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u/Lost-Werewolf9046

▲ 5 r/shadowfist

The Gun in the Office

There was a guy, I can’t remember his name. He would come into the office and play Shadowfist with us in 1995.

Back then I would play Shadowfist until 3 or 4 in the morning every day and sleep in until noon. This was a habit and a tactic. I didn’t really want to run a company, I just wanted to create games and play them, Daedalus Entertainment was this nuisance I had to navigate in order to do that (which is why it exploded).

Back to the guy, I believe he was Egyptian or Lebanese by ethnicity but he was channeling the Godfather. He would drive around Seattle in a Cadillac playing Frank Sinatra music all the time. But you could tell he was this harmless nerd and gaming fanatic like us putting on airs.

He walked into our office one day, to call him cocky would be an understatement. But I liked his energy and invited him to join our gaming group in the office.

So he came in regularly and play Shadowfist and Feng Shui with us into the small hours of the morning.

Every time he came to visit, he would lay something down on our reception table. At night our reception area was unlocked and unmanned (my sister manned it 9 to 5, she was the one effectively running the company and putting out the fires I frequently lit.

This was before smartphones, business people carried “daytimers” basically small notebook ledgers where they would keep their diary, phone numbers and calendar. It was common practice to unburden yourself of these things when you got somewhere and put it down on a table (they were quite bulky).

I assumed that was what he was doing.

Then one day I was walking past reception I glanced at it and saw what it was properly.

It was a loaded automatic pistol.

I freaked out, why is there a loaded firearm sitting on a table in my unlocked reception area?

He replied that it was due to reasons of comfort, playing Shadowfist with a loaded automatic pistol tucked under his blazer would make him uncomfortable.

I was a bit dumbstruck, I don’t want him playing Shadowfist with a holstered firearm, sure, but there’s a larger thing here, I don’t want him brining a firearm into the office and leaving it in reception.

He genuinely didn’t understand my concern. But you created Shadowfist, it’s about shooting so I didn’t think you would mind.

But this is dangerous.

Oh, this is nothing he replied the serious firepower is in the trunk.

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u/Lost-Werewolf9046 — 22 hours ago
▲ 14 r/shadowfist

How Shadowfist's Netherworld Was Born

I touched on the origins of the Netherworld in a previous post I want to flesh it out more in this one.

Beyond the basic conceit of the Netherworld I identified a movie: Saviour of the Soul as a touch stone for inspiration. It was a singular movie at the time, the first Hong Kong Action "art movie".

People keep bringing up Big Trouble in Little China and yes Robin and I loved that movie. But if you want the movie that shaped Shadowfist the most it's this movie.

The whole movie was filmed in a massive dark warehouse of some kind. Everything happened in this weird liminal space that was expansive, fading into mysterious darkness in all directions.

There were martial artists, kung fu powers, magic, mysterious societies, cyberpunk dystopian themes, a weird inventor who created high tech gadgets and magic.

Some of the scenes looked like they were happening in the future, some scenes seemed to be happening in a mystical and romantic fairy tale land.

And somehow it all seemed to work together.

So basically I came up with the conceit of the Netherworld, that this was a place, a bridge between the junctures, you simply walked through the netherworld and you were in the other juncture and that time moved forward at an equal pace in each of them. So there would be no time travel, the junctures are effectively locations you access by traversing this liminal space. That made all the junctures part of the same world.

So when the moment came where we had to answer the question "What is the Netherworld then?" I simply said

"hey Robin, how about Savior of the Soul?"

Robin loved the idea and ran with it, and he did more than just “flesh it out” he made the Netherworld its own thing and created critical shifts.

Then he thought, if there are critical shifts there might be a faction living in exile within the Netherworld that used to rule the world.

That germ of an idea would later become the Four Monarchs later.

And that is how Robin and I worked together, constantly riffing off each other.

I was good at mechanics, rules and I had a good sense of the genre but I couldn't create stories as fecund and original as Robin.

Robin created worlds for breakfast, and he knew what the game mechanics should "feel like" but he didn't know how to create rules text or assign numbers to things.

But Robin knew when the mechanics I created "felt wrong" and would nudge me in the right direction.

But I digress, back to the movie.

The woman in blue from that movie was key for us. She's a mysterious matriarch who lives in some kind of ... err place it's hard to understand what it is. She's royalty of some kind but not part of the main world. One of the heroes is dying from some mystical poison administered by "Silver Fox" a Kung Fu Assassin with a bulletproof cape.

The heroes of the movies (Dragons) come to her to petition her for help. She's not with the bad guys, but she's not with the good guys either. The lady in blue is her own thing and you didn't just barge in to her place asking her for stuff.

This woman in blue has a court, warriors that look like they belong to a bygone era. One of them wields a cutlass and looks like a Pirate dressed up for the prom.

Robin turned her into the Queen of the Ice Pagoda.

And he had this idea to make her a leader of one of these factions that used to rule the world and is now living in exile within the Netherworld.

