Public Print and Play
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 01:52:01 PM

Hello everyone,

Get your printers warmed up and your scissors ready. Today we are releasing a public print-and-play kit for Oath!  

Before I get to the links, I want to say a few words about this release. Like other print-and-plays we've released publicly, this won't be supported exhaustively. We'll do our best to answer any questions you have of course, but this kit will not see active updates.  If you do have questions, you should send them here. 

I also want to make it clear that this isn't a development kit. We are not currently looking for playtesters. Instead, the kit is meant as a fully-featured demo. Outside of the automated player, you get all of the printed components you need to enjoy 3-6 player games. I've also severely truncated the game's archive of cards mostly to save you all ink but also because the archive currently contains many duplicates and cards still in development. 

All that being said, if you would like to submit reports from your game, you are welcome to. That form can be found in the link below. Longer and more exhaustive comments (espeically on the rules) should be sent directly to [email protected].

Alright, that's it. If you'd like access to the print-and-play PDF, the Tabletop Simulator Mod, or if you wish to leave feedback about your games, click here.

What's Next?

Finally, I wanted to let you all know about a few things that are coming up. First, tomorrow at 8:30 PM CST Girls' Game Shelf with be streaming their first game of Oath over on Twitch. Second, we've got lots of stuff for you on Thursday, including an in-depth look at what's in the box as well as an office live stream of an Oath double header. Then, on Friday at 11 AM CST, Nick, Patrick, and I will be on Reddit for an AMA over at r/boardgames. 

Questions?

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]. Please refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system so that we may better assist you.

Updated Shipping Price Estimates and Pledging for Multiple Copies
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 01:49:28 PM

Hey everyone!

We've gotten a lot of feedback regarding our shipping prices and your voices were heard. We've been working hard at finding alternate solutions on how to make Oath as accessible as possible and we're happy to say that we've updated most of our shipping prices :)

New Shipping Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet on the project page has now been updated, but you can also view it here.

To summarize, we have reduced shipping prices to Europe and some parts of Asia, as well as provided additional shipping costs if multiple copies were purchased (more on that below). 

Please note that we are still trying researching alternate shipping solutions for New Zealand and Australia so these prices have not changed. Another announcement will be made if a cheaper solution can be found. This is, however, still a work in progress and not a guarantee. We will certainly do what we can.

Pledging for Multiple Copies

This is definitely one of our most asked questions and the short answer is that you can definitely pledge for multiple copies. Each account will be limited to a maximum of 4 copies of Oath and each copy will incur additional shipping on top of your base shipping rate as detailed on our new spreadsheet (for example, a backer in Germany would pay shipping as $13usd + $5usd per copy added).

To pledge for multiple copies, you're welcome to adjust your pledge amount accordingly during this campaign but you will also be able to add these additional copies in the pledge management platform shortly after the campaign closes. We'll create a separate "how-to" update that will detail exactly how to do this once the pledge manager is set up. 

Backers at the "Oath Pledge" level ($90) in the pledge manager will be able to add copies at the Kickstarter offered price, however, this offer will not extend to our $1 backers as prices for Oath in the post-campaign manager will increase unless in the "Oath Pledge" level.

Retailers

If you are a retailer interested in backing the campaign, please contact our sales manager at [email protected] for further details.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]. Please refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system so that we may better assist you.

Thanks!

Leder Games

Live stream with Kyle Ferrin and Oath Play-throughs
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 01:46:29 PM

Hey Friends! 

I just wanted to come in and write a quick update reminding everyone today's stream and featuring some gameplay videos! 

Today at 2 PM CST Oath's artist, Kyle Ferrin, is going to go live on Twitch and Facebook to talk about the world and art of Oath. Kyle will be answering questions covering everything from concept art, style changes, and the creative direction from the game board! There will be art that you haven't seen! 

For those who couldn't catch our play through stream on the 16th, we have the recording now up on Youtube, PLUS SpaceCatsPeaceTurles will be continuing the campaign on their Twitch channel every Saturday! On top of that, for more Oath gameplay goodness, I wanted to make sure we feature Quackalope's playthrough of the game: 

Also as a reminder, we will be releasing our Tabletop Simulator mod and Print and Play of Oath on the 28th. 

Thanks for all the support!

- Gates

Questions and Support?

Please send all inquiries to our support email, [email protected], and to refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system so we can better help you.

A Peek into the Process Behind Oath's Setting
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 01:45:48 PM

Hi everyone,

First, I wanted to let everyone know that we'll be having an AMA on Reddit next Friday (the 31st) at 11 am CST. Nick, Patrick, and myself will all be on hand to answer any questions you might have about Oath or Leder Games in general. 

Today I'll be writing a little about the creative process here at Leder Games and sharing a little of the history behind Oath's world-building.

As you've probably gathered, Leder Games is a bit of a strange game company. Over the past few years  I've gotten to know a lot of folks who work in the game industry, and I am consistently surprised in the variety of company structures and procedures that exist. That's especially true of creative teams. I hesitate to draw broad conclusions from what I know. Some companies give a lot of creative control to the originator of the game. Other companies attempt to shoehorn their games under the demands of a particular creative license. And, probably most commonly, many publishers also take a very active role in deciding what the proper theme for a game should be based upon market demands. That said, each company is responding to the challenges of its own position, and there's no single right way to make a game.

