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 Heartbreaker Update
I got a request/suggestion to rearrange the document so that all the Char-Gen stuff is right at the beginning, as well as putting those steps more thoroughly/specifically into the Table of Contents, so I might look into how to arrange that, soon. Any suggestions are appreciated! 
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 06:25 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 05:21
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demota posted:It does, yeah! To build on Bigup DJ's good advice and what you say here, I'd suggest you format moves along the lines of "When you would suffer an injury, if your character describes how they avoided it, you can discard a matching triple and ignore the wound." Trying to match the types of dialogue with the corresponding actions so that you have to yell about the inescapable power of justice when doing a finishing attack, but how justice operates while blind so the flash bang attack doesn't phase you when you are trying to defend. Is there any kind of system to do sudden reversals of battle momentum either by revealing new powers or reversing a super attack? It seems to be an important feature of the genre.
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May 12, 2014 08:46
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wallawallawingwang posted:To build on Bigup DJ's good advice and what you say here, I'd suggest you format moves along the lines of "When you would suffer an injury, if your character describes how they avoided it, you can discard a matching triple and ignore the wound." Trying to match the types of dialogue with the corresponding actions so that you have to yell about the inescapable power of justice when doing a finishing attack, but how justice operates while blind so the flash bang attack doesn't phase you when you are trying to defend. Is there any kind of system to do sudden reversals of battle momentum either by revealing new powers or reversing a super attack? It seems to be an important feature of the genre. I'd intended to have revealing a new power as a thing to cancel out an attack or Seize Victory. At least, enemy-side. For heroes... I was honestly considering that if character advancement was a thing, new abilities could only be acquired in mid-combat when the time was right. I hope to have a new playable version by this weekend!
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May 12, 2014 20:38
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I got some feedback on my game doc, and it was suggested that the char-gen process should be explained step by step, without any reference to game mechanics woven in. This seems utterly stupid to me; I tried as best as I could to intersperse mechanics in the character creation process as the become relevant i.e. "Pick your attribute scores" is a pretty useless instruction without any reference to what they actually do, right? Am I in the wrong about this? What are some good examples of how to arrange a player resource guide/PHB sort of doc?
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May 13, 2014 20:37
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P.d0t posted:I got some feedback on my game doc, and it was suggested that the char-gen process should be explained step by step, without any reference to game mechanics woven in. This seems utterly stupid to me; I tried as best as I could to intersperse mechanics in the character creation process as the become relevant i.e. "Pick your attribute scores" is a pretty useless instruction without any reference to what they actually do, right? I've been thinking about the same issue. It is a good question and depends largely if you see your manual as procedure or pedagogy. From the pedagogical point of view of "teaching people to play", of course you want enough context in your chargen so that they can make informed decisions - and that includes mechanics. However, from the procedural point of view of "make a character", you want focused and clear writing for a step-by-step guide to achieving the chargen task. The long line of D&D PHBs has definitely taken the procedural approach, outlining all the choices you need to make without detailing how it will all play out. I agree that giving choices without context is not ideal as it can lead to trap options / etc depending on how big a part charop plays in your system and how frontloaded charop is. The FATE Core rulebook takes the procedural approach. Its chargen section refers to future pages for skill and stunts, but still has the chargen in one section on its own without too much mechanical detail. Apocalypse Engine games as well typically provide an outline of char-gen outside the playbooks, with the mechanics of the moves, by the self-contained design, in the playbooks themselves. Also consider that the pedagogical approach is most useful to new players, but loses value as the system becomes more familiar. A procedural writing style that is sectioned by discrete topics is easier to use as a reference by more experienced players.
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May 13, 2014 21:08
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P.d0t posted:I got some feedback on my game doc, and it was suggested that the char-gen process should be explained step by step, without any reference to game mechanics woven in. This seems utterly stupid to me; I tried as best as I could to intersperse mechanics in the character creation process as the become relevant i.e. "Pick your attribute scores" is a pretty useless instruction without any reference to what they actually do, right? I'd suggest reading a bunch and marking down the things you like. Not everyone is going to give you the same answer. Generally, people say they prefer character creation to be early. I'm not one of them, but it's a noted preference. I personally put some basic game mechanics first, then start chargen so people know at least how things work on a basic level - this is how a lot of D&D intro sets have done it. A good chargen chapter explains terms as they come up, explains some knock-on effects of making certain choices and walks you through things nicely, so naturally almost no such chargen systems exist. And for people who know the rules, condensing the process into a chart or two at the back of the book doesn't hurt either. But really, read what people are doing and note down what works and what doesn't.
