Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Karma, in the bargain: If writing a game that uses a karma system, AKA not rolling dice but using some non random way of determining the outcome of things, one of the great challenges is having situation not be too cut and dry. The Amber dice less role playing system does this by creating a situation where no one really knows how they stack up as compared to the rest of the group. You might know, “I am stronger than Bill, but Hank is the strongest of us all, however Kelly is a far better swords woman than any of us and very dangerous with a blade.”   The game sets that up in character generation with a bidding system, and carries through the game. In Amber it’s very thematic, replicating quite well the relationships all of the princess and princesses of Amber have with each other in the books. That’s one way to do it. And it works if the players are using numerical values to measure their characters abilities and the GM can say for sure “Yes your character is physically stronger than h

So here I am again on the edge of the “I'm going to write a game” cliff. This time I am going to try to do things a bit differently. Using this blog I'm going to document my process, which in turn might help, entertain, or possibly bore others. When I finish this game I will have a nice record of what I did, the design choices I committed to and why. Hopefully some discussion as to why I am making some decisions and why I am not making others will happen. I hear you ask, “Why such a big deal, you write a game like every time take a shower, or at least once a week?” I'm on the tail end of 38 years old and have been doing this a long time, I think I finally need to settle in and write some thing I really like. To put it simply take it seriously for once. This next project I really want to try and put my real honest to goodness best effort forward. To that end I plan on making a game that I would want to run or play, the one that happens in my head. Our game Phase Abando

I think how light or how heavy an RPG rule set needs to be is really up to the needs of the players. What does the group find fun? Where does the game need to take them? What kind of story do they want to put together? For example, I don't think Russ (one of my friends and fellow players) would mind me saying that he likes AD&D. It just fits how he likes to play. Why? I don't know he would have to say. I have a feeling that having a ladder set up in the system that a character has to climb as they get more powerful (Ie levels) would have something to do with it. Many lighter narrative games miss out on the whole “we are going to string these adventures together and your character will get better dynamic.” Even Fate which is the game system of the moment in the wider RPG community, falls down in this regard with character improvement rules that feel a lot like an after thought. It also seems to me that many games that look to be Gm'less (like our own game Phase Aban

Dice and Cards, Cards and Dice: Lately I have been mulling over game systems that use both cards and dice, for resolution. I love dice, nothing makes me happier than working out just that right die mechanic that helps carry a game along smoothly. I enjoy rich dice as well; I want to squeeze as much game relevant info out of each roll as I possibly can. As a designer, it makes me happy. Cards on the other hand have an interesting attribute that is hard to model in dice. When a card is pulled then discarded the chance of pulling each other card in the deck goes up. That’s blackjack in a nut shell. That’s cool. To that add the physical size of cards allows them to hold more information than dice, and in effect give richer results. A normal playing card shows, color, suit, number, and face. That’s a lot of information on each card, a lot of randomization, a lot of opportunity to use that information in interesting combinations. If this discussion branches out to custom decks of cards, then

Day four of the semi-great AD&D blog challenge. Hello, My name is Mark and I have a favorite setting.. Preamble: I have to start off by eliminating the settings that were home brew, custom, or Gm written. If I were to not  I would go with my friend's Sebastian & Kirk's settings, if for no other reasons than the sheer number of little notes Seb kept on index cards regarding all kinds tidbits, and the drawing of Shadis that Kirk did that made us all not want to ever find him. However onto the topic at hand. I love Birthright. There, I said it. I am throwing my hat in for Birthright. I have no idea if the game / setting / mass combat card rules as boxed are playable, I have my doubts. However I love the  idea and the scope of the game, that the PC, are blooded, bonded to their lands, and gain power from them. They lead armies, they move amongst the other leaders of the realm, the pc's are finally where successful PC's end up, running a land holding. Oh and Realm Ma

Day two and three of the D&D writing month.. I started writing about my favorite race, (for the record Dwarf) and then I started thinking how for me favorite race is linked forever linked to favorite class. A stout grumpy dwarf fighter is by far my favorite thing to play. Hands down, game over man. I think the reason is this, if they could package any class race combo as “working class hero” It would be a dwarf fighter. Every player comes to the the table with their own definition of “hero.” The hero archetype is ingrained in our psyche from millennium of storytelling and tradition, then it is informed during our youth by experience and observation. Eventually everyone develops his or her own view of what is good, righteous and right, in short our own vision of heroic. For me it has always been the working class underdog who overcomes adversity based solely on dogged determination, the guy who gets up every day and goes to work for the better good. The guy who does not look to fig

Post one in the  30 posts for 30 days D&D challenge. How did you get started with D&D? Well that's interesting and a bit tough. I playing games with a neighborhood friend back in elementary school, games like Areo Tech and Battle tech and shortly before he moved away I got my hands on the red-box of basic D&D (like 4 weeks + allowance at the time.) So we made characters, ran the initial adventure from the box, did it all”Wrong” but it was fun. I started talking about it at school. Got some more books (blue box?) It really started at my friend Fred's house, I drew a big cheesy map, he made a character named “Buck” who was particularly proud of his pole arm, and we had a campaign. Buck searched for the Ruby Sword, and it was hidden on that map, and he went all over the place, fighting monsters and searching. It was a sandbox game before any one ever talked about sandbox, it was really poorly put together but neither of us cared. We were staying up all night and having