Over the past few years we've developed a very “bottom-up” approach to creating our games. Though we of course react to pressures of the market, in general decisions about how a game should look and feel stay with the creative team for the duration of the project.

In another setting, I might have come to Patrick and said, “I want to make a political fantasy game.” That didn't happen here at all. Instead, my first pitches to Patrick were mostly about feeling and shape. I wanted to make a strategy game that was able to remember how it was played. I wanted to do a game about history. What would the game look like? Where would it be set? Should we seek a license partner? Who would buy such a game? I didn't know the answer to these questions and I didn't pretend to. The project seemed urgent and intriguing and that was enough to justify the work. I'm glad Patrick agreed.

After I began to work on the design seriously, some thematic challenges and constraints began to take shape. For instance, I knew that I wanted the game's cast of characters, places, technologies, and institutions, to develop and to grow. However, I wanted to avoid both anachronism and the kinds of long causal chains and tech trees that are associated with civilization games.

This is about the time that I started talking with Kyle about the project. I offered Kyle a bird's eye view of the game and what the material demands of the design would likely be. I knew I needed lots of cards and art. I knew the cards would likely be suited. I knew who the players would be and the rough shape of the game.

As we talked about the game, it was abundantly clear that we would need some kind of fantasy setting. A historical setting would be too rife with goofy history. A science fiction setting was too oriented towards progress. Of course, we could possible attempt something like sci-fi feudalism such as Dune or Emperor of the Fading Suns (a personal favorite). That option was enticing, but the mechanisms in the game were much more closely linked to land warfare and single-state politics. If we wanted to go in the direction of science fiction, the game should meaningfully grapple with the strangeness of that scale and subject.

(Some art from the Fading Suns roleplaying game which was also used as a setting in an excellent PC strategy game. Though we moved away from sciefence fiction, many of that setting's features stayed in the back of my mind.)

Around this time I was reading a lot of history that ran the gamut from Bronze Age epics to late Roman and Byzantine accounts of their empire's slow declines. Kyle and I were also both talking quite a bit about fantasy novels in general and some of the interesting problems and possibilities of the form.

Fantasy seemed like a natural fit for the game's subject material. This was mostly because of it's ability to tolerate anachronism without clearly signaling any kind of progression. For instance, in a Civilization game a tank can fight a phalanx. It's clear to every player which one of those two things is “advanced,” and there's a huge bias in the player's mind towards their own present moment and how that moment might imagine the future to look. Basically, civ games pretend to empower players to write their own history, but in practice the players already know how the story goes.

(This image may come from a Civilization mod, but it pretty well captures the kinds of tropes I wanted to avoid in Oath.)

In a fantasy setting the futuristic and the ancient and co-mingle in ways that we both found quite provocative. So, we were off to the races and Kyle went to work.

For the first several months the game was set in an inflected Norse-style fantasy setting. The suits of the deck were broken into various peoples and groups of peoples. One suit might be the Dwarves. Another suit might be the Trolls.

As I played the game I found this racial/species structure for the deck was severely limiting the scope of the game. For one, such divisions are almost never immutable. Definitions of peoples and cultures are porous. Folks move around and are influenced by everything they come into contact with. It's easy to forget this by looking at old political maps. It was increasingly important that the game's suits not be link to any specific people.

Kyle and I talked a lot (a lot) about this. We chatted through the relationship between racial tropes in fantasy and the history of racism in the 19th and 20th centuries. We passed some articles back and forth. And, in the end, it was clear that we needed a better framework for thinking through the game's world.

After much discussion, Kyle suggest pivoting the suits from particular groups of people to more elemental ethical and ideological positions. He offered me a list of different suits with descriptive modifiers and even a sketch of how these suits might grow and change.

I was immediately convinced of the idea. For one, this conception of the different suits offered a solution to a host of thorny design problems I was having. For another, I thought it gave both of a lot more room to flesh out this world without being too chained to the standard fantasy tropes.

Once we had that framework in place we established some basic rules for the world-building. First, the world would be old. To borrow Caves of Qud's excellent tagline, the world of Oath would be a layer cake of thousand-year old civilizations. Second, though the world would be filled with strange and wondrous peoples, they wouldn't be organized into tribes based on their strangeness. The world of Oath would be filled with travelers and exiles and found communities.

Next, we wouldn't be overly judgmental. There are no bad guys or good guys in this world. We likewise wouldn't attempt to explain too much about the world though much can be inferred. I think it was important for both of us that the look of the game be as open as the game's design.

Tomorrow, Kyle will be streaming a little and talking about the process behind both creating the game's art and some more specific history about why the game looks the way it does. You'll find that stream here.

Questions and Support?

Please send all inquiries to our support email, [email protected], and to refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system so we can better help you.

Design Diary: Oath's Long List of Cards
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 01:11:35 PM

Hi everyone, 

Today I'm going to share with you the next designer diary. If you've already read it on BoardGameGeek, this is basically the same thing. We are just posting them here as well so that folks don't feel obligated to dig through BGG.

