I heard from Phil recently: he’s working on a new game system with a younger protege. Which is kind of cycle-of-life, because he’s eleven years younger than me, and I was kinda his mentor when we worked on Sketchies. He says, “I think Guilded Age maybe taught me that what I actually do want to do is make games. Which, honestly, should have been obvious because my entire method of coming at GA was envisioning it as a game that exists.”

As I’ve already mentioned, this would be more and more of a bone of contention between us as time went on: whenever there was a conflict between making Kingdoms of Arkerra a game with functional mechanics and making Arkerra a real world of incalculable complexity, I pushed for the latter. But this scene shows how those sensibilities can mesh: I took first crack at it and Phil reworked the dialogue without changing much of the action.

I’m a little sorry we revised out Gravedust explaining that the souls of the dead, not just a trail of their bodies, had prepared him to face Auraugu, but we were already feeling the pressure to move things along.

GRAVEDUST: Surrender or die, thief. Make your choice quickly.
BANDIT (mostly unconscious): I ch’se s’rr’nd’r…