Week 5 Session: The two-phase boss workshop

Building the boss from Week 2's item-description exercise into a two-phase encounter with an earned transition

22 March 2027

Before the session#

Bring the boss from Week 2 and the attack-tells cheatsheet from Week 4, if you built one for the same boss. If not, bring any original boss concept.

In the session#

Design the transition: at what trigger (health threshold, arena event, an ally’s death) does the boss change, and why would this boss, specifically, change that way given what its item descriptions already say about it. Then design phase two’s new attack — telegraphed, per Week 4’s legibility standard — and one staging change to the arena that signals the transition has happened before the health bar does.

We workshop transitions in pairs: your partner has to guess, from the trigger and staging alone, what kind of character this boss is. If they guess something your item descriptions already established, the transition is doing narrative work. If they guess nothing in particular, it’s a number change wearing a cutscene.

Afterwards#

This is the direct draft of the Boss Blueprint, due this week — bring the trigger, the new attack, and the justification sentence, written up.