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May 13, 2014 21:13
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Rulebook Heavily posted:I personally put some basic game mechanics first, then start chargen so people know at least how things work on a basic level - this is how a lot of D&D intro sets have done it. This is basically how I did it, specifically this is what I'm talking about with these posts.
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May 13, 2014 21:18
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Looking at that, the only thing I'd suggest adding is examples of each basic roll at the start and maybe a sample character to walk people through things. That can all be added later or after playtesting (and you could totally try the pbp forum or get into #badwrongfun on synirc.net and recruit some people there).
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May 13, 2014 21:25
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What are some good map-making tools to use?
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May 14, 2014 04:39
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I did a game for Game Chef. It's a Resistance/Werewolf style party game called Za Vstrechu! It's set during a masked ball shortly before the Russian revolution, and is meant to be played out over the course of a real dinner party. It's not like a full RPG or anything and it hasn't been playtested so I don't know if it counts for the OP but hey, it's a game and it's playable. Feels good to get something done.
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May 18, 2014 22:00
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Thought I'd throw my hat in the ring with a project I'm working on. It's an Over The Edge chronicle/series/campaign thing I'm calling Reptilia: Attack of the Lizardmen from Mars. I've got a very work-in-progress doc for it, introducing the basic mechanics of Over The Edge and the core ideas for the campaign. At the moment, I've got the whole narrative arc sketched out and I'm currently working on the mutant lizardmen subspecies. I'm thinking that Over The Edge could respond well to an almost dungeon-crawly approach- the loose rules mean that combat can get a lot more chaotic and bizarre than DnD tends to end up. I just need to put in some additional kludges to compensate for the weirdly realistic healing/damage rules. You are a soldier in the Citizen Forces, fighting for the last human city, and your squad has been sent into the scorched northern jungle in search of a rumour. Somewhere out there, say the scouts, is an entire ruined city full of eggs- a hatching factory of sorts, lightly armoured and (lizard-)manned, but vital to the reptilians. If you can plant a beacon on it, Citizen Long Arm artillery can bake the place and prove to the scaleskins that humanity isn't down yet. Unfortunately, the lizards spot your helicarrier before it makes it to the drop zone, and a flying beast the likes of which humanity has never seen slams your ship into the ground. A small band of survivors, you have to find some way to survive and get back to the city- even if it means making some sort of fragile peace with the scaly bastards. I'm kind of wondering just how strange I should make the story. Over The Edge lends itself to going completely balls-out insane.
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May 20, 2014 08:24
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So now I'm working on a yet another game project, that I'm tentatively calling "Keirsey's warriors". The idea is a very very simply miniatures game played on a 8x8 grid with tiles (I actually went and bought a upwards set from a thift shop for prototyping) that are stacked to form the terrain. The plan is to build 16 different types of characters, all equaled out (so there's no team points managing). I was thinking there would be different ability cards in a deck that are based on your team's unit's temperament type (Guardian, Rational, Idealist and Artisen). One part of this design is dividing up the "switches" (e.g. Introvert vs. extrovert, Thinking vs. Feeling, etc.) of the types into mechanics. For example, Introvert would be more back-row types and Extrovert front row. Judging(J) would be more "settled" (abillities a series of checkboxes) and Perceiving(P) more flexible (abillities cost a number of energy points). (So, to use a D&D anallogy, J would be like wizards, P would be sorcerers). I'm kind of stuck though, I'm not sure if it's best to work from the frame of the four types and build down, or work from the individual classes and work up. One idea I have is having the engineer able to alter terrain. I'm also stuck on what to do with the healer, since I need something else for that character to do besides healing, since I want each class to have a few choices since I'm thinking this is going to have no more than 4 units on a team at a time.
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May 21, 2014 00:03
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Here is something I thrashed out pretty quickly and have been prodding into some kind of a shape since. The War Is Over is a game about writing an international peace treaty after a major fictional conflict. The fundamental mechanics are in generating the world in which this takes place, giving players secret goals to achieve from the treaty and then resolving who the 'winner' of the game is. My main concerns are that the actual 'peace conference' part of the game is entirely devoid of mechanics, and whilst that is sort of the point it may leave players flailing around for what to actually say or do. Plus, the scoring system may be a little OTT, though I feel it does achieve what I want it to, and the secret agendas are I think just a little bit poo poo (and lacking in number for the game to be truly replayable).
