Development Journal #1 - The Initial Seed
So I'm making my own game. This is an incredibly daunting task, to be honest, but, I have a couple of advantages here.
For one, I'm not looking to publish this game. That saves a lot of work, in my opinion, because if you’re looking to make something commercially available there’s a whole bunch of redundant stuff you need to make sure you include. You know, the whole “what is this roleplaying game” thing, “how do these dice work”, etc. Leaving out all this saves a tone of work. You also don’t have to worry as much about style and the like. No graphics, no layout, none of that.
Two, I’m writing this solely for my own personal use and benefit. I’m just bringing you along for the ride via this Journal. That means there’s a massive level of polish and clarity I can generally skip over. I’m the only one who needs to understand what I’ve written. Well, and my players, but I’m there to explain and translate as needed. So I don’t need an in depth description of all the attributes, especially the glaringly obvious ones like “Strength” or “Intelligence”. And for anything that does need clarification (like, if I use Coordination instead of Agility), usually one short sentence will cover this and provide a quick reference for me.
Third, I’m creating this for a specific game, a specific setting, fitting a specific genre and theme. The narrower your focus, the easier it is to create something, because it means you don’t have to try and write rules to cover every possible contingency. Likewise, I’m writing this for a specific group of players, which means I also only need to create to cater to the game as it pertains to them. I’m not going to have a potential player-base clamoring to add a bunch of new races or new gear or whatever that I or my group will never personally need or want. As such, I can focus the design and mechanics around those needs.
Fourth, and most importantly, the game doesn’t have to actually be finished. This sounds bad, I know, but what I mean is that I don’t necessarily need to have a full rulebook done and written when we start playing. I need to have a solid idea of what the mechanics are, and need to have the majority of those written. I need to have a solid understanding of the mechanics I’m using, so that future rules will fit into them snugly. But as long as you have a solid foundation and know what you’re looking to do, you can then create and add to your game as if it’s a Lego set. I don’t need falling damage rules out of the game, for example. If and when it does come up, at that point I can look at my mechanics and go “Ok, this is the average health, this is the average damage range things do, and here is my standard dice mechanic. So with all that in mind, how much damage should a character in this game world, with these parameters, in this genre, take if they fall 20 feet? 50 feet? 100 feet?” And from there, you assign some damage and move on.
That’s really the key to design… You need a solid foundation. It’s like building a house, of really anything you will do in life. Without the basics, everything will fall apart. But if you have those, really have those in mind, then everything else will usually just fit together nice and neat.
So that’s the general stuff… But what about my game? Good question. And honestly, I’m going to save a lot of this question for my next Journal update next week. Because I’m keeping a bunch of stuff tightly under wraps, some until I sit and talk with my players and reveal to them, and some because the nature of the game means the players will be learning everything as it comes up in game, very “first person perspective”. So I want to keep that stuff under my hat until they’ve had the chance to experience it. But we can talk a few things.
My first step is deciding what I want to do with the game, and why I want to do it. What is my genre? Is this a high action game? A drama focus? Deep character and roleplay? Narrative and collaborative, or is it going to be a more traditional GM and Players set up? You can’t just pick a genre (say, “Western”) and start designing. You need to know the kind of Western, and what you want from the game. Are we exploring the lifestyle and culture of the actual Old West, or is it Movie Old West? Does racism come up much? Slavery? Or is it more lighthearted stuff where it’s Cowboys shooting it out at High Noon and facing off against Bandits and Outlaws? Or are the players outlaws? Are we missing in steampunk, or Cthulhu, or horror, or aliens, or robots? What is it I want from this game?
The next step is to think about the game world itself. A straight Western is sorta easy, since that’s based at least loosely on reality and history. But what about an alt-history where magic-infused rocks, undead, and steampunk mad science are all involved? How does that affect history? Or are we doing an Western pastiche, but set on some far off planet? In which case, how is this different from the traditional Old West, and how does being on this planet change things?