In terms of the scale of its card design, Oath is much more easily compared to something like one of the card games produced by Fantasy Flight Games rather than something like Dominion. While Oath has fewer cards in it's pool than the first set of KeyForge, it's quite comparable to something like Netrunner plus a few expansions. Remember, I'm talking about unique card design. Obviously a game like Dominion has more raw cards than Oath. But Dominion only contains 25 different kingdom card piles—the vast bulk of the game is duplicates.

Most games with a large number of unique cards demand such robust card lists because they need deck variety. Each card is a little tool that the players might use to build a strategy around or supplement an existing strategy. The card list is essentially where the game and all of it's various strategic potentials exists.

Oath isn't quite like that. In Oath all cards sit on top of the game's strategic and tactical framework. You could play game after game of oath with just a suited deck without abilities and the design would work just fine. In fact, for many months of development, this is exactly what I did.

Don't get me wrong here, the cards are not extraneous to the design. In fact, they are essential. As I worked on the primary systems of the game, I did my best to create a place for literary hundreds of unique powers and cards. The cards were going to be critical for the game's storytelling framework and critical for how the game grows and changes.

The ability of the game to adapt from play to play was the primary driver in determining the game's shape and the demands of its card list. I wrote about that at length here: Designer Diary 5 – Cards and Continuity. The short version is basically if I wanted to use the game's cards as a kind of memory system, I was going to need a bank of at least 120 to 140 cards in addition to the game's site cards (24), starting deck (54), and visions (5).

I had worked with large card lists before. Pamir has around 100 unique game cards, and I learned a lot working on Pamir's card list. Oath would put those lessons to the test.

The key problem is figuring out how to think about large card lists so that you can work in a purposeful way without getting lost in the weeds. It's a little like painting a mural. Though you might use many of the same materials and skills to paint a mural on the side of a building as painting a small piece, the method of production is completely different. You have to adjust your procedure to be able to quickly go between thinking big and thinking small. I'll stop the painterly comparison here before I get into too much trouble with Kyle.

Let me give you another example. When I build proof-of-concept playtesting kits, I try to get the entire game down to around 5 pages. I build these pages as artboards in Adobe Illustrator not because it's the right program to work in, but because I can work quickly and can easily zoom out and see the entire project all at once. I'll usually use small versions of the cards and a tiny version of the board that fits in a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Such a kit is easily edited and allows me to rapidly iterate during the early stages of a design.

 A Root kit from September 2017, about a month before launch. As you can see, my graphic design work is sloppy, but the basic framework is easy to iterate on the fly.

Oath was initially quite helpful in this regard. The game only uses about 20-25 cards per game and it was easy to build a representative deck. However, as soon as the design started taking off I was faced with the prospect of wrangling a truly massive card list. It was clear that I needed to adjust my methods.

The first thing I did was establish some core archetypes to each of the game's six suits. These wouldn't be hard and fast rules. Instead, they were guidelines that should inform the general attitude of each suit. Next, I created a list of different “roles” that cards could play in the game. I knew I wanted some portion of the game's cards to be battle plans and another portion to have one time when-played effects.

With these general principles in mind, I laid out all of the cards in a kind of atlas and broke each suit up into little chunks. Now, I could go into each chunk with some big picture ideas in mind before I started getting deep into their design. Here's what one version of that atlas looked like back when I was still calling the game Saga:

Funnily enough, though everything else from that iteration sank like a brick, this way of tackling Oath's larger-than-life card list stuck. This is one reason why the various terms and symbols in the image above might not make any sense to those of you who have already developed some familiarity with the game.

As I iterated the game, I began to get more comfortable thinking on the macro level and started to create some basic guidelines that would inform the design of each set of cards. Here, I decided to imagine that the different suits in the game would have certain natural affinities and antipathies. The basic idea was that the deeper you got into a suit in the archive, the more you would start to see abilities bleed into the domains of the other suits. (Sidenote: by reversing this “wheel” of relationships, I was able to come up with the natural combat counters in that suit's battle plans.)

I could then put this affinity into a revised card atlas.

 Note: somewhere along the way I had to drop the Clockwork suit from the deck. There's probably a another whole post about why the game has six suits and not four or five or seven, I'll spare you for the moment. 

In this atlas, each square is a card. The black squares represent core card types associated with that suit. Then any block matching that color will be associated with that suit's abilities. So, a gray "Order" block in a hearth row is going to be a Hearth card that has some affinity with the Order type, perhaps it's a battle plan. Then, using the affinity/hostility wheels above, I could create a "Captain" type card that would be good against beast cards.

Again, none of these things are hard and fast rules. The main purpose of the exercise was just to provide a general framework so that I could easily shift my focus from small scale card design to the larger picture.

 You'll soon see some of these dynamics work out in practice when I take you through the first two suits in our tour through the starting deck later this week.

Alright, that's it for now. As with last week, I'll do my best to answer any specific questions you might have in the comments below.

Questions and Support?

Please send all inquiries to our support email, [email protected], and to refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system so we can better help you.