Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Friday the RPG discussion day of the week. Are there any games that you have wanted to play a campaign in but have never had the chance? There are so many games out there! The pool   of games to select from is broad and deep, with the RPG industry 30 plus years old (depending on what yard stick you wield.) Add to that long history the current small press renaissance that we are in the middle of it seems there are more great games popping out every time a guy turns around. Each of us must have at least a few games that make us say, “Damn! I wish I could get a game of that rolling.” I put the question to the group I game with and one of the guys gave back, “GURPS discworld.” Unsurprisingly I have never read any of the Discworld books. And with all respect to Mr. Pratchett, I don’t plan on starting in on it right away, simply because all told I think there are like 40+ novels to chew through.   As an RPG however the discworld RPG powered by GURPS light and written as a standalone by Phil

RPG Games are like onions “they make you cry?” “yes” “they stink?” “sometimes....” Getting ready for the next Shards of Thimbral Playtests session. I have a few changes and additions to make based on the first two playtests, out line in these earlier posts. http://dustpangames.blogspot.com/2013/11/live-play-test-number-1-so-it-begins.html http://dustpangames.blogspot.com/2013/11/play-test-2-breaking-rules-of-playtests.html So I am starting to add layers to the  “Shards of Thimbral RPG.” I have what I feel is a decent enough  mechanic for the  telling of stories which I outlined it in  long winded detail here: http://dustpangames.blogspot.com/2013/11/nitty-gritty-open-hood-game-mechanics.html I still need to play-test the ever loving stuffing out of it, but I feel that it works and I think I can move forward with the layering of other system details. The first detail is structure. Each session is set up by the players looking at each others character sheets, and picking two goals from t

Why you no Kickstart? Kickstarter and why I'm not going that route, the small fish view: More than one person as told me, “Hey you should kickstart your game, that would make producing it that much easier!” I paraphrase liberally, but that's the gist. I love kick starter. I think it is a great idea for groups and start ups who are looking for a boost. The whole Idea of “crowd-sourcing “ has revolutionized the gaming hobby and provided start up funds that have allowed companies to explore original ideas that may not have fit perfectly into other more traditional business plans. Bravo. With all that said KickStarter is also not built for the really little guy.  "Hold on!" you say, "The little guy is the whole point of crowdsourcing!" I hear ya...and.. I know there have been some success stories in the past. Here are some of the biggest ones, naturally they have big names attached to them. http://www.cnbc.com/id/48725154 I bet if I looked around enough there

This ones not about “The Shards of Thimbral” Lets Just take an Off topic side trip for a second. Besides it's Sunday and I'm not due for another post until tomorrow. I want to talk about the new generation of video game systems. I am also going to do so with out ever giving an opinion on which I think is better or which one a person should run out and drop their hot $500 plus dollars on. That's up to you. I have had some thoughts on this recently along the lines of, “Should a 38 year old man even be considering this video game stuff.” with the present crop of games, I'm not 100% sure I should be. I realize a lot of the gaming industry is trying to find what's going to hold people of my age group, what I call the “original video game generation.” More adult themed games and stories percolate around the surface of gaming every now and then, and designers show that a game system can do more than Call O' Duty. It can also do more involving games and apparently th

Setting Notes Setting / Game name Shards of Thimbral. Holy cow I actualy have name for this thing! Yes the game is now known as “Shards Of Thimbral” I hope that is evocative enough to hang my hat on as I move forward. My last post was all admittedly dry, mechanics and chance this and reward that ~!BAHHHHH!~ That side of game design is only a small percent of what makes a game fun. Today we get to put the meet in the proverbial sandwich . Setting is difficult, Time consuming and risky. A good setting can capture an audience's imagination and make people want to play a game. An uninspiring setting will turn players off and kill even the best designed game system. What I am offering up here is the original setting design document, the frame on which I'm going to hang the Shards of Thimbral game and fiction on. I have three goals: I want to make the setting evocative and fun, with a range of narrative possibilities to satisfy a range of players and play styles. Secondly, (Though th

Nitty-Gritty time: Hoods will be opened and tinkering will commence. AKA: The Dread Theory in motion post: I have to start with what this game project is not. It is not a world beating, paradigm shifting, new thinking, game changing, never before conceptualized pile of awesome. I kinda wish it was, but I'm not that guy, I don't have those kind of chops. What the game is going to be, is a game I would enjoy running or playing. It will also hopefully facilitate the kind of R.P.G. and world building experience I enjoy. Those are my basic design goals. As for general game theory, this game is an application of stuff that has been around a while, utilized, explained, and fought over by people a lot smarter and more well spoken than I am. This game is just my take on it. On to the gears and grease: What I like to start with is an economy of reward. The reward in my view is narrative control, the right to move the story in a direction you as a player want, through character and party