In this case, the desire to run this game from wanting to emulate a very specific genre of fiction and entertainment. And it’s one I think is easy enough to work with, so that was a big plus. I also have a game setting and background that I created a number of years ago for a different homebrew game I ran, and it fits in nicely with what I wanted to do. So I merged those two together, and I was ready to rock.
Now it was time to think mechanics. This is where it gets tricky, It’s also a weird one for me, because I seem to find working mostly balanced mechanics to be stupidly easy, even though I put no thought into (nor am I actually all that good at) statistics and figuring out probabilities. Frankly, I just don’t worry too much about those anyway, and in a game that’s pretty laser focused on accomplishing a very specific design goal for such a singular game and singular purpose it’s just something I feel will come up much anyway. I don’t expect my players to really push the system too terribly far in a weird direction, nor as a GM will I likely allow them to do so anyway. So this makes things a bit easier as well.
For this game, I needed a couple things. First, a set of attributes. My goal for this game is to come up with a system that’s a more traditional style of RPG (Standard GM to Player relationship, fairly standard character sheet, stats, skills, etc), but streamline these as much as possible while still maintaining a solid sense of purpose and flexibility. My go to games are D&D and Shadowrun, and currently Shadowrun has 8 Attributes (plus a couple special attributes and a few derived attributes), while D&D (depending on the version) has 6, plus a couple specials and derived. Most games tend to use around 6, more complicated games go to 8, but some of the simpler systems and a few Indy type games have as few as 3, such as Guardians of Order’s Tri-Stat system (Most notably used in Big Eyes, Small Mouth).
I wanted to pare that down even further than D&D’s 6, but not as few as Tri-Stat’s 3. I tried like hell to get 4 to work, but no matter how I poked at it, I needed more. 6 would still be ideal, to be honest, but I ended up whittling it down to 5 and I’m happy with that.
The next element then is to start getting a rough idea of a system. I’ve always had a fondness for “Attribute + Skill + Dice” vs a TN myself. So that’s what I ended up going with. I’ll be honest, even at this stage, I’m still waffling over the exact set of dice to use, mainly because I need to have the right number variance. Ultimately, this system will need to scale by a fair bit. Attributes and Skills will start relatively low, but will increase a fair bit as the game progresses, maybe as much as 4 or 5 times their starting value.
So, for example, let’s say my starting number range for both stats and skills is 1-6, with an average for each being 3. So my starting average roll is going to be 6 + Dice. In this case, if I choose 1d10 for my base mechanic, I’m looking at an average of 6+1d10, which means an average roll will be between 7 and 16. A minimum test will be 2+1d10, and a max will be 12+1d10, so ultimately my range is 3-22. Not too bad, if this was all it was going to be. But as I said, things are going to scale up. So say I scale to x4 toward the later game. Suddenly, attributes and skills may be as high as 24, but the minimums could still be 1. So now suddenly I’m looking at players possibly rolling a 24 Stat plus a 24 Skill. So max test of 48+1d10, or a range of 3-58. Big difference there. But, not only are my ranges now wildly varied, that 1d10 which in the early game still accounted for almost 50% of the test result at the higher end, suddenly accounts for a fraction of that, a mere 20% of the possible score of a higher end test.
Ultimately, if I kept to this system, it means that I either have to price my Target Numbers at the higher end game so high that players have no chance of hitting them if they haven’t maxed out both skill and attribute, or I accept that at the higher end, characters will succeed without trying the majority of the time, since the random factor is so low.
And yes, I know I said I don’t really do the math and probabilities. And really, I don’t. This isn’t the system I’m using, but it’s one I initially considered and quickly discarded. I didn’t sit and calculate the math, but I could tell just by looking at it it was going to be problematic. Sitting and doing a bit of basic math just makes it even worse. :)
This has ended up a bit longer than I originally planned, but that’s ok. Next time we’ll talk skills, and I’ll hopefully be able to start talking a little more about specifics!
