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To paraphrase one of my favourite childhood movies, let’s set the wayback machine for about three years ago. Enter a wanna-be game designer with aspirations of rocking the world.

Yeah, I wrote a little thing for an ancient Game Chef contest, and I’ve been hammering away on it ever since. It’s got a hold over my creative energies and time, and it’s meant that other projects have been back-burnered.

But it’s worth it.

I’m so very proud of The Adventures of Sir Swords-a-Lot and the Brave Knights. It’s repeatedly done what I want it to do, and each time I play it, I learn a little more about my hobby. (As an aside, it also does stuff I don’t want it to, but that’s ok.)

Swords-a-Lot grew out of a desire to build a game for my then-four-year-old-son to enjoy with me. In fact, it originally bore his name (“A Game for Philip”). It’s seen several iterations, some outside playtesting (some very successful, some very unsuccessful), and a fair bit of open playtesting by yours truly at conventions (hey, Hammercon and CanGames, who loves ya?)

I’m finally satisfied with everything important about the design. It’s now a often-enough-requested-event at my house to feel satisfied with it, and I’m quite happy with all of the mechanical fiddly bits’ complexity and integration into the imaginary action. It feels right.

So, I’ve been using some of my time granted me by being laid-up by a hideous back spasm to sit down and do the awful work of re-writes. The game is done, it just needs to be written.

To give myself a side-goal, I’m going to spend the next little while talking about the process I went through to bring Sir Swords this far. Hopefully, one guy’s experiences over  four years hold your interest.

I’m calling this series of posts “In praise of taking it slow” both as an act of apology for its duration, but also because I think that more people should. Take the time; do it the way you want; if this isn’t your living, you don’t have to act like it is!

Also: the image is one of the earliest cover sketches for the game, by the excellent Marc Meyer.

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