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Let's track the character sheet for Band-Aids & Bullet Holes over the course of design. "But wait," you say. "The game doesn't have a character sheet!" Well then this should be extra interesting.

Last week I did a thread called 10 Guys Named Barf about how BABH uses pregen characters while still leaving you room to customize them. You do this by writing them custom "calling cards," basically character traits you marker directly onto playing cards. This week let's follow Lockhart.

Lockhart (or Lockhardt back in this first draft) is the Hotline Miami character. I thought it'd be fun to do some pregens that called out particular game influences, so they get a chicken mask and, back at the beginning, a briefcase handcuffed to their wrist.

I was in before writing directly on cards, and I loved these sheets. But writing on cards is so much better. I'm looking forward to playing with it.

This is a great point: the sheets weren't bad! It's just that writing on cards is better.

I think this whole thread is a great example of iterative game design being as much about taking away or eliminating as adding or fixing

This sheet has a lot of other things that got cut from the game. "Desperation" was a second wound-like mechanic that stuck dead cards into your deck. "Obligations" became needs. "Who Owes You" and "War Stories" was me trying to mechanize the idea of Debts. All of these eventually proved unnecessary.

Here's a 2nd/3rd pass at the sheet. On the first of these I've cut Desperation; that makes it the newest version. On the others you can see I reworked how Debts are marked - you write names below questions that lead to Debts.

Debts ended up getting cut for two reasons. First: where do we write down that Lockhart owes Sterling? It always took a sec to sort out if I owed Sterling or he owed me. Then we have to write the reverse on Sterling's sheet. And if the Debt is paid, we need to update both places. It was a mess.