For one, I'm not looking to publish this game. That saves a lot of work, in my opinion, because if you’re looking to make something commercially available there’s a whole bunch of redundant stuff you need to make sure you include. You know, the whole “what is this roleplaying game” thing, “how do these dice work”, etc. Leaving out all this saves a tone of work. You also don’t have to worry as much about style and the like. No graphics, no layout, none of that.
Two, I’m writing this solely for my own personal use and benefit. I’m just bringing you along for the ride via this Journal. That means there’s a massive level of polish and clarity I can generally skip over. I’m the only one who needs to understand what I’ve written. Well, and my players, but I’m there to explain and translate as needed. So I don’t need an in depth description of all the attributes, especially the glaringly obvious ones like “Strength” or “Intelligence”. And for anything that does need clarification (like, if I use Coordination instead of Agility), usually one short sentence will cover this and provide a quick reference for me.
Third, I’m creating this for a specific game, a specific setting, fitting a specific genre and theme. The narrower your focus, the easier it is to create something, because it means you don’t have to try and write rules to cover every possible contingency. Likewise, I’m writing this for a specific group of players, which means I also only need to create to cater to the game as it pertains to them. I’m not going to have a potential player-base clamoring to add a bunch of new races or new gear or whatever that I or my group will never personally need or want. As such, I can focus the design and mechanics around those needs.
Fourth, and most importantly, the game doesn’t have to actually be finished. This sounds bad, I know, but what I mean is that I don’t necessarily need to have a full rulebook done and written when we start playing. I need to have a solid idea of what the mechanics are, and need to have the majority of those written. I need to have a solid understanding of the mechanics I’m using, so that future rules will fit into them snugly. But as long as you have a solid foundation and know what you’re looking to do, you can then create and add to your game as if it’s a Lego set. I don’t need falling damage rules out of the game, for example. If and when it does come up, at that point I can look at my mechanics and go “Ok, this is the average health, this is the average damage range things do, and here is my standard dice mechanic. So with all that in mind, how much damage should a character in this game world, with these parameters, in this genre, take if they fall 20 feet? 50 feet? 100 feet?” And from there, you assign some damage and move on.
That’s really the key to design… You need a solid foundation. It’s like building a house, of really anything you will do in life. Without the basics, everything will fall apart. But if you have those, really have those in mind, then everything else will usually just fit together nice and neat.
So that’s the general stuff… But what about my game? Good question. And honestly, I’m going to save a lot of this question for my next Journal update next week. Because I’m keeping a bunch of stuff tightly under wraps, some until I sit and talk with my players and reveal to them, and some because the nature of the game means the players will be learning everything as it comes up in game, very “first person perspective”. So I want to keep that stuff under my hat until they’ve had the chance to experience it. But we can talk a few things.
My first step is deciding what I want to do with the game, and why I want to do it. What is my genre? Is this a high action game? A drama focus? Deep character and roleplay? Narrative and collaborative, or is it going to be a more traditional GM and Players set up? You can’t just pick a genre (say, “Western”) and start designing. You need to know the kind of Western, and what you want from the game. Are we exploring the lifestyle and culture of the actual Old West, or is it Movie Old West? Does racism come up much? Slavery? Or is it more lighthearted stuff where it’s Cowboys shooting it out at High Noon and facing off against Bandits and Outlaws? Or are the players outlaws? Are we missing in steampunk, or Cthulhu, or horror, or aliens, or robots? What is it I want from this game?
The next step is to think about the game world itself. A straight Western is sorta easy, since that’s based at least loosely on reality and history. But what about an alt-history where magic-infused rocks, undead, and steampunk mad science are all involved? How does that affect history? Or are we doing an Western pastiche, but set on some far off planet? In which case, how is this different from the traditional Old West, and how does being on this planet change things?