Play test number two, breaking the rules of play testing. The first or second rule of play testing is “don’t test with your regular group, you know them too well.” And while I agree with that, I feel that breaking that rule at this early stage is acceptable.   Better to test early and often with whomever you can get than not to test at all, in my opinion. With that in mind I broke our normal gaming group up into two groups of two, and ran two separate play tests. This was for two reasons, one the scheduling of it all made breaking the group up just easier. Secondly small groups give fed back in ways that I can digest more easily. Two opinions coming at me is fine, four or five might be   overwhelming all at once, at least it would be right now when everything in the game is still fluid and could be changed. Once the game is ready for bigger groups we will merge the groups and move forward. So onto the play test: Importantly this play test featured start to finish character generation,

The goals, that’s the thing! Let’s talk about goals in RPG’s. In my current project each character can set up to three goals for themselves when the character is created.   The option is left open to leave them blank until the player gets their feet wet and has some ideas about where they want their characters to go. Mechanically the player can spend experience to move their character closer to fulfilling a goal.   Once the goal is fulfilled they get to narrate a section of story that brings closure to the goal, and they can then add something new to their character sheet, this can be anew connection or a new ability and so on. Our group used this exact system in our group written house game Phase Abandon.   I like it so much I am directly porting it into my latest project. Having goals for characters allow the group to move in a story arc, even when they are not 100% sure how to start off. The goals also provide a generally pretty natural feeling of character growth.   The player can

Today two friends of mine and I play tested the game I have been working / blogging about. This is the first time that the new game has been given a spin, and the first time either of the guys playing h as seen any of the mechanics or any of the setting, so it was all pretty new and exciting. (For me at least.) Sitting down for the first time and trying to concisely describe the things that are rattling around in my head is incredibly challenging for me. Not that I am uncomfortable, especially not with the guys involved, it's simply a difficult thing to do. Putting ideas into words is not made any easier when the setting being introduced is so undeveloped that I don't even have solid names for some key items and area yet. Lucky for me my friends are a patient bunch , and we got moving pretty smoothly. I'm not going to get into the minutia of the story, however I will write brief portions and relate them back to the test.. Setting: without outt writing it all out , i

Game development: Hitting some bumps, bumps of self confidence, or is that a hive? (Subtitle: this is why they call these things “Heartbreakers”) With my first play test in 2 days, yesterday I printed my first very basic play test copy of the rules so far. I have not even named this damn game yet. Here are my lumps and bumps moving forward: I am working with Scribus to do my lay out, I know that in design would be easier particularly because I know a bit about how to use it, but Scribus is free. I find it ok, though I am not steady with everything it can do yet. Putting in Text and lining up margins is easy enough, I look forward to delving deeper as the project moves forward. What I don’t know much about is proper lay out and text flow and all those other chunks of know how a lay out professional has at their fingertips. I can learn the program, but that does not make me an expert or even a neophyte at making a text easy on the eyes. That is going to be hit or miss.   My plan is to st

How to not steal from your friends, GM needs to be a player, talk it out! Preface, I consider everyone who plays RPGs just a friend I have not met yet. Perhaps this outlook is a bit strange, but that’s how I trip though life. I don’t want to steal from my friends, so I need to talk about some of the concepts in my newest game. The Game Dungeon World has been pollinating my new game with ideas. Not so much in the nuts and bolts, there are things love about dungeon world and things I don’t. I’m not sold on the system of GM “moves” though I do think it ties the whole game together eloquently. I’m not sure if the game can be played with a running narrative, as it seems fit to generating bursts of fiction. (Like watching the middle 30 minutes of Conan the Barbarian, nice fight, but what, why?) What I love and what has really stuck with me are the principles for GM’s. What the fine folks working on Dungeon World have done is put into words more concisely than I ever could a lot of the things

Before I start, Happy November 1st.. Damn...The year is just clicking by. Play test: like brushing your teeth As often as possible, after every meal if you can, and do it early….rinse ..repeat.. I am planning a quick and dirty play test of mechanics for my new game with some friends that I have been gaming with for a long time. It’s very early in the development cycle for me to even think about playing a ”real” game, but I have to kick the tires. So what are my thoughts on play testing? I think that the only way to get a feel for a game is to play it. Not only to play it but at least for the first few times play it with people whose opinions you trust and play styles you know. It makes for a good barometer of your system if you know the players starting points. For example if you have a player who likes crunch in his games and you are making a less than crunchy system you already know they might say “I never felt satisfied during the fights.” You as the designer could translate that to