SSO 2/3

Evolution

The single biggest change during playtesting has been the Activation cards. During SSO each player is given a number of movement cards...

Primary Engines

My natural inclination with games is to see them in a very abstract fashion, which while working on Gaslands with Mike Hutchinson worked...

Playtesting Judgments

Playtesting is vital. Its hard to know how much is enough, just like re-writing, but certainly some is vital. As a designer its very easy...

Time to die.

SSO contains player elimination. For those who haven't immediately sworn to never have anything to do with the game on that basis, let me...

Further Challenges

I've been testing and tweaking the base game and first two decks for around 5 or 6 months now, and that was after some pretty carefully...

Narrative Imperatives

Okey, so, inflexible linear narrative imperative. Thrilling I know. SSO is a narrative game, the intent is to tell the story of your...

Manifest Crew

The S.S.O. comes with a wide range of crew, 12 in the base set actually, 4 command crew, 8 general crew. They've all been repeatedly...

The horror, the horror.

Having decided that horror was the puzzle I wanted to answer with this particular game the important question was one of setting. To be...

Thematic Decisions

I've been writing games in one form or another for most of my life but it wasn't until recently, working on games design with Mike...

Number Balance

Crew numbers has been the most important balancing act in the whole game. SSO is largely based on base 6, the challenge deck is 24 cards...