In this case, the desire to run this game from wanting to emulate a very specific genre of fiction and entertainment. And it’s one I think is easy enough to work with, so that was a big plus. I also have a game setting and background that I created a number of years ago for a different homebrew game I ran, and it fits in nicely with what I wanted to do. So I merged those two together, and I was ready to rock.
Now it was time to think mechanics. This is where it gets tricky, It’s also a weird one for me, because I seem to find working mostly balanced mechanics to be stupidly easy, even though I put no thought into (nor am I actually all that good at) statistics and figuring out probabilities. Frankly, I just don’t worry too much about those anyway, and in a game that’s pretty laser focused on accomplishing a very specific design goal for such a singular game and singular purpose it’s just something I feel will come up much anyway. I don’t expect my players to really push the system too terribly far in a weird direction, nor as a GM will I likely allow them to do so anyway. So this makes things a bit easier as well.
For this game, I needed a couple things. First, a set of attributes. My goal for this game is to come up with a system that’s a more traditional style of RPG (Standard GM to Player relationship, fairly standard character sheet, stats, skills, etc), but streamline these as much as possible while still maintaining a solid sense of purpose and flexibility. My go to games are D&D and Shadowrun, and currently Shadowrun has 8 Attributes (plus a couple special attributes and a few derived attributes), while D&D (depending on the version) has 6, plus a couple specials and derived. Most games tend to use around 6, more complicated games go to 8, but some of the simpler systems and a few Indy type games have as few as 3, such as Guardians of Order’s Tri-Stat system (Most notably used in Big Eyes, Small Mouth).
I wanted to pare that down even further than D&D’s 6, but not as few as Tri-Stat’s 3. I tried like hell to get 4 to work, but no matter how I poked at it, I needed more. 6 would still be ideal, to be honest, but I ended up whittling it down to 5 and I’m happy with that.
The next element then is to start getting a rough idea of a system. I’ve always had a fondness for “Attribute + Skill + Dice” vs a TN myself. So that’s what I ended up going with. I’ll be honest, even at this stage, I’m still waffling over the exact set of dice to use, mainly because I need to have the right number variance. Ultimately, this system will need to scale by a fair bit. Attributes and Skills will start relatively low, but will increase a fair bit as the game progresses, maybe as much as 4 or 5 times their starting value.
So, for example, let’s say my starting number range for both stats and skills is 1-6, with an average for each being 3. So my starting average roll is going to be 6 + Dice. In this case, if I choose 1d10 for my base mechanic, I’m looking at an average of 6+1d10, which means an average roll will be between 7 and 16. A minimum test will be 2+1d10, and a max will be 12+1d10, so ultimately my range is 3-22. Not too bad, if this was all it was going to be. But as I said, things are going to scale up. So say I scale to x4 toward the later game. Suddenly, attributes and skills may be as high as 24, but the minimums could still be 1. So now suddenly I’m looking at players possibly rolling a 24 Stat plus a 24 Skill. So max test of 48+1d10, or a range of 3-58. Big difference there. But, not only are my ranges now wildly varied, that 1d10 which in the early game still accounted for almost 50% of the test result at the higher end, suddenly accounts for a fraction of that, a mere 20% of the possible score of a higher end test.
Ultimately, if I kept to this system, it means that I either have to price my Target Numbers at the higher end game so high that players have no chance of hitting them if they haven’t maxed out both skill and attribute, or I accept that at the higher end, characters will succeed without trying the majority of the time, since the random factor is so low.
And yes, I know I said I don’t really do the math and probabilities. And really, I don’t. This isn’t the system I’m using, but it’s one I initially considered and quickly discarded. I didn’t sit and calculate the math, but I could tell just by looking at it it was going to be problematic. Sitting and doing a bit of basic math just makes it even worse. :)
This has ended up a bit longer than I originally planned, but that’s ok. Next time we’ll talk skills, and I’ll hopefully be able to start talking a little more about specifics!