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May 23, 2014 16:10
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So an idea I've had bouncing around in my head for a while has been coming together pretty rapidly in the past few weeks. And I'm close to the point where I'm going to want to try prototyping it. Does anyone have a "cards" template for Acrobat or (preferably) Word, unless someone has a better program suggestion? Something I can just c&p text into so I can print them out and play around with them.
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May 28, 2014 15:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:So an idea I've had bouncing around in my head for a while has been coming together pretty rapidly in the past few weeks. And I'm close to the point where I'm going to want to try prototyping it. One easy way to do it (in Windows at least) is to just save your cards as images of roughly the right aspect ratio, then select them all in the folder and print, and choose "wallet" as the printing size. The size won't be right on, but probably close enough for prototypes and playtesting. 
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May 28, 2014 15:35
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Well, right now the cards are just flat text in a Google doc. I want to take the text and put it into a card template so it looks like that.
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May 28, 2014 15:48
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Image editor of choice, any 4:3 resolution image, add text box, copy, paste, save, and print as above. Probably not what you are looking for though. DTRPG's templates (Indesign/Scribus) are a pain, but you can print pdfs 9-up for the same sort of result as the images. And saves you a step for if you plan on selling POD cards through them later. The Game Crafter has some templates in other formats too. But you probably just want something like this.
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May 28, 2014 16:02
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Dagon posted:Image editor of choice, any 4:3 resolution image, add text box, copy, paste, save, and print as above. Probably not what you are looking for though. Actually, that's pretty much what I wanted. Eventually I'd like something with art assuming I can stick with this, but right now I was looking for an alternative to writing everything out on index cards.
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May 28, 2014 16:06
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I've used Magic Set Editor to prototype card games before. It's a lot of work to make your cards not look like MTG cards, but if you don't care what they look like it works pretty well.
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May 29, 2014 03:35
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I'm not making a card game; I'm about 7/8 of the way through making an inspiration deck "Deal-A-Fantasy-Setting" deck. Basically, there will be 80 cards all told: 20 "Major Locations", 20 "Minor Locations", 20 "Organizations", and 20 "Personages". The basic use of the cards will be to split the four decks apart and shuffle them each. Then you draw five Major Locations and play them apart from each other on the table. Those are the main points of the campaign map. Major city cards can be played on existing major location cards. Then you deal out four Minor Locations, either separate from the played cards (meaning the location stands on its own), or on an existing major location (representing a connection or that the minor location is part of the major one). Next you deal out four Organization cards the same way. Finally, you deal out four Personage cards the same way to represent the major NPCs in the setting. The only real rule for stacking cards is that you can't have more than three cards in one "stack", otherwise things get a little too muddled. Once the cards are dealt, it's up to the group to interpret what the cards and their relationships mean. It's a Dungeon World-style "ask questions, build on the answers" thing; why does the Great Gathering Of Clans meet at the Bottomless Chasm? Why is the Obelisk located in The Holy City? Why does the Fanatic stand alone from everything in the world? Things like that. Each card also has bolded phrases to help spark ideas or inspire the group. I've got a lot of the cards printed and sleeved so I've been playing with them a little bit to see the combos I can make.    
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May 29, 2014 04:01
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm not making a card game; I'm about 7/8 of the way through making an inspiration deck "Deal-A-Fantasy-Setting" deck. Got a pdf?
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May 29, 2014 04:50
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Not yet; I have all the "alpha" cards in a Word template that I printed out to make those cards. I can print it to pdf when I get home from work.
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May 29, 2014 12:45
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Evil Mastermind posted:Not yet; I have all the "alpha" cards in a Word template that I printed out to make those cards. I can print it to pdf when I get home from work. Declare whenever it's a complete project and I'll list you in the second post. write games finish games
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May 29, 2014 12:48
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Well, ideally I'd love to get the cards done up professionally through Game Crafter or DriveThru or something; nice Tarot-sized cards with art and whatnot. Realistically, that's probably not going to happen though.
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May 29, 2014 14:58
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It doesn't have to be fully produced to be essentially complete.
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May 29, 2014 15:03
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Oh, I get that. I'm just sayin'.
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May 29, 2014 15:21
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, ideally I'd love to get the cards done up professionally through Game Crafter or DriveThru or something; nice Tarot-sized cards with art and whatnot. Do it! DriveThru's POD cards aren't too hard (except when they reject your files for mysterious reasons) and end up a pretty decent quality. Totally don't mind helping if you get stuck. My Food Chain cards came out pretty good: 
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May 29, 2014 16:02
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Dagon posted:Do it! DriveThru's POD cards aren't too hard (except when they reject your files for mysterious reasons) and end up a pretty decent quality. Totally don't mind helping if you get stuck.  ) there wouldn't be a lot of space for art.Still, that's down the line. I have to finish the last few cards first.
