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 »

6. January 2010 by admin.

Writing on Fourth Draft is furious. Much of it is the long promissed ‘design kits’, most of that being streamlining of things transfered from old TAYDS material and notes made from playtests since that was written, methods for creating adventures and running games, for designing worlds and handling players, and of course the question of what kind of Narrator you want to be.

I don’t mind that. I like updating my old work to match new experiences and concepts within RPGs developed since. But I find it difficult to adjust to one aspect of this writing: No rules! The guides are just that, guides. They contain no character trait explanations, no simulation of game world realities, no streamlined dice use, and it just feels… weird.

Now, I grew up with roleplaying games being mostly a book of rules on everything from battlemaps to race bonuses. I love creating adventures and worlds, and I love teaching others how to do so. What actually pains me is that I am currently putting a lot of effort into teaching others how to create, and it is like talking about surfing or painting; it makes you want to actually do it! I have not had the amount of creative urges I have right now in a long time, ideas just swelling up inside me, wanting to be transformed into creative works. It does not matter if those ideas are on how to cleverly represent some twisted aspect of a literary reality, or if it is the invention of a new civilization for a game world, I just feel a lust to create.

For now, I take constant notes while writing the guides. I jot down ideas, questions, stray thoughts and anything else that comes to mind and wants to get out. The guides are doing their job, making me think and create, but they also need to be written themselves. I can only imagine the things ready to burst from my skull when all the guides are done… and that’s just the basic versions for Fourth Draft; there is plenty more in the pipeline for Fifth Draft!

Maybe that’s also why there have been fewer posts on this blog; I want to get the guides done, and writing here is time I could spend on that

Posted in Design kits, Game worlds, Fifth Draft, TAYDS, Races, Narrator, Fourth Draft, Playtests | No Comments »