17. April 2010 by admin.

The first part of Fourth Draft is still being compiled. But as a little treat, here is the first (very rough) draft of the character sheet! It’s extremely simple. There are two reasons for this: This version is only meant to be functional, not pretty, so dazzling decorations are not yet part of the equation, aaand… it really is a simple sheet! Unlike many other RPGs, GEARS works around a very simple character design concept put forth since First Draft, and a few tweaks made it even simpler. As a result, anything character related (technical stuff, not the fictional background stories some players choose to write! And not really equipment lists either… sorry) can be placed into one streamlined row! The character sheet, really, is nothing but a coloumn of these, every row just the same. And you can do anything with it!

So here it is, the first version of the GEARS character sheet:

Posted in Abilities, First Draft, Background, Disabilities, Character creation, Equipment/Gear | 1 Comment »

9. February 2010 by admin.

Writing is progressing. It’s in the tough parts now, the things that need work and the things that need serious thought. GEARS in its entirety has been the product of intense work, but what is being done now is not just the structure of the game, but all the scaffolding that holds it together; it’s what will take GEARS from a detailed idea and turn it into an actual game. The plan is that, because this takes longer than the previous draft work, parts will be posted before the full Fourth Draft is put together. Changes in wording and outline are making the game mechanics far easier to understand and use, and small pieces are fitting so nicely they are opening up whole new realms of possibilities (I am looking at you, ‘character aspects’!). So even though everything is chaos, layout-wise, there is gold in this mine, if I may be so self-indulgent! And since the second major round of playtest is being put together now, along with the first serious (but still limited) push into public spotlight, things are looking mighty heavy for the coming weeks!

For the time being, here is the cover designed for Fourth Draft. As in the previous two covers (First Draft had no cover), the theme is “Work In Progress”, but the very simplistic logo-and-textlayout is now being transformed into something a little more interesting. Of course, clearly still WIP!

Posted in First Draft, Dice Mechanics, Layout, Fourth Draft, Character creation, Playtests | 1 Comment »

14. January 2010 by admin.

Roleplaying characters come in many variations, but one challenge is common throughout any game that does not either A) use solely the real world as the game world or B) provide absolutely everything in the game world premade (in the original book or supplements). That problem is truly weird characters. Alien races, ghosts, demons, magical entities,computer intelligences, etc., are all strange enough to push the boundaries of a rules set.

Things like extra arms, non-physical bodies, transformations, and even stranger ideas should theoretically be possible in any system meant to be truly flexible. But what does such an ‘extreme’ character mean in terms of character creations? GEARS is being tuned up to handle things stranger than just odd people, and questions like this are beginning to crop up. The current method is to use the existing character components creatively, or a few added and fairly streamlined creation rules to simulate the weirdness wanted. The challeng, of course, is that people can imagine some of the strangest things, and catching up to that is hard for anyone trying to design rules.

What I want from GEARS is a toolbox that allows others to put together the basics to allow further expansion. With non-physical characters as an example, the exact nature of being intangible can be defined by someone willing to truly contemplate the topic. From that, a basic use of base components can be put together to recreate what that intangible aspect might mean in rules terms. Others can then take that basic design and create variants and expansions on it to simulate different kinds of intangible, like energy beings, ghosts, astral projections, etc., etc. GEARS provides tools, users (possibly in GEARS supplements!) put them to strange new uses, and from there, well, the sky is the limit.

So for now, the challenge is to make the basics of the game flexible enough, and at the same time plant the seeds of creative use and expansion. Not easy, but the way GEARS is turning out, it is becoming easier and easier to produce the little additions that make streamlined, flexible use possible. And that is a promissing thing!

Posted in Design kits, Fifth Draft, Abilities, Races, Aliens, Character creation, Fourth Draft, Superpowers | 1 Comment »

12. January 2010 by admin.

Roleplaying is about stories. But roleplaying games are also about numbers. GEARS is an odd mix of rules light and rules heavy; there are a lot of things to use, but they all use a very, very small set of actual rules. There is only one real dice mechanism, for example: Roll the number of dice and check how many roll ‘good’. There are only two fundamental things a character needs to have: Abilities and cash. And anything else is built like those, such as Disabilities working just like a standard simple check or Relations being basically just the Abilities to get someone to help you out.