I think originally the idea was that she would be a powerful healer in tune with the movie.

And then I went "uh healing belongs to the Guiding Hand I think it should be something else

Later on we made Ice and healing a thing but at the time Robin and I agreed and we just gave her a big fat fighting score because the Four Monarchs weren't fully fleshed out and we wanted Guiding Hand to "own healing" in the first release.

I can’t remember when Robin fleshed out the Four Monarchs fully, I think it was after the Shadowfist card set was finalized but before we went to print.

By the time we started working on Netherworld together Robin had the Four Monarchs fully fleshed out story wise.

And we had our first design goal for Netherworld, to make the Four Monarchs a viable faction with their own distinct feel. Other design goals (make two player better and improve cut through during stalemates) came later.

u/Lost-Werewolf9046 — 6 days ago
▲ 20 r/shadowfist+1 crossposts

The movie That Inspired Shadowfist's Game Mechanics

The core mechanics of Shadowfist was inspired by a movie called Bury Me High. In this movie two factions were fighting over a Feng Shui site.

The conceit of the movie is that whoever had an ancestor buried inside this Feng Shui site would be granted powerful auspicious benefits.

Robin saw the movie first and drew inspiration from it. He told me that he wanted to make this foundational to the world of Shadowfist.

So I hopped on a bus to to a place called "Suspect Video" in downtown Toronto. At the time I was renting 21 movies a week and watching three a night. Suspect Video had hundreds of Hong Kong action movies, impossible to find today.

After watching the movie I agreed. And I didn't take much persuading, I largely deferred to Robin's creative vision and we had a fantastic collaboration.

I was staying with my mother at the time and came up with a design of a game that revolved around controlling Feng Shui sites, trying to make it as dynamic as possible.

Shortly afterwards Robin and I played the first game of Shadowfist using paper cut outs with Wing Dings as the faction symbols and resources on plush yellow carpet on my mothers dining room floor (I was forbidden to use the dining room table for gaming so we had to do it on the floor).

Then Robin outlined and fleshed out the factions, what they felt like. I responded that we could give each faction a specific design theme, healing, damage redirection and event and state cancelation for Hand. Plucky hitters and comebacks for Dragons. Oppressive tech, monstrous abominations and killing events for Architects. Non combat damage from Lotus Sorcerors and regeneration and icky powers for their monsters.

Bold faced abilities were created shortly afterwards with no faction having a monopoly on them but they each tended to be associated primarily with one faction.

More playtesting ensued. Robin identified that it was difficult to come back from behind in two player, I made some adjustments but ultimately I didn't go too far enough because I judged it to be a design risk to make the card set too volatile given that all the playtesters were novices.

I made one big contribution to the worldbuilding aspect, the Netherworld. Robin stated that we needed some way to link these timelines together and he didn't want to use time travel. So i proposed the Netherworld, a liminal space that linked the junctures citing Saviour of the Soul as a source of inspiration.

Robin loved the idea and fleshed it out into the concept of the Netherworld that we know today.

And that in a nutshell is how Shadowfist came to be.

u/Lost-Werewolf9046 — 7 days ago
▲ 22 r/shadowfist+1 crossposts

Yes, I'm that Jose Garcia.

I stayed away from Shadowfist after my spectacular flame out with Daedalus in the late 90s but I've frequently "looked over the fence" to check in on how it was going wistfully.

Recently I moved to Northern Spain (basically back to my families roots) and I was aware that the new owners are in Oviedo so I reached out to them and they invited me to come up and play Shadowfist.

To be honest I didn't know what to expect, I feared that it might be awkward and weird.

So I bought a return ticket in advance, it gave me a natural excuse to exit early if I felt uncomfortable.

They greeted me at the bus station at noon, we had some brilliant Asturian food and got to playing and telling stories.

It was a surreal experience, I created this game and played it for 30-60 hours a week solid for years and had a few 20+ game winning streaks in duels.

But yesterday I was easily the worst player in the room and had to stop and read the text of half of the cards being played.

I did lots of head scratching.Modern Shadowfist is more gnarly and intricate.

But it still retains its essential character, my original design intent back when I was sketching out this game with mocked up photocopies on the carpet of my mothers dining room is still there.

Not because I possess some over riding genius but because the players and designers who have poured their hearts into this game over the last thirty years understood the spirit of the game and brought it back to life from the dead again and again.

I wasn't much of a competitor but I was able to tell them lots of stories about those early years.

We laughed a lot and I think it did me and them a lot of good.

The games carried on til dawn and I urged them to go home and get some sleep but they escorted me to the station and waited with me until I boarded the bus home.

I really like those guys.

They want to support the continuation of the game and to recruit new players.

It's not an easy task, Shadowfist may have used up all of its nine lives but they are committed to trying.

I found that very heartwarming and I'll be visiting them again up in Oviedo (or hosting them down here where I live now in Leon) for some more games and to share ideas.

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u/Lost-Werewolf9046 — 11 days ago