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May 29, 2014 16:32
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And now the last few cards are finished. Here's my alpha draft: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29294549/All%20Cards.pdf
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May 29, 2014 23:52
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Hopefully it doesn't count as a triple post if there's like a week between them. I'm starting to think about card layout and whatnot for the Deal-A-Setting thing. I'm not sure if I want to go with Tarot-size cards (which would give me more space for art and text) or "normal-sized" cards (which would make them more accessible, I think). What are some good sources for public domain art I could use on the cards? fake edit: Oh poo poo I checked the OP for art sources and RH put my cards there. Now I have to keep going! real edit: Johnstone Metzger, a guy whose work I really admire and want to emulate, has also told me to keep going. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 16:41
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'sup, Goons? I've got some news to share with you. I finished my work for The Abstract Thief. It's up for sale on Paizo.com for $3.99 It's currently undergoing an approval process on Drive-Thru RPG, and should be available up there soon! Rulebook Heavily, feel free to add my stuff to the OP when you're able to do so. I'd prefer you to use the Drive-Thru link when it comes up, but I don't mind both either. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 20:13
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I'll add the drivethru link when it comes through, no problem. Nice job with something you recorded basically from start to finish in the thread!
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Jun 7, 2014 20:44
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As a distraction from writing my thesis, I'm preparing to put Legacy: Children of the Fall (my civilisation-rebuilding AW hack, now renamed for better SEO) up on Kickstarter. As part of that, I was wondering if any goons here had advice on:
The most up-to-date version of the game is up here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bsubrmyuwww0dsf/Legacy%20v2.pdf
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Jun 10, 2014 12:34
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Flavivirus posted:As a distraction from writing my thesis, I'm preparing to put Legacy: Children of the Fall (my civilisation-rebuilding AW hack, now renamed for better SEO) up on Kickstarter. As part of that, I was wondering if any goons here had advice on: There's an absurd amount of info on running a Kickstarter campaign here. If you want to know more about shipping costs, read this and the article linked to at the top. If you're serious about publishing a book, you also need an editor! I've been editing a *World game for the past half-a-year now (Pirate World) so hit me up if you're interested or want to know more.
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Jun 10, 2014 13:45
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Bigup DJ posted:There's an absurd amount of info on running a Kickstarter campaign here. If you want to know more about shipping costs, read this and the article linked to at the top. Thanks! I'll go read through that website - looks pretty comprehensive. As far as shipping goes I'll likely let DriveThruRPG handle that (like the Last Stand: Reinforcements KS), as it looks like a major headache. It does mean that backers have to pay twice though, once on the KS and once at DTRPG to get it printed at cost, so I'm slightly worried that might drive away or confuse backers. Guess I'll just have to make sure it's explained clearly on the page.
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Jun 10, 2014 17:36
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Here's the Drive-Thru RPG link for the Abstract Thief. Now it's up on 2 webstores. The content and price are the same as they are on Paizo.
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Jun 13, 2014 01:10
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That's the paizo link, but I found it!
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Jun 13, 2014 01:20
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Rulebook Heavily posted:That's the paizo link, but I found it! I feel so embarrassed right now. Proud, yet embarrassed.
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Jun 13, 2014 05:03
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I want to create a campaign setting for a fan-made system. I've created some custom rules that I'm ready to at least test out, but I'm not sure how to populate the setting. What are some good resources I could read for world-building an RPG setting? Alternatively, should I just start a game and create the setting as I go (the Ed Greenwood approach to setting development, if you will)?
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Jun 13, 2014 05:26
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Rulebook Heavily posted:My new to-be-done project is a boardgame project with Legacy mechanics, meaning mechanics which after every playthrough change the game depending on the results of play. The current working title is Dungeon: Legacy, because I am shameless in my inspiration. For what it's worth, this sounds like something I'd definitely be interested in buying. I've been working on and off on a couple of projects for awhile now, i'm pretty close to having a prototype ready for a game inspired by B/X style play. It's not a retroclone at all though, no D20s or whatever. I just wanted to make a simplified system that could be used for West Marches/Megadungeon type play that has really quick character generation. I'm setting myself a deadline of July 1st to have some play testable.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:37
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