Making Too Many Bones: Unbreakable, Part 3 - Gale
Shepherding my first Gearloc design from inception to completion
Welcome to the third in a five-part series about the making of Too Many Bones: Unbreakable, the final standalone expansion in the Too Many Bones board game series from Chip Theory Games, where I work as a writer and developer. This huge project is now being shipped to board gamers around the world, and to highlight the different facets of how it came together, I will be tackling individual aspects of its creation in an ongoing series this summer. Enjoy! Part one is here, and part two is here, part four is here, and part five is here.
When I first learned I was going to be on the design team for Unbreakable, one of the things I was most excited by was the possibility of creating a Gearloc. For those unfamiliar with the game, Gearlocs are Too Many Bones’ bespoke player characters, each one in possession of totally unique mechanics that allow them to interact with the game in new and exciting ways. They are usually the most anticipated element of a new Too Many Bones release, as they are the vessels the players use to experience the rest of the game. Our players debate their strengths and weaknesses, share special builds and synchronicities, and generally develop cult followings around individual characters over time (thanks in no small part to the charming art of Anthony LeTourneau, who has drawn every Gearloc’s primary character pose). Designing one would be a big deal, and I was excited for what I could bring to the TMB canon.
Before the details of how I tried to do this, however, let me break down a Gearloc into what I would call its four basic component elements, which are laid out on its character mat and explained in detail on its character sheet.
Anatomy of a Gearloc
Stats: Base measurements of starting HP, Dexterity (which determines how far you can move the Gearloc and how many dice you roll on your turn), Attack (how many basic damage dice you can roll) and defense (how many basic damage-canceling dice you can roll). These can be increased by spending training points over the course of the game.
General passive mechanics: All Gearlocs have basic abilities that allow them to approach a battle from a unique perspective. This is usually expressed via their Innate abilities, which typically confer some sort of advantage that can eventually be upgraded through proper dice rolls and strategizing.
Skills: The real star of any Gearloc, the skills area is made up of 16 unique dice, most of which have unique faces. These skill dice are broken down by line and generally relate to a particular strategy of using that character (for example, the medic character Patches’ biggest skill line relates to his ability to heal or revive his fellow Gearlocs, while another skill line focuses on the damage-dealing poisons he brews up in his apothecary). Players roll skill dice and choose whether to apply them; once used, a skill is typically gone until the start of the next battle (some also may stay in the character mat to be used as counters or other modifying element). Most skill dice also have a unique miss side known as “bones,” which leads us to the final element…
Backup Plan: One of the most unique aspects of TMB is that misses can help you, often just as much as rolling a hit. When you roll bones, you can place them in your Backup Plan column and spend them to trigger the corresponding ability. If you manage to collect six in a single battle, you can permanently upgrade your Innate ability, flipping your character chip over to its starred side to keep track.
Chip Theory co-owner Josh Carlson told all of us that we would have a chance to pitch him on Gearloc ideas, so we all set to work. Of particular interest to him was making sure we got the two characters that were coming in the Unbreakable box right (the others would be sold as expansion content). When the company made Too Many Bones: Undertow, its previous standalone expansion, the game was originally intended as a good introduction point to TMB, but one of the included characters, Stanza, was deemed too complicated for beginner players (despite being a personal favorite of mine).
Pitch sessions
We knew right away that Josh would be developing one of the Gearlocs, which later became Riffle, a special Gearloc sold as part of a years-long April Fool’s Day promotion. Josh Wielgus quickly zeroed in on Carcass, a taciturn survivalist who could “cook” defeated enemies into recipes that could nourish him or others in battle. Co-owner Adam Carlson was interested in a Gearloc that was beginner-friendly, ultimately settling on Figment, a time traveler character who manipulates the flow of gameplay in an easy-to-understand way. That left three others, and three people left to pitch: developer Logan Giannini, dev and rules expert Shannon Wedge, and me.
All of us brought a variety of ideas at an initial roundtable discussion. My first concept was a Gearloc called Beacon, an older character who had figured out a way to manipulate the mysterious orbs created by the kobolds of Too Many Bones. I’d started working on Beacon before I even began working at Chip Theory full-time, in the hopes that I’d one day be able to pitch him. He operated by means of an adjustable switch that controlled which aspect of his orb control was active (for the initiated, it was similar to the way Tink’s dial controls which attachments he can add to his robots).
I also brought another Gearloc I’d come up with called Rubble who used a jackhammer to manipulate fault lines under characters, and a less developed character named Marshall who was a hand-to-hand fighter. Finally, I liked the idea of designing a playable version of Mirawatt, a recurring character in the lore of the Too Many Bones series, as a cyborg Gearloc. Shannon and Logan also brought monk-style characters, and Logan pitched a Gearloc with a Gollum-esque personality split who could be upgraded by placing multiple small character mats next to each other over the course of play.