There is one ‘rule’ that is less notable, however, and yet it is pivotal to game balance. Game balance, of course, is the idea that a player (or Narrator!) cannot make something insanely powerful, or end up puny, by simply choosing one Ability or the like over the other. Once the game starts, everything else being equal, you get what you pay for. ‘Minmaxing’, the dreaded ability of math-skilled players to figure out how to make something far more powerful than the allotted CCP should make it, should be non-existant. The rule that much current debate revolves around is the unwritten “1/10″ rule.

Now, the 1/10 rule is in place to make GEARS easy to handle and easy to remember. Throughout GEARS, either something is handled straight forward, with 1 of something meaning 1 of something else (every Ability level is 1 CCP for 1 level, for example), or 1 of something is 1/10 of something. The obvious example is Talents, which provide 1/10 of their level as a bonus to certain other rolls. But Relatios also have a Base built on 1 level equalling 10 CCP put into the Relation, and Income is 1/10 of the point-to-cash rate per CCP. 1/10 is found in several places throughout GEARS. The current debate is, is 1/10 the right number?

The key worry is in Talents (or rather, the way they provide a bonus; in Fourth Draft, this is renamed Benefitting, and Talents are just Abilities that are often used for their Benefit). At 1/10, it takes 11 relevant Abilities to make it worth investing in a Talent solely for its Benefit. True, Talents have other functions, but this is a Big One. So if 1/10 is making Talents look useless, should it be 1/5 instead? That would put them back into the game, making them a serious assett to characters built around certain concepts (”a precise and quick-thinking pilot”, “a natural with animals”, etc.). But the 1/10 rule is a very serious concept in GEARS, even if not explicit (maybe it should be made explicit….), so that would mean changing 1/10 to 1/5 throughout the game, or accepting that numbers will become harder to juggle. The latter is definitely not a wanted option, so the former, making 1/10 into 1/5 in general, looks like the only option left.

What would that mean? Talents will become more powerful, but will they become too powerful? Will they unhinge and unbalance the game? It would take 6 related Abilities to make a Talent worthwhile, and Talents have Specifics, too, so the player might make the Talent more relevant to one or two Abilities or situations than the rest. It seems doable, but it is in the end a choice, which way to balance it (fractions like 1/7 or 1/8, or decimal numbers, will be too great a math presence to be truly wanted).

Relations may work with a Base of 1 per 5 CCP the relation is built on. A Relation relies on Base, Loyalty and Availability, so one level in each still makes it seem worthwhile (1 level of each costs 3 CCP, ‘paying out’ 5 CCP in Relation creation).

Income is a bit less clear. 1/10 of point-to-cash rate means it takes 10 weeks for a character to ‘earn’ the equivalent of 1 CCP of Wealth. With 1/5 as a rule, it will take 5 weeks. Will that make Income outshine the prospects of investing in actual Wealth? For the first adventure a character has, it really doesn’t matter; Income pays out later no matter what. But when the characters have 3 weeks of R&R, the character just gets more than half a CCP’s worth of money dropped on it! Does that make Wealth seem useless in comparison? Or does it perhaps make Income just seem more worthwhile?

These questions are not rethorical. This is a serious matter for GEARS, as it pits the balance of minor versus major effects of multiple rules against each other, and pits all that against the ideal of One Fraction To Rule Them All. And there is no easy answer, so the debacle will continue for some time, before it becomes clear whether Fourth Draft will usea 1/10 rule or a 1/5 rule…

Posted in Human Template, Abilities, Relations, Fourth Draft, Character creation, Disabilities, Wealth | 1 Comment »

1. January 2010 by admin.

Christmas and New Years behind us, it looks like the time to get back in the saddle. Not that things have been all that quiet; writing on Fourth Draft has been quite active, much of it being structure and phrasing. The wording of rules from Third Draft are becoming more streamlined, making them easier to read and understand, and also setting them up for a better layout. And on layout matters, a lot of decisions are being made on graphics and text setup. Fourth Draft is going to push GEARS into a more respectable look, hopefully the beginning of making it look visually professional. Content is still the One True Focus, but we are far enough along that looks are beginning to count, if nothing else then because that includes how content is arranged, visually.

But that’s all still abstract ideas and nitpicking, respectively. What has taken center stage for the last week has been the Background trait. Of all the material in existence for GEARS, Background has become one of the more controversial topics, starting out as one of the foremost innovations of the rules and then abruptly slipping into the background (no pun intended), overshadowed by such things as Specifics and Learning Abilities in terms of innovation.

