Band-Aids & Bullet Holes Design Diary: The Moves That Didn’t Make It

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is my upcoming deckbuilder tabletop roleplaying game built for bloody revenge operas inside a tight-knit clique of professional assassins. Here’s a post where I take one story from its design and break it down so maybe you can better design your own games. If you want more context on how the game works before diving in, check out this free demo.

Last time in this series I took a look at my favorite basic move from Band-Aids & Bullet Holes. But I also mentioned that throughout design I had this open question of whether the game wanted moves at all.

Today I’m going to walk through every basic move I tried putting into the game and why the vast majority felt useless at best.

I’m gonna start up top here with my conclusion after looking back over these: I wrote ~10 moves and only ~2.5 of them made it into the final game. That’s so interesting to me! Again and again I concluded that handling something with a move was less compelling to me than leaving it up to freeform roleplay and the players’ genre expectations. Compelling! Let’s get into some specific examples.

But before that, let me describe the basics of the game: characters are small decks of “calling cards,” playing cards with a short evocative phrase written on them (toothy grin, nail gun, bisexual lighting, punchable face…).

The basic structure of the game is we go around the circle taking turns. When it’s your turn to frame a scene, you answer these questions:

• Which character are you playing as?

• What does that character want?

• Who do they want it from?

Someone else picks up the “who do they want it from?” character. They say where they are and add some color to the scene. Then we basically just roleplay it out from there.

Now the moves! First up is a banger:

Look sick as fuck.

You’re not going to believe how many words I have to say about this move. It was a great move. Honestly maybe I should put it back in the game - more on that later. Obviously this is just a thing you can do regardless of whether there’s a move for it, but I like the act of calling it out.

Dream Askew / Dream Apart sort of does this. In that game you have weak moves that typically get you into trouble but net you a token, strong moves that get you out of trouble but cost a token, and “regular” moves that you can just kinda do.

Some of the regular moves act as fictional permissions. Probably not every character can “use your psychic gifts with unexpected side effects” whenever they want, but the Iris sure can!

But every playbook has the regular move “take action, leaving yourself vulnerable.” And the book says that every time you act as your character in the game, that’s making a move. So anything you do that doesn’t fit another move? By definition it must have been this, meaning you’ve left yourself vulnerable.

If I’m designing a game where DA/DA’s definition of a move holds, that every action you take as a character must come from the list of moves, then I love a move that’s like “look sick as fuck.” It would mean that any time you appear in a scene you’re automatically looking sick as fuck, and these characters all deserve that. (When BABH did operate like this, its version of “take action, leaving yourself vulnerable” was “sink deeper into the shit.” Heh.)

Even when I didn’t take that definition for moves, I got some benefit in playtesting from putting a bunch of “there’s no rules here, just a suggestion of a thing to say” kind of moves on the playsheets in that if people were stuck they could look down, pick something, and do it. But it came with a cost, too: put too many moves on the sheet and they became overwhelming. People would “i ain’t reading all that” the playsheets and then none of the moves were worth anything. In the end, I trimmed out most of the “you can just do this” moves.

But this one, especially when paired with “get deeper into the shit”… it sets a great vibe, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s worth enough to bring it back. Hm.

Beg for aid. If they deign to help, they may set terms, and they gain a Debt on you. If they turn you away in disgrace, mark a Desperation.

Call in a Debt. If they agree to your terms, strike out the Debt. If they refuse you, they mark a Desperation.

There’s a neat symmetry here: who’s indebted to who? That changes who has the power when I come asking for a favor. But this pair went away because I cut Debts as a mechanic (and then later Desperation too).

The thing about debts is that they feel very important to the John Wick verse. Any “we go way back” kinda violent revenge thing, really. You can imagine that scene where I come to you and you’re like “no no no, get out of here, we don’t need your trouble” and them I’m like “remember how you owe me for Shanghai?” and you go “godammit” but you get your gun and join me in my car.

In early playtests, each character had this thing called a “character sheet” and on their “character sheet” you could “write stuff down.” One of the things you wrote down was a person who owed you and a person you owed.

The problem was you had to track these things in two places: I need to write down that I owe you, and you need to write down that you owe me, and it’s easy for us to get it flipped and both write down we owe the other or something. Compounding this was the essential character non-monogamy of BABH: any player can pick up any character. So it’s not even like “I owe you” it’s “Barf owes Queenie” which means I owe you when I’m Barf but then you owe me when I’m Queenie.

Confused yet? Playtesters sure were. And debts as a mechanical object weren’t adding anything anyway so I just cut the whole idea of them and this move with it.

Provoke someone with biting words or felony destruction of property. Say what you want from them, then flip cards:

• If you draw a red card, you lose.

• If you draw black, high card wins. 

Loser looks like a fool and chooses: do what the other wants or mark a Desperation.

This was my attempt at a basic conflict resolution move. Does the game need a conflict resolution move? Maybe, maybe not. What it definitely does need is something to help resolve stalemates where two characters are beefing and neither’s willing to back down.

I like the name “provoke someone” as a way to force people towards a particular kind of action when they hit a stalemate. The rest of this is just whatever though. I’m experimenting with card color to try and use all the affordances of a standard deck of playing cards, but it’s just extra clutter.

Eventually it morphed into this:

When you want to change how things go, raise the stakes with biting words, felony destruction of property, or whatever. Say what you want someone to do, they say the same of you, then shuffle up and flip. High card wins. Loser looks like a fool and chooses: 

• Do what the other wants, or

• Mark a Desperation

Winner says how the scene concludes.