One of the great things about the Chip Theory design team is the active conversation and collaboration between all the developers. Shannon ultimately elected to not design a Gearloc herself, preferring to focus on refining the game’s mechanics as a whole, but she and I had a conversation about how it might be fun to design a character who had a small secondary mat that could somehow predict and manipulate enemy placement on the battle mat. We already had a multi-character mat Gearloc in the Lab Rats (my No. 1 character in the series), and due to the higher cost of printing, cutting, and stitching multiple pieces of neoprene, management wasn’t interested in pursuing another Gearloc of that type – which ruled out Shannon’s idea, as well as Logan’s upgradable Gearloc.
Or did it? I started to wonder if perhaps either idea could be accomplished using only one character mat. With Shannon and Logan’s permission, I took the basic thrust of their ideas and tried to incorporate them into what I was working on. When Josh suggested I combine my Mirawatt design with Beacon, that solidified my approach: I would add the “upgrade” ability to the cyborg, and I would incorporate the secondary staging area into Rubble.
Now, if you have any of the Unbreakable game materials, you’re probably aware that there are no playable characters named Mirawatt or Rubble. Instead, along with Static (Logan’s character, selected after everyone agreed he had the best idea for a martial artist Gearloc), there are two others: Gale and Polaris. To get there, Mirawatt and Rubble had to undergo some changes. Today, I’m going to write about Gale’s journey.
Gale
In my role as the company’s primary flavor text writer, I worked with Josh to finalize names, backgrounds, and basic visual elements of the Gearlocs, often in collaboration with the characters’ individual designers. For example, with Beacon out of the picture, I suggested we make Figment’s time machine powered by a Kobold orb staff, and Anthony created one of the most memorable looks of any character in the series.
Mirawatt was a bit different. We already had a somewhat established design for her (she looked a bit like an elven Judy Dench), and we knew she was a tech-focused character, but I wanted her to be different from other tech-based Gearlocs like Tink or Gasket. We also knew, from the previous lore of the game, that Mirawatt was likely soon due for some kind of climactic confrontation with the Gearloc Council, the evil organization that serves as one of the games’ overarching antagonists. Thus, my idea: Mirawatt would be gravely injured in some Gearloc Council offensive, and to save her life, she was integrated into a cyborg body.
However, with Figment already established as the other box character, Mirawatt wasn’t looking great on the box, so Josh elected to change her name to Gale and make her a younger, new character. I was disappointed, but I decided to make Mirawatt important to the story of the game in other ways, which I’ll write about later in this series.
Regardless of the precise theming, I sketched out Gale’s basics very quickly, and she remains functionally the same Gearloc she was when I initially designed her (with, of course, some important balance tweaks suggested by Shannon and fellow playtest supervisor Salem Scott). With an eye for Gale being a simpler Gearloc that would be good for the Unbreakable box, I made her a four-tool character who could specialize in high attack, movement, defensive tanking, or healing (this was similar to the original Beacon design, with his staff controlling which line was “active” at a given time). To accomplish the single-mat upgrade ability, I gave her three dice (called Major Skill Dice) that provided transformative ongoing effects when rolled and also provided significant passive buffs to ALL of the other dice in the given line. For example, the attack-based Major Skill Die allows several of Gale’s dice that usually can only be used on adjacent spaces/enemies to be used at range – but most of its sides also come equipped with a negative status effect that can be applied to an enemy each time any of her other attack dice are rolled.
Major Skill Dice are significantly better than most common skill dice, so they start out locked away, as per Gale’s innate ability. Their mat spaces are literally sealed by a separate token. The only way to unlock one of the dice for training is to activate Gale’s three-bone backup plan, Mechanic Protocol, which allows you to remove one of the three tokens – thus, simulating Gale’s in-battle upgrade work to unlock her new cyborg body’s highest potential.
Gale was fun to design because most of her skills came naturally; they were a combination of ideas I’d had for Beacon and a variety of skills I’d always wished existed on other Gearlocs. Her movement line, in particular, with dice that let you move after attacking and one that lets you move away from a baddie after moves next to you, were “wish list” items that I got to help make a reality. The result, I think, is a powerful, easy-to-play Gearloc that allows players to use her effectively in whatever way they like. I’m very proud of her.
Polaris’s journey, on the other hand, was a bit bumpier. I’ll write about that next time.
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What else is good on the internet?
As a frequent moviegoer, I really appreciated this article about bad theater projection. I usually experience decent projection living in the Twin Cities, but I think this article goes a long way to explaining why some folks have been turned off of the theatrical experience, even if they don’t quite realize this as a contributing factor. Side note: Very shortly after I read this piece, I watched Barbie theatrically and was subjected to a dim bulb, so it can happen at otherwise well-kept-up AMCs, too.
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From the field
I’ve not had a lot of time to work on new writing outside of this Substack and work lately, but you can check out the preview page for Hoplomachus: Pandora’s Box here. Pandora’s Box is the first wave of Hoplomachus expansion content. Developer Logan Giannini is spearheading the design this time around, but I’m handling the story and world-building duties once again. It’s going to be a fun game! The campaign launches in early September.
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Follow me on Twitter @RTHowitzer, read my Letterboxd reviews @mrchumbles, listen to my Star Trek podcast at outofcontreks.podbean.com, or email me at outofcontreks@gmail.com.