In 2018, I got back into playing wargames. I picked up a Legion of Everblight army for Warmachine, enticed by the corrupted elves and strange tentacled beasts. I fell in love with the game's lethal and technical gameplay, and ended up getting quite invested in the competitive scene. (For veterans of Immoren's endless war: I mostly paired Abby2/Lylyth3, and played Rhyas1 in brawlmachine.)

I say that I was enticed by the corrupted elves and strange tentacled beasts, but it's maybe more accurate to say that I was enticed by the release model that Privateer Press had chosen: the rules were available for free online. At a time when I wanted to get back into playing with minis, other games made it hard to break in - buying a core rulebook and army codex for something like Warhammer would have set me back over a hundred dollars, and then I was on the hook to read dozens or perhaps hundreds of pages before I could decide whether I wanted to get into the game and what my first mini would be. In contrast, I could learn to play Warmachine by watching the official youtube tutorial and I could study what all the cool models did over at Warmachine University.

The free rules release model meant that Privateer Press was able to connect to more players, and teach their game in more interesting and accessible ways. It meant that as a prospective player, I could get a better sense of whether this was a game for me before having to commit any dollars. And ultimately, it's what lead me to get into the game. (I ended up moving on to other hobbies around 2022.)

As a designer, I took note of how much was made possible when the rules weren't paywalled. I know that roleplaying games are a different beast altogether, but I was intrigued by the idea of trying to apply a similar concept to my own work some day. Going For Broke proved to be the perfect fit! And as a bonus, having the rules available for free online meant that I could release a super slim, compact game that had a low price point and was easy to toss into your purse or backpack.

You can read the current rules for Going For Broke here!

Going For Broke's rules are currently available in-line on the webpage itself. Once the crowdfunding campaign is successful (60% of the way there already!), I'll also be developing a PDF version. In the future, I'll be adding a video tutorial as well!

This crowdfunding campaign is a big part of what enables me to take this approach, because the support upfront means I'm not pressured to hawk my PDFs to pay the bills. Which means I'm super thankful to all of you for your contributions! Thank you so much for being involved in this release!

For such a simple, compact game, the journey that Going For Broke took to get to this moment was long! I wanted to take a moment to talk about the origins of this game.

The first iteration of Going For Broke was actually developed way back in 2012. Back then, it was named Keep It Sunny — an (unlicensed) fan game for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. You could choose between playing as Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee, Frank, and a couple guest stars.

Take a look at the cards below and you'll get a sense of what stayed the same and what changed over the course of its development (when compared to the current rules). The game always used coins, but in the first iteration they were just used as tokens to be collected and then "cashed in." There were always pre-established character cards to choose from. The episode structure was also locked in from the very beginning: financial need (or opportunism) leads to an A Plot and a B Plot, one of which succeeds, the other of which fails, leaving the characters right back where they started.

What changed? First, I dropped the It's Always Sunny skin, replacing it with a new show premise and a new cast of characters. New characters meant having the opportunity to be really intentional about representation (the final cast of Going For Broke is majority POC, with gender parity and queer representation baked in). The mechanics went through numerous iterations, landing on the simple elegance of "answer this question to unlock your coin, flip your coin to try to resolve your plot." And finally, with the game no longer tied to an existing media property, I was able to think about the possibility of publishing.

And now, thirteen years later, it's finally making its real debut!

Thanks for being here, and for being part of this long journey. I'm so glad this campaign has started with a bang. I would be super grateful if you could help me keep up that momentum, by sharing a link on social media and helping spread the word!