Well, in the grand tradition of completing a virtual set, here I am again to reflect back on the project as I breathe a sigh of relief that it has been shipped to the printer, and now we can all just sit back and wait for the cards to get printed and distributed.
First of all, I want to say a very large and heart-felt thank you to everyone who supported R&R with your time, resources, and donations to help get these cards printed. Just as with Destiny of the Force, this was a labor of love for the community that has long played and supported this game, and the showing of financial support to just cover the cost of printing speaks louder about the confidence this community has in its lead design team, and that means a great deal to me.
While we learned many lessons from our work on Destiny of the Force, R&R was a much harder set to design than Destiny. For one thing, our design team make-up changed somewhat. Co-designers Eric Larson and Deri Morgan stepped aside due to more pressing real-life obligations, which was completely understandable, but both stayed on in advisory capacities. Replacing them on the team were Bill Russell, whom many of you already know and who oversaw playtesting on Destiny, and Eric Frost, who offered some great advice with Destiny and even saw at least one of his card designs make the final cut in that set. So, I was confident that working with both of them on this new set would be just as smooth as the first set, and that the ideas we would produce as a group would really build on the work I helped Deri and Eric L. create in Destiny. I wasn't wrong, either. I'm even prouder of the designs of R&R than I am of the Destiny set, and that is not to discredit Destiny at all, as I am indeed immensely proud of what that set accomplished and what it represents. To see an Old Republic squad not only make the top 4 cut but actually win a Regional is incredibly humbling.
As I said, R&R was not without its own set of challenges. For one thing, once you are a designer, it's in your blood, and Eric Larson quickly began working on a new idea for a sub-set of theme cards that led us to eventually pause our work on R&R when we realized the interactions with stat blocks being designed simultaneously could be problematic (read: abusive). The Battle of Theed set is, in my opinion, an amazing set for what it does and has elements that are going to really strengthen the game in ways that just weren't possible with the standard 60-card sets we were doing in R&R. Does that mean that every card is going to be game-changing? Of course not. But there are a number of very interesting ideas, and we worked right up until the last minute before deadline to make sure it was the very best it could possibly be. I would say that was true of both R&R and Battle of Theed. We learned a lot about the power and influence sub-sets can have on actual set work, and it was a good lesson, especially since I'm sure Battle of Theed won't be the last sub-set we design.
Additionally, as was announced recently, we also began developing a set of characters with a cost greater than 100 pts. I won't spoil any of the surprises, but I will tell you we worked - as a group - harder on balancing those than we did even on R&R, and we worked VERY VERY hard on that. We scrapped the Epic card sets no fewer than 3 times and started completely over, retaining the theme of the original work as much as possible while creating a "rock, scissors, paper" feel to it. No one piece dominates over every other. It took us about 5 drafts, but we finally got it where we wanted it, where it will be the most fun without just being a dice contest.
Of course, as many of you are aware, we had some personal challenges along the way, and I would even go so far as to call some of those challenges "setbacks." But we rose to the occasion, as did the entire community, and I am proud to say that despite the loss we have sustained, we are stronger and smarter for it, and we have made changes to the way of doing things that will prevent such a setback from ever being so potentially devastating ever again.
I hope everyone enjoys playing with the R&R, BoT, and Epic cards as much as I enjoyed helping design them. V-Set 3 is already in the works, but I am taking a break from this set. I have other things I need to focus on, and truthfully as much as I enjoyed working with Bill and Eric F. on this set, working on the V-Sets takes up more of my time than anything else I am doing right now. I plan to stay on as a playtester for V-Set 3, and am working with Les Eller and a few other people (whom I don't want to mention because they haven't fully committed) on V-set 4, which we hope to have done in summer 2012. Your design team for V-Set 3 will be Bill, Deri, Eric Larsen, and Daniel Stephens, who got his feet wet the same way Eric Frost did with Destiny. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with what the four of them are doing.
We also have some side project ideas in the works, nothing set in stone, just things we are discussing doing. Thanks again to everyone for their support of this community endeavor, and we hope you will continue to support what we are doing. Remember, this is still your game (more now than ever), and we can't do any of the things we are doing without you!
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