Life and Giant Robots
It's been busy, busy, busy this last couple of weeks.
First off, Destiny of the Metal Gods is taking shape nicely. It's going to be one of the longer ones, probably around 60+ pages, but a lot of that will be example mecha and the lists of mecha systems. I got a combat playtest in on Wednesday, which went well. The underlying Rivers and Lakes mechanics are as solid as ever, and the new stuff - special abilities, dedicated attack and defence dice - worked as I'd hoped they would. It's a little bit more involved than vanilla R&L, but I think the complication adds to the game rather than detracts from it. I was worried that I wouldn't get it done in time, what with the amount of things that I needed to do, but after a few good hours thrown in today it's shaping up. There's one more chapter to finish writing, another that hasn't been added to the 'script yet, and the final layout and proof-reading to be done.
One thing I really enjoy about writing games is when emergent behaviour crops up that enhances what you're working on. That's happened a couple of times in Destiny of the Metal Gods. The first one was when I was working on skills. True to R&L, every skill can be used in combat. This time round, however, they are named for particular types of battle, and repurposed for similar non-combat activities. Rather than picking your best for combat, the GM tells you which is most appropriate for that sequence. Which skill you use can change when the pool refreshes. What I didn't realise until after I'd written it up was that that mechanism was a perfect opportunity for the GM to rotate the 'glory' player, by picking what combat skill to use in a way that gave everyone their chance to shine.
The second time was to do with weapon special abilities. I'd decided that the abilities would trigger when a dice showing a particular number was used to attack or defend. What I hadn't foreseen, until the actual playtest, was that this amounted to an indirect 'maximum uses' system, in that you couldn't simply spam your best attack all the time. Unlike a hard cap on special attacks, you can use some special abilities to mess with your dice so you use the other special abilities more often. If you thought that dice-watching and dice choice strategy in R&L
was fun, this should knock your socks off.
Yesterday was the Rivers and Lakes demo at Escape Games. At first it looked like there wouldn't be any players, but I rounded some up (including a total RPG neophyte) and the proverbial good fun was had by all. No sales, sadly. One thing I learned from flogging stuff at the Warwick evenings is that persistence pays off. Plenty of people will take the plunge the third week you wave it under their nose. So I'll probably run a few more demos, maybe some of the other games in my library, to drum up interest. The players seemed to enjoy themselves, and I consider that job #1.
This week, up to Thursday, is my last week at Leicester. It's been a struggle to sort out the research data and leave everything as accessible as possible for Matt when I officially leave. Monday, I'm starting my new position at Oxford. Same field, longer contract, involved in more projects. Between the two is the unbridled mayhem of Kitacon. I can hardly wait.
This afternoon an attempted repair of my seized-up windscreen wipers ended up wrecking the armature. The pins were solid in the cylinders, and I suspect the effort it took to winkle them out last time had weakened the aluminium fastening points. Bludgeoning with a hammer did not free the pins, but did reduce the problem to a conceptually easier one. I need a new wiper assembly. With any luck I won't have to buy a motor at the same time. A hammer was broken in the process, too.
First off, Destiny of the Metal Gods is taking shape nicely. It's going to be one of the longer ones, probably around 60+ pages, but a lot of that will be example mecha and the lists of mecha systems. I got a combat playtest in on Wednesday, which went well. The underlying Rivers and Lakes mechanics are as solid as ever, and the new stuff - special abilities, dedicated attack and defence dice - worked as I'd hoped they would. It's a little bit more involved than vanilla R&L, but I think the complication adds to the game rather than detracts from it. I was worried that I wouldn't get it done in time, what with the amount of things that I needed to do, but after a few good hours thrown in today it's shaping up. There's one more chapter to finish writing, another that hasn't been added to the 'script yet, and the final layout and proof-reading to be done.
One thing I really enjoy about writing games is when emergent behaviour crops up that enhances what you're working on. That's happened a couple of times in Destiny of the Metal Gods. The first one was when I was working on skills. True to R&L, every skill can be used in combat. This time round, however, they are named for particular types of battle, and repurposed for similar non-combat activities. Rather than picking your best for combat, the GM tells you which is most appropriate for that sequence. Which skill you use can change when the pool refreshes. What I didn't realise until after I'd written it up was that that mechanism was a perfect opportunity for the GM to rotate the 'glory' player, by picking what combat skill to use in a way that gave everyone their chance to shine.
The second time was to do with weapon special abilities. I'd decided that the abilities would trigger when a dice showing a particular number was used to attack or defend. What I hadn't foreseen, until the actual playtest, was that this amounted to an indirect 'maximum uses' system, in that you couldn't simply spam your best attack all the time. Unlike a hard cap on special attacks, you can use some special abilities to mess with your dice so you use the other special abilities more often. If you thought that dice-watching and dice choice strategy in R&L
was fun, this should knock your socks off.
Yesterday was the Rivers and Lakes demo at Escape Games. At first it looked like there wouldn't be any players, but I rounded some up (including a total RPG neophyte) and the proverbial good fun was had by all. No sales, sadly. One thing I learned from flogging stuff at the Warwick evenings is that persistence pays off. Plenty of people will take the plunge the third week you wave it under their nose. So I'll probably run a few more demos, maybe some of the other games in my library, to drum up interest. The players seemed to enjoy themselves, and I consider that job #1.
This week, up to Thursday, is my last week at Leicester. It's been a struggle to sort out the research data and leave everything as accessible as possible for Matt when I officially leave. Monday, I'm starting my new position at Oxford. Same field, longer contract, involved in more projects. Between the two is the unbridled mayhem of Kitacon. I can hardly wait.
This afternoon an attempted repair of my seized-up windscreen wipers ended up wrecking the armature. The pins were solid in the cylinders, and I suspect the effort it took to winkle them out last time had weakened the aluminium fastening points. Bludgeoning with a hammer did not free the pins, but did reduce the problem to a conceptually easier one. I need a new wiper assembly. With any luck I won't have to buy a motor at the same time. A hammer was broken in the process, too.