What Background originally did was guide character creation along what is known as ‘life paths’ in most RPG theory. In other words, characters were created by describing the paths they had taken in life, and defining Abilities and such from that. If your character had been a mercenary mechanics, that would produce some Abilities etc., and if a character had been orphaned at age 12, that would define certain character traits. Characters were not so much items picked as lives lived.

The rules now support a ‘pick your skills’ character creation more, but the old Background material is being revised and updated. The point now is to make game worlds the vessel for life paths, allowing some choices to be only available along certain paths. This might be learning mystical martial arts, possible only with enough Background from hard travels; without a heroic journey behind it, your character cannot be taught the Ancient Arts by secluded monks. Whether due to lack of insight, not having proven oneself worthy, or in other ways failing to have done something with his or her life, a character might be barred from certain options. Even advanced military training can require the character to have a certain amount of Background in the right fields!

And issues of Background are starting to show beautiful levels of sybergy with things like races, giving a character of one race opportunities other races lack. If you are not a dwarf, there are paths in life blocked to you. Those paths may hold otherwise forbidden knowledge, or they may simply be advantageous or plain interesting in other ways. Careers, challenges, experiences, associations, connections, they can all be made to tap into Background, with astoudingly easy game mechanics. This is what Background was made for, but the way it fits into the overall flexible GEARS game system is turning out pretty impressive.

Posted in Game worlds, Layout, Background, Human Template, Races, Third Draft, Fourth Draft, Genre, Character creation | 1 Comment »

19. December 2009 by admin.

With the release (and subsequent adjustments and rerelease) of GEARS Third Draft, I feel I may have left the blog to drift a little. Third Draft took a greater effort than expected, mostly because of the first attempts to do a serious layout (the part that got the most adjustments, actually!).

So with that work pretty much done, there is only one logical thing for me to ramble about today: Fourth Draft!

And there is a schism here, a change of process from the first three drafts to this next one. It is probably not easy to see from the outside, but there is a massive difference between writing rules and writing games! Rules are about making sure as much of the gorund you want is covered as possible, making sure things fit together, make sense, and has a degree of balance (we are still working on the balance thing). Games are about writing something that otherscan easily understand, use and enjoy. That means that Fourth Draft will need better language,better organization, and better layout. Just saying “we need more/better rules” will not cut it!

So the writing procedure has been turned upside down, for one. The first three drafts were written as rules were needed and became possible; first the dice mechanic, then character creation, then all the other things characters might have, and onwards from there. Fourth Draft is about structure. Therefore, the first thing written for it is a complete and detailed layout of all the contents planned for it, set up in a way that seems logical and user friendly. Not surprisingly, the bulk of what is not only in Third Draft, but also what is mentioned but not finished in Third Draft, will all only be part of one section: The Rules

Originally, the core book being written was meant to have three major sections: The Game Engine and The Rules System, hence the name, GEARS: Game Engine And Rules System, and of course the Alice 2.0 setting. As things look now, a more detailed structure will benefit everyone much better, leading to five majorsections:

• The Game, describing how games can be played, how to organize sessions, what the roles and tools are for Narrators, how players tend to think, etc. Half of it is for beginners learning to handle roleplaying games without too many bad experiences, half of it is for skilled Narrators/GMs from other games wanting to get a better game going with less work. The section is about people, real people, playing roleplaying games; how they think, what they want, what they may need, etc.
• The Engine is a toolbox for the Narrator. It describes how to easily produce things from ideas, and how to get ideas when you run out. Methods, tricks and tools are delivered to quickly turn a general idea of a world, an adventure, or anything else pertaining to the game into something tangible and usable. It even goes into how these things can be set up to be shared between Narrators, to the point of how one might professionally publish them. The idea with this section is A) to ease the task of creating breathtaking campaigns, B) to kickstart a creative GEARS community, and C) to actually sow the seeds for writers who will come to write for the game! Most professional writers will already know the information in the section, and much more, but a lot of it will be news to those without publishing credits.
• The Rules, basically what is already in Third Draft, with many of the blank spots filled in. A serious rewrite is going to be done on many parts, for better phrasing.
•  The System, meanwhile is an extension of what is in The Engine and The Rules, providing a lot of different, creative uses of it all to create concepts for the game that have the complexity of ideas from The Engine, but are fully compliant with The Rules, using what already exists to create things like detailed poisons, hacking rules, character ethics/value systems, magic and divinities, and so on. This is both a collection of premade material that goes beyond the basic rules, and examples for how more can easily be made. Focus is on explaining ideas so that creative concepts can be reused and expanded on by others.
• The Settings contains both Alice 2.0 and multiple short world writeups, to get genre games going. Rules are going to be integrated into this, rather than the ruleless description of the Alice 2.0 setting included in Second Draft and Third Draft. The other, non-Alice settings will be picked to demonstrate genre and style creation and modification, giving the new Narrator a wide scope from the start, and an ample toolbox.

