Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Looking at historical fantasy for a role playing game. Recently I floated an idea of hooking the gaming group to the historic Lewis and Clark exploration of the Louisiana purchase. Using the expedition as an underpinning and plot hook, to get the players into the wilds. The next step is to re-mystify the forests and fields from a time before “we” were all over them. A straight up historic re-walking of Lewis and Clark would be interesting if well done, I just don't think it would be a heck of a lot of fun. I also don't think I am built for straight up historical reconstruction. This is where a bit of research and “stretching the real” comes in. What were people afraid of in 1804? How did they view the wild places of our continent? It will be my job as Gm to set a stage where those fears are real, and not simply imagined. Another challenge is this. In RPG's walking is not fun, to say your party walked or canoed or whatever is simply not as fun or as descriptive as doing th

Found it on my thumb drive. The table top basketball game is one of those ideas I have written and deleted several time over the years. I have a board drawn up, I have pieces built, but it's the die mechanic and the game play that has killed the idea more than once. a game that looks to simulate a sport is tough. Sports are visual, visceral, exciting. A player has to be a certain type of sports fan to want to boil that down to purely tactical x and o’s. I have to face it any table top game of basketball I create is not going to have the thrill of watching a player swoop down the lane and dunk. The reward for the players has to be getting the most out of each procession, being efficient, basically not playing form the stance of being a fan or player but, playing from the stance of being a coach. With that said the rules have to be detailed enough to be realistic (offer realistic tactical tradeoffs and risk vs. reward), and fluid enough that the game still feels like basketball and n

Blank page syndrome I guess. I was thinking of updating the concept of PARANOIA to be a bit more topical for today (Though Paranoia is technically always topical.) So I was thinking of a game where every character has a camera installed in their eyes when they are born. When the characters reach young adult hood the dormant cameras switch on and they become part of the worlds biggest reality show. You can literally tune into anyone, the camera is never off, every one is watching you. Naturally you would be given a bunch of similarly aged room mates, and stupidity would ensue. Each player would have a turn interacting with the world, the other players as the “audience” would give the player dice to do things with. Good rolls would raise the character popularity a bad rolls would raise the characters infamy. Each player would have two stacks of 6's in front of them (like hell for leather) one to represent popularity one to represent infamy. With mechanics to move dice between towers

I’m not sure about the one page game of this week. Busy at work and intellectually lazy at home, I am drawing blanks for games I can fit on one page. I went three weeks though, and it's only Wendsday! What I am thinking of doing is running a test solo game of “down On Old Mill Road” and then publish it here. That game idea drew some atention, so it might be worth fleshing out a bit. Dread Ball talk:  Aound the end of this week or the end of next week. Once that happens I will post an unboxing over on my youtube. Everyone can get a look at what teams we have to play with and start thinking about which team suits them. For the record Dreadball is not Blood Bowl and the comparisons I see on line are not really all that valid. Some of the terms are the same but the game plays much differently. The way I see it Blood bowl is very strategic in that how you are going to reach your goals is often largly predetermined by your team choice. You can choose to play how you want to pay before th

Aleria Fluff. Guild of Rangers: The lands once known as the Alarian Empire are now a loose confederacy of feudal holdings being ruled by lords and clans. Each of these territorial rulers still pays tribute to the Emperor in Dairhouse, while ruling his or her lands as they say fit. The power of the old empire is rarely felt in the outlining highlands, the concerns of an oncoming winter weigh much heavier on a citizens mind than do the opinions of a distant king's court. News moves though the kingdom in the form of rangers, hardy outdoors-men who move from town to town, disseminating the latest news from Dairhouse. For many in a small town the rangers are the only contact they may have with a larger world around them. Each Ranger has his or her own towns that they service. The reappearance of a ranger at the town hall or near the jarl's hearth is a welcome sight and a reason for many to gather, Drink, feast, and listen to the news of the land.     Lately however, in the city of D

Tessellations and the big ship.   Lately my mind has been turning to fleet battles whether it is ocean going vessels or space fairing dreadnaughts.   In the past my big hang up was either you have a grid or hex mat restricting your movements or you have a measure system that may or may not account for a ships nimbleness or maneuverability in it's own way. I have sometimes felt a both methods are a bit clumsy.   Here is my thought. Why stop at grids and hexes? Why not stray into the world of semiregular tiling?   The tiling that I am most interested in is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tiling_Semiregular_4-6-12_Great_Rhombitrihexagonal.svg (aint that perdy?) If we were to restrict ships to only being able to enter spaces of their size / class or larger, we could have several sizes / class of ships all acting under the same rules but performing very differently in play. For example if a large ship can only enter the big peach spaces that are connected by squares, and had

Do it yourself or Kick it? I like to write games and explore game ideas. I don't think any of my ideas are boundary pushing , or even new, but I enjoy the process and like to share it with others. I call it the “do it yourself “ gaming hobby. If a game or genre catches my eye , most of the time I have tried to do it myself at least in my head, figure out how I would make that game. With the advent and rise of Kicks starter however I have been more and more tempted to simply make a small investment and get in the ground floor of an interesting game. If I put the block game on the table and tell a group “lets play this! And oh by the way we have to print out character sheets and rule books and bring your own mini's and yeah any mini's that you might have that we could uses as mobs.” or “lets un-box this new Kicks starter and give it a go with real figures and a nice glossy book.” Chances are the group will want to try the real production game. Additionally the production leve