This is clearer and cleaner than provoke someone, and it actually served its purpose of breaking a stalemate.

The problem here was simple: no one ever fucking used it. It drove me nuts. This was at a time when there were only like three moves in the game: be vulnerable, fight a duel, and raise the stakes. Why weren’t people using it to make scenes go forward???

Got your guess? I cut this move for a while, but it’s back in the final version and now it works great:

Break a stalemate. If the two of you reach an impasse and neither will back down, both say what you want then shuffle up and flip. Loser chooses:

• Winner gets what they want but loses integrity. Loser remakes the winner’s flipped calling card. End the scene.

• Loser walks away and suffers a wound. End the scene.

• Start a duel.

The options have changed again, but that wasn’t what mattered here. It was just renaming the thing so when people were stuck in a scene this move correctly flagged itself as the answer to their problem. Obvious in retrospect.

Interrupt the Bloodhound’s scene to send two dozen goons after them. Tell them they’re surrounded, mark a Desperation, and start a duel between them and your goons.

This used to be a move that only the Bastard got to have: you could only use it when you were acting as the Bastard. Sick move, right?

This move does still exist, but I took it from the Bastard and gave it to the City, the game’s de facto Greek chorus - if you’re not currently in a scene, you’re part of the City. This was purely a practical choice: the Bastard didn’t have a reference sheet, so where should I print this move? The natural choice was on the City sheet, so boom, now it’s a City move and any character can do it as long as they’re not currently in the scene.

Betray someone’s trust. Take one of your Wounds and pass it off to them.

This is another move I think is a banger, but like Be Vulnerable it interrupted the flow of play more often than I’d have liked. Maybe I should bring it back the way I saved Be Vulnerable…

The real reason I cut this one though is just that no one ever used it. So why take up space on the reference sheet?

Negotiate. Make offers, counteroffers, and threats. Use biting words, felony destruction of property, or whatever. Say what you do and ask how they respond.

Okay, this is a “you can just do this thing and there’s no mechanics attached” move. This is the one I think it’s important to put on the sheet: mostly you’re just doing this. When in doubt, roleplay.

But I went through several iterations of trying to mechanize the basic structure of a negotiation. It was always so much messier than just talking, and it confused people and knocked them out of being in their character back into a real world “wait how does this work?” headspace. Booo! So we ended up here.

But let’s look at a couple of the failures. Here’s the first as a set of three moves:

Make a demand. Tell them what you want and ante up a calling card. Later on if they do what you want, they’ll get to remake your anted card. (You can use this move more than once a scene. Each time you ante another card, and they have to do what you want or deny you.)

Deny them. Tell them no. Whatever they want, they don’t get it. You suffer a wound for the privilege— physical, emotional, or metaphorical.

Do what they ask. Remake any calling cards they’ve anted up. You can rewrite their names and/or adjust their rank up or down.

Anteing cards was interesting. I still kind of love this - when you demand someone’s help you have to put a piece of yourself on the line metaphorically to do it. People didn’t intuitively get it though, they didn’t understand what anteing up “meant.” It was all great vibes to me, but ultimately too vibes-y.

Here’s what came after that:

Dangle a carrot. Offer to gift, upgrade, or invent a new calling card for them. If they do what you ask, you must make good on your offer.

Brandish a stick. Say what you want and threaten what you'll do if you don't get it. If still they deny you, you must follow through on your threat, and you each suffer a wound.

These feel so right to me! God, maybe I should playtest more… No, no, that’s game designer madness talking… Get it together Sam, we gotta publish the game…

I genuinely can’t remember why I moved on from these. My guess is it was twofold: another case of people not moving the moves, plus these not fundamentally solving the problem of “what happens when we hit a stalemate?” I do know when I cut them it was to bring back “raise the stakes” as “break a stalemate.” But maybe both! I dunno.

Here’s where I landed with a negotiation move:

Negotiate. Use biting words, felony destruction of property, or whatever. Offer or threaten to remake or give them a new calling card. Say what you do and ask how they respond.

It’s basically that first move again, but now I’m calling out that you can remake or hand out calling cards if you want to. Dangle a carrot and brandish a stick would more clearly flag that you can muck around with each other’s calling cards, but this version pushes people more towards freeform roleplay, and that’s what I prefer.

We’re here at the end now. Here’s the current full set of moves:

Negotiate. Use biting words, felony destruction of property, or whatever. Offer or threaten to remake or give them a new calling card. Say what you do and ask how they respond.  

When you catch them with their heart exposed, choose: risk something in return and you each heal a wound, or don’t and just they suffer a wound.

Break a stalemate. If the two of you reach an impasse and neither will back down, both say what you want then shuffle up and flip. Loser chooses:

• Winner gets what they want but loses integrity. Loser remakes the winner’s flipped calling card. End the scene.

• Loser walks away and suffers a wound. End the scene.

• Start a duel.

Fight a duel. Pick up the duel sheet and make a whole thing of it.

I’ve found this to be the right balance of providing people tools to push the game forward when they’re stuck, mess with each other mechanically, and stay out of the way to let people roleplay.

But the fun of moves is that it’s easy to write new ones. You can make the game more mechanical, more move-based, less freeform roleplay by adding back in carrots and sticks, any of the other moves here, or new ones of your own invention.

I’m gonna leave things here while I decide whether or not to change my game again at the eleventh hour. Thanks for reading.