I will refrain from going into details about each section’s structure and subsections; that is what writing Fourth Draft is about, after all. But expect to see something much more like an actual game than a carefully crafted set of house rules next time!

Posted in Genre, Fourth Draft, Style, Design kits, Game worlds, Third Draft, Character creation, Alice, Second Draft, Magic, Narrator, Hacking, Conflict | No Comments »

11. December 2009 by admin.

… needed on several accounts, it seems!

The site was down Dec. 10 due to a miscommunication with our new provider. It’s up and running again, though, nothing lost. We do not expect it to happen again.

The other kind of organization is Organizations, large structured groups that characters in a game may be involved with somehow. They may be allies, enemies, bystanders, victims, interests, power factions, or anything else one might imagine them for. And I want creation tools for them, just like we have for characters, equipment and exotic powers! Why? Because with such a system in place, it becomes possible to distribute fully designed Organizations for game worlds and adventures, or modular ones that can be assembled for any campaign. Like a collection of monsters or a set of premade characters for use in adventures (as people encountered by player characters, presumably), such Organization collections would allow immensely detailed game worlds to be set up in minutes.

But also, because proper structure allows quicker and more versatile use in adventures! If an Organization is described well, and there are meaningful rules and guidelines in place, the Narrator can quickly assess what it means when the characters blow up a secret lab, recruits a key expert, affects a vital operation, etc. It makes the Organization a vibrant, dynamic part of the adventure, instead of some nebulous background explanation for where the ninjas come from!

Sadly, the Organiation rules that were ready were made for the Relations rules that were voted out as ‘bland’ during playtest. The new Relation rules are much, much better, thanks to extensive player feedback, but they do not fit into the old Organization rules. So they need rewriting! When they are done, players can deliberately assess how to cripple giant Organizations by cutting out vital operations, they can build and recruit their own, they can join up, infiltrate, sabotage, have dramatic stand-offs with and generally have fun with Organizations, from the local mercenary outfit to the intergalactic alien religion or the secret conspiracy of the Elves! I have an old character, made for a different game, in which house rules were used to design an agent who could call in orbital strikes, if and when he could explain why the act would be absolutely vital to his Organization. Of course, they more or less owned him in return, but tense situations are where adventures are born! I want characters like that to be modelled with the basic rules in GEARS; the advanced rules will take it much, much further…

Posted in Aliens, Relations, Design kits, Game worlds, Dammit!, Monsters, Equipment/Gear, Narrator, Superpowers, Character creation, Playtests | No Comments »

9. December 2009 by admin.

Things are coming along fine, Relations are being expanded, and the rest is being filled in nicely. Nothing really to report there. So what do I use this entry for. Hmm….

Just kidding, I never really run out of things to ponder loudly on

What I want to have a go at today is a bit off the usual wagon, though. GEARS is, at its root, a roleplaying game. But in today’s world, you have to grow beyond your own little bubble, and that is the intention for GEARS, as well! Observant visitors to the (still WIP) website will already have noticed that there is a link, still inactive, that says “Software”, and even one that says “Merchandise”. These are some indications of plans for after the releases start coming! Software refers to the plans to builddigital tools for the game. The basic ones aretools for creating beautiful (or just easily assembled) sheets for characters, complex items/vehicles, game worlds and even adventures & campaigns. The point is to make the whole effort behind a game move smoother and give results that will be cheerished even outside the game. Who wouldn’t want their favorite GEARS character turned from a worn collection of scribbled papers into a neat and stylish personal file? And the opportunity to create a string of adventures easily and in nice format is not only a comfort for many Narrators, it also makes it much easier to hand the adventure to another Narrator for using! Digital assistants and easily accessed lists of, well, whatever you want, it all makes for a sweeter, cooler game…

But there is no plan to stop there, really. Today, things like Instant Messaging and forum games have become a strong force in roleplaying, and the world is apparently holding its breath in wait for Google Wave to be released, so no doubt it will be a new digital platform for traditional roleplaying games to evolve on. Games should embrace that. In fact, they should promote it and push for the exploration of it. The world is changing, and roleplaying games should be at the forefront of that change. Face it, we’re the original geeks, and we’re proud of it. No way technology gets a say without us aboard!

