Playtest May 19, 2026 - “Killing My Darlings”

Town Brewing Co. — Charlotte, NC

Tuesday evening, 7:00pm

GridCore was playtested with a new table, including three first-time GridCore players: Timothy, Abraham, and Taylor.

What started as a normal session quickly turned into a live simplification experiment.

I think the unlock for me to feel at peace and go with what the table was feeling was hearing Taylor say:

“I would buy this game.”

That created enough safety for me to seriously explore a different direction.

So we began removing systems from the table:

• the board

• the magnets

• the dice and movement layer

What remained still needs more testing, but:

The scenarios still worked.

The discussions still worked.

Jury Mode still worked.

The new filing/open structure still worked.

The biggest shift:

players first chose instinctively what they would genuinely do — then interpreted afterward what value drove the choice.

That creates a different feeling at the table:

more immediate, more social, less filtered.

But the biggest surprise was personal.

I was ok with the simplification. I actually wanted it.

The onboarding experience had started feeling confusing. Hearing Taylor immediately recognize the core loop - and suggest stripping the game closer to that center - gave me the confidence I didn’t know I needed to make these changes.