The Future of Black Hats

Grab your preference of a hot coffee or a cold beer, wall of text incoming.

We have gotten a lot of questions about what our plans are for the future of Black Hats, if we are to assume that the crowd funding campaign is successful. I just wanted to address them all in one place for those following the campaign who would like to know more.

Are there going to be expansions? More content?

Yes! There are several directions that we would like to explore with Black Hats’ game design. There are a number of ideas that hit the cutting room floor while we developed the game, either because they were too complex for the base game or we just couldn’t quite make them work the first go around. There are two major areas we would start developing on for future expansions first:
Multiplayer Mode - This is one of the bigger ideas we are constantly noodling on in the background. A multiplayer mode would necessitate a new game board to accommodate the additional players and their runners. We’ve toyed with both 2v2 and free for all designs.
Faction Mechanics - While the core set is made up entirely of mercenaries who will work for the highest bidder, the world of Black Hats would obviously contain different factions who work best together. After all, what cyberpunk setting doesn’t have hackers teaming up for big scores? Even within the established fiction of Black Hats, there’s also the third party groups creating the powerful rigs, like Khonsu, IMB, MILNET, Rravager, and others — you know they’re out there assembling teams to further their own nefarious goals. We’d love to flesh these ideas out and reward thematically-driven teams with unique cards and deck construction rules, as well as additional lore and artwork. 

Do you have plans for tournaments or competitive play? Prize support?

Absolutely. We already ran a playtesting league during our development and we are going to run another one after the crowd funding campaign. In addition to facilitating online league play using Tabletop Simulator, our goal is to build towards a regular in-person tournament at GenCon each year where the community can meet each other and play in person.
We don’t have the infrastructure of larger companies to offer cash prizes, but prizing for our tournaments and our leagues is still important to us. There are still a lot of fun prizes we can offer on an indie budget — : Unique alternate art cards, a set of holographic Hack the Networks, acrylic tokens, are all things we could create as prizing for top placements in our events.

Are you going to support the game with balance changes?

For as long as we have players giving us feedback, we intend to listen and respond. A lot of thought and playtesting has gone into making sure that nothing is overpowered or ruins the fun of the game, but we don’t have enough hubris to assume that our playtesting is a match for every single one of you trying different combinations and strategies.

We don’t like the idea of banning cards or issuing errata because both come with their own challenges and both create negative feelings if someone shows up to a game without knowing that an update was issued. But you know what we like even less than bans and errata? The idea of Black Hats being unsatisfying as a competitive game due to unaddressed balance issues.

We are willing to make these kinds of adjustments if needed, though we won’t do so lightly. It’s hard to make concrete statements without the context of a specific meta problem, but we can make a few general promises:

1. If there is a change, it will be announced via email and Discord.
   
2. If a card receives any kind of change, the new version will be reflected in our Tabletop Simulator mod and our online loadout builder. It will also be made available in a printable format online for you to slip inside a sleeve over the original card. Finally, all future published expansion content will include updated printings of previously changed cards, if there are any.

What about Dice or Death Games in general?

On our campaign page we use the language that we are creating an indie game studio. The story of Dice or Death Games begins with Black Hats, but we certainly don’t anticipate ending with only Black Hats.

Right now Black Hats will be our only focus. There is nothing more important to us than delivering for the people who are making this whole operation possible.

That said, it is hard to turn off that game designer brain. We are often discussing ideas for entirely new games that have no relation to Black Hats, mechanical or otherwise.

The End

That is all we have for today! If there is something you’re burning to know that wasn’t answered here you can always reach out to us through our discord community.