Merchandising is a time-honored tradition that might well be older than roleplaying games themselves! Today, there is a million and one options to take your favorite game, character or the like out of the game and into your home, your wardrobe, or your life in other ways. T-shirts and posters are the simple stuff, already in the works; figurines for painting, or even tailored outfits inspired by game worlds, now that is a challenge worth a game for the new millenium!

Of course, all this is for the game, but it is not the game itself. The rules are coming along, and soon, Alice will grow and worlds will rise up around her, and around GEARS. Digital toys and beautiful (or terifying. Or hilarious!) merchandise will follow logically from that. This is the time we have to revolutionize roleplaying, and around here, the ideas are flying, and we are always out there looking for more

Posted in Game worlds, Character creation, Narrator, Alice | No Comments »

7. December 2009 by admin.

Though it is still in very early testing, there seems to be a solution to the problem sorrounding Relations. If it works, characters will be able to have friends and enemies, connections and rivals, pets and stalkers, and all sorts of people, creatures and more exotic beings surrounding them, as part of who the character is at the very first character creation! The goal is not just to make a quick rule for attaching others to the character, but to make a core concept, sleak, streamlined and versatile, that can make characters a part of a vibrant world instead of forcing them into the role of ‘lone stranger’ again and again.

It has not yet been expanded into a platform for the Organizations rules, which are meant to provide complex organizations (duh) in the game world, created as richky as characters and acting as actual, integrated parts of a campaign, should the Narrator want it. Once the new Relations rules grow to that point, players can create corporate representatives with access to their employer’s trillions worth of resources (on company jobs, that is!), or infiltrator agents able to call down orbital strikes on picked targets in the fight for freedom or oppression. They can even take down monolithic enemies facility by facility, and their encounters with that enemy will bear the mark ofevery little victory… or failure!

It should be clear by now that I am very excited about this. The toss of the old Relations rules was probably the best thing to come from playtesting, because the new ones make better sense, offer more options and customization, and are generally just cool. You can have powerful allies who will trust you with advanced technology and sniper support, but who will abandon you the minute they see significant consequences of their involvement. Or you can have die-hard friends, who will fight to the death for you, even if all they have is a gun and a prayer. You can base a Relation on fear, or you can hire your muscle for cash alone. And those nasty people looking for you, well, it’s called Determination, and for a simple game stat, it will mean the world for you when your ancient nemesis stands on the other side of certain destruction and has to decide if you’re worth the risk…

I’m getting all giddy

Posted in Character creation, Pets, Relations, Game worlds, Narrator, Wealth, Weapons, Vehicles, Teams, Cash, Playtests | No Comments »

4. December 2009 by admin.

Writing is now dealing with Technologies, for designing a game world in such detail that the advancement of individual categories of items can be felt. Maybe laser rifles are a new invention, still clunky and imprecise. Or maybe they are refined, not just horrifically precise and terribly lethal, but light enough to be snapped into pocketsized concealment modules. But none of that will happen unless non-lethal, scientific lasers (and the kind for light shows) are first invented! Pick your Technologies, pick their individual Progress, and the system does the rest.

This is just another piece in the puzzle that is the, still fairly new,  “creation kit” philosophy of GEARS! I have noted on the concept before, but I feel it is essential enough to repeat: In so far as it is at all possible, the GEARS core rulebook will contain the materials needed to construct anything. Most games have core books that deal in detail with character creation, some of them even only characters of a certain, low level. The GEARS character creation rules have proven far more compact and streamlined than originally expected, so now other aspects of the game are following. Equipment is just one example, another being the creatures mentioned in earlier entries (based on the character creation system used slightly differently), vehicles as an extension of equipment, super powers as an addition to standard Abilities, and so on. And game worlds are now getting the first kick into action. Fourth Draft might actually end up having not just a better structure, but also some design kits for campaigns and adventures!

One design kit that is still a bit up in the air (other than Relations, which, as mentioned yesterday, have run into a few problems) is races. The character creation system, supported by the still-to-be-pinned-down Human Template, will allow some strange creations, but the feel of an entire and at least somewhat unique race is still a bit murky. The exact elements of fantasy and alien races will need some examining and testing before something truly worthwhile can be included. It might end up in Fourth Draft. But it will be made.

Posted in Relations, Races, Human Template, Design kits, Game worlds, Aliens, Fourth Draft, Equipment/Gear, Superpowers, Character creation, Third Draft, Vehicles | 1 Comment »