DESIGN DIARY - 11.20.00

Plan of Campaign

This is it: the home stretch.

We're getting close to the end of November, which means that development of Jedi Knights is reaching its final stages. It also means that some of the members of the Product Development team prefer to stay home rather than to come to work and face me every single morning, so they pretend to be suffering from exotic ailments such as conjunctivitis or childbirth.

Nevertheless, the PD guys who are still able to walk and operate low- to medium-tech devices (doorknobs, coffee machines) are hard at work to give Jedi Knights just the right finish.

"I've enlisted Designer Ed Gartin [from the Art Department] to help me out with the look of the playmat," Chuck says with a straight face.

Actually, "enlisted" is a bit weak. "Swindled" would be more like it.
Let's backtrack.

The Diary entry for November 8th featured the following quote from Chuck, about the playmat prototype posted on his wall:
"I just keep it up there in the hopes that someone from the Art Department will walk by and go, 'Man, this looks bad. Let me take this disaster downstairs and try to do something with it.'"

Joe read that entry. The next morning, he couldn't resist walking up to the PD floor, staring at Chuck's playmat and saying "Man, this looks bad."
Unfortunately for Chuck, Joe didn't carry on with the rest of the quote. So Chuck had to wait for another victim.
Ed recently learned to play Young Jedi and was offering suggestions about the sample game printed on the upcoming Young Jedi playmat. When he heard about the sample game that appeared on the Jedi Knights playmat, he called Chuck and said he'd be happy to provide feedback on that one as well, if he needed it. Chuck agreed, but instead of emailing Ed the sample game, he sent him the file of the entire playmat. When Ed opened it, sour-faced at the sight of the botched surgery, he turned to Joe and asked if he was supposed to design the thing. Joe said yes - no doubt relieved to know he could once more safely go to the PD floor.

"So not only will the playmat look great," continues Chuck, "but Ed's comments on the sample game were very valuable because he's so new at those games. He has a very fresh approach, which helps us a lot."

So right now PD concentrates on "tweaking old stuff instead of creating new stuff," as Chuck puts it. "The gameplay on the cards is pretty much locked down," says Tom Lischke, "especially once a particular card is approved by Lucasfilm."

Lore is also an important chunk on PD's plate. "Every card has lore," continues Tom, "and now we're refining it. Compared to our other games, Jedi Knights lore is more 'aggressively entertaining.' We're going for a style that's more editorial rather than straight reporting." So Jedi Knights players should read lore that has a bit more of an edge to it instead of simple facts about what's on the card.

Since every deck will be built around a main character - a "theme" - some of the cards were designed with a gameplay link to that main character - a "theme stamp." Vader's Lightsaber would be a clear example of a card with a Vader theme stamp. Couldn't Hit The Broad Side Of A Barn would be one for Greedo. Except that the Greedo deck was scrapped in early development (at 7:30 a.m. on Day 1).
The PD team also tried to work the theme relationship in the flavor of the lore. "For every card with a theme stamp," says Tom, "we've tried whenever possible to present the lore in a way that would express the point of view of the theme [the main character] on the weapon, starship or character depicted on the card."

Downstairs, I can only have a quick word with Joe. "All the models are pretty much finished now," he says, "but some cards still need to be completely assembled." Which means placing the right model in the right setting, and tweaking like there's no tomorrow.

Joe did not offer to comment on the now infamous Playmat Incident.

Francis K. Lalumiere
The Juggler