptions instead.
• Some events have been shuffled around to work better with Short Circuits (or just work better in general)

Some musings on the current state of the game:

• The Good
  • Bottom of the Ninth is really good  at creating compelling characters you care a ton about! There are characters from each game I still think about and care about, and that includes some throwaway characters from solo playtest games. I think this is the most important thing the game does and I'm super happy it seems to have stuck the landing.
  • I think it's also pretty good at telling compelling, messy blaseball stories - especially telling the specific story that is the arc of a blaseball team through an era.
  • I think people have had fun both playing and listening to it every time it's hit the table, which is great!
• Things that aren't landing right that I'd like to improve:
  • There may be too much loss and consistent morose tragedy in the back half of a full game. It gets to be a bit too much of a consistently painful slog of bad things happening repeatedly.
  • Collapse should have more of a focus on victory, striking back, finding meaning, and closing character arcs. It's the finale, and on average each character gets about two events for them in collapse.
  • Not enough relationships get created in a game. It takes more links to form a relationship than I anticipated, and that means things don't get tangled and messy enough.The opening act is kind of slow with how many players get created in Return. 
  • There always seems to be a few vaguely defined characters that get created in expansion and then get are neglected through the rest of the game. Maybe players could use a little more definition than the almost perfectly blank slates they start as? Games seem to work best when people define characters and develop them as table talk, but that's not really explicit in the rules.
  • The way scenes are framed could maybe use some streamlining / clarification / work.
• Specific things I want to change about the event deck:
  • More cards should have contrasting opinions, such as having both a serious and a humorous option. This lets writers set the tone better, and the back half needs at least the option to have some lighthearted stuff
  • More cards (and especially early cards) should directly create relationships, just to get the ball rolling on filling out the shipping chart.
  • Add a few more events set against big team-wide happenings, such as championship events or away games. Something to provide extra context for links and give an arc to the entire team.
  • Trim some of the weaker, less inspiring, and too-specific events. 

Lastly, a few big ideas I'm rattling off as massive changes that might be worth trying to shake things up a lot:

• I'd like an entirely new set of events for ending a Short Circuits game. Something less apocalyptic and final, with some character-based endings instead.
• The way players get details could use work. Maybe "Develop a player" lets every writer at the table add a detail? Maybe everyone suggests something, and the active writer picks one to canonize? Maybe everyone gets to add a detail between each era? Something to make characters come alive a bit faster / better
• Maybe "add a detail" shouldn't even be an action? Make players frame a scene every turn - the drawn card can be the framed scene and they can create a quick link, or the drawn card can be the quick link and the new link frames the scene.
  •  This is kind of dangerous, because "add a detail" is by far the fastest action. It kind of works like a "pass" in a lot of instances.
  • Maybe steal Fiasco's "you either choose the resolution or frame the scene" mechanic, or make some other way of bringing other writers on when you're not sure.
• Maybe lower the total number of players. 14 is cute, but it's a lot of players and it's part of what's driving so many additions in Return and so many losses in the back half. It sets a minimum amount of turnover you have to hit, and that's been a constant pain the entire time.

Anyway, wow that's a lot of words. This was mostly for me, but I hope I didn't waste your time! Thanks again <3