Diary of a Failed Game Designer

The other night we successfully tested a game I had been kicking around called Nova 74. Those of you who have been reading this blog or a while may remember I mentioned it once or twice in 2014 and specifically in a post about a game with a similar setting that popped up on kick starter . This will not be an actual Play post. (no-one reads those any way, do they?) This will be more of a look at what we did with the game as it was for this first trial run. For the record this game is very much a "Mark Game." Meaning it's  nothing like AAIE. While I love AAIE and can have a cracker jack night of gaming with it, it's a black sheep among my designs. premise: The  B rated, and over the top side of 70's of Television and Movie crime Fiction. Influences include serial crime dramas, Blacksplotation films, Grindhouse films. Barretta, kojack, Shaft, Super Fly, Coffee, Switchblade Sisters, Dirty Harry, ect. I wonder about  Blade runner ... Hrmmmm So basically crime drama se

Here you go a complete Role playing game for a fantasy setting that gets out of the way and never holds your hand at all. This is what we all want right! Right? If so  why do designers continue to make games? Why not just say,  "Here's some pretty pictures of Barbarians and caves.  Roll D20 if the GM says you succeed, you do, if not you don't,  now go play." Should we all be playing  S.L.U.G ?  Perhaps. Perhaps not. Is the  following game any good? No. Is it complete thing, like a thing for which you would give your money to a guy in a booth at MassiveCon ? No. Could the vast majority of  people reading this blog go and  run a fun game for their friends with it? Yes I bet they could, because you folks are awesome. So why are RPG systems not just this.... because this would require allot of work to get up and running.. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oldest School RPG: A game that does not

I was thinking last night about combat in D&D 5th edition and had a bit of  brain storm concerning adding  details to Fighter / warrior combat without involving more dice throwing. Here is what I came up with more or less on the fly. I'm spit-balling here, I have not tested any of this yet. This will involve 2 steps. Step 1: Take each character and monster and divide their hit points by 5. The resulting number should be jotted down as what I am going to call the Character's  "break" number. If any single attack does equal to or more than the targets "break number" the attacker can cause a "break effect." on that target. So if for example the  level 10 fighter has 100 hit points any singe attack that does 20 (hp / 5) or more damage will cause a break effect. My thought was players could choose a break effect rather than a feat or attribute bonus when they achieve a level where they could take an attribute bonus. The player would choose weather o

This is a post about the long standing campaigns out there. Little pieces of the multi-verse that we have been  nibbling away  at intellectually  since high school or even before that. For me, I started my campaign mostly ran it as a proper game in high school, but the basic map goes back to the very first game I ever ran and  a fighter named Buck looking for a ruby sword. That is a span of something like 26 years give or take. The last time I ran it was Friday, the game included a reference to something that happened in game back in 1994.I know there are folks out there who have been running games in the same world of their own creation for even longer. I know for a fact there are people out there who have kept better maps and  notes over the years than I have. My question to you is what would it take to for you to blow it up? Not start something new, but  rend the  old world to pieces. How would it happen? The introduction of new powerful magic can change a world for ever. Dropping a