Ok, after some computer problems and loss of some files, I am back. Lucky for me I keep my game information on a separate external hard drive so I didn’t lose any of my game files.

So previously I talked about my background in game creating and then discussed the 5 basic guidelines I set for myself for this new game. Here I am going to discuss the type of game I am creating.

I have decided to create a car combat game. I remember, when I was younger, picking up Car Wars, wondering how this game worked. I never bought it, nor to this day, have I ever played Car Wars.

To begin with, I am not exactly sure why I am making a car combat game. You see, I don’t like cars and I don’t know anything about cars. This is coming from a guy whose first car blew up because there was no oil in it, and his second car also blew up because there was no oil in it. I haven’t watched any Mad Max movies in a couple decades and the whole car combat craze died for most in the 80’s, then in the 90’s for everyone else.

Like I mentioned before I started playing D&D 4e in a PBP game on www.thetangledweb.net and in their silly game posting area there is a posting game called Race War. It must be pretty popular since it is always being bumped up. I initially thought it was a car combat game similar to Car Wars, as it turns out it is nothing more than people making fun of the D&D races, or something like that.

This Race War post however catches my eye every time I log into my D&D game. So after all these years I thought I would finally get around to checking out this Car Wars game from Steve Jackson (I believe). However I cannot find too much information on google. Maybe I’m not looking in the right spots, who knows. So because of that Race War post, and my lack in ability to find any concrete information on Car Wars, along with the fact that I just like making games, made me decide to just create my own car combat game.

So the second thing I did after creating the guidelines for my game was research the other car combat games out there. (For those wondering I haven’t mentioned the first thing I did yet…that will come in the next blog.)

I found a bunch of homebrewed rules, many of which are just mere skeletons of an actual game. The creators of these games probably know exactly how to play the game, but was either too lazy to fill in all the details or figured that everyone played the other car combat games that they based theirs off of and decided not to help out those of us who have never played a car combat game.

I did find one Dark Future from Game Workshop as a free download. A descent game except for the fact that your cars can’t turn! That’s right you can only go forward or backward. It’s like a racetrack, as you circle the racetrack you try to kill each other. I like a lot of the game, but would like the freedom to turn left or right, like most cars do.

One of the things I noticed in all these games is that you are either in a post apocalyptic world or in some kind of car combat arena. (For the record, I don’t know anything about Car Wars so I don’t know if it fits either one of these stereotypes). I don’t want to limit people to these two styles of play. Pretty much I want to first create a rules system that will work in both of these styles and more.

The next blog I will discuss the first thing I did after creating guidelines for the game along with a couple of problems I had.

King Nate

After going through an incomplete history of my previous game making life, it’s time to talk about why I am making a blog about this new game, why I am even making a new game, and to set out some guidelines for the new game.

My wife, who does not enjoy games, though I constantly try, was looking at one of her friend’s blog. My wife turns to me, as I am studying my Japanese, and tells me that we need to start up our own blogs.

I laugh her off, because I don’t have anything worth blogging about. Once I get my turn at the computer (we need to get another computer), I start brainstorming an idea for yet another game.

Then it hit me, I can write a blog about this game making process I’m just about to start. I can get feedback and suggestions. I can keep track of my train of thought so I don’t lose track of the type of game I wanted to make. Some good can come from this whole blog thing after all. So that is the why I am writing a blog.

I started off my giving myself some guidelines to follow. I don’t plan on breaking these guidelines, however if a better game can be created by breaking them, I will, but I will do my best to stay within these guidelines I set for myself.

The first thing I wanted as a guideline; To make a perfectly compatible game between tabletop and PBP (or PBEM).

This whole idea for my new game sprang to mind from my current online PBP (play by post) D&D 4e game at www.thetangledweb.net I moved to Japan recently and as a result lost a lot of available people to play games with. I turned to the internet. I discovered PBP games a long time ago, but always thought they we silly. Now I decided to give them a try, desperate times call for desperate measures. While I’m having a lot of fun with the game, as it turns out playing D&D 4e online just isn’t the same. Immediate Actions messes everything up. Opposed skill checks and stuff like that, there are some things as a DM I have to do that I wouldn’t in a real game. I wanted a game that would be able to play in a PBP very easily yet still have the fun cinematic feel of D&D 4e. That’s when I decided it’s time to make another game.

Guideline 2; how to determine random outcomes.

Now I am a big fan of the percentile dice (1d100) it’s perfect in my mind. As a GM you decide the difficulty of the situation in percentage and the player rolls under that percentage. For players that like rolling high numbers you determine the percentage of failure and then that player must roll higher than that number. Everything can be converted into percentages pretty easily.

The other thing I like to do when creating games is to use as many different dice as possible. So if I don’t use the percentile dice I will use ALL my dice.

I also like the d20 set up, especially in 4e. You take the most popular die in the game and build the system around it, and it all seems to work out pretty good.

So after going over my three favorite options, I decided to take a page out of the d20 book, but not with the d20. You see, every time I open my dice bag I am mocked by my purchase of the d30. While I have done my best to add the d30 to other games it feels extremely underused. So I want to make the whole system based on the d30, similar to the d20 method.

Guideline 3; Cinematic.

I greatly enjoy WotC’s decision to make a more cinematic D&D opposed to a realistic model. Most of the game’s I’ve ever created or modified was based off of realism. This will be the first time I will focus on a more cinematic experience.

Guideline 4; Simple

Since this will also be a PBP compatible game it needs to be simple enough to have each person make all their actions and dice rolls in a single turn.

Guideline 5; Easy math

This is really a combination of guidelines 2 and 4, but I gave it its own guideline because I wanted to constantly remind myself to not go overboard with this. I only want to have addition with no subtraction, and I want high rolls to mean good and low rolls to mean bad.

To sum this up, here are the 5 guidelines I set for myself while making this game.

1. Make a compatible tabletop to PBP (PBEM) game.
2. Use d30 system.
3. Cinematic over realism.
4. Simple to play.
5. Easy Math.

The next blog I’ll talk about the type of game I am creating. What genre it falls under and how it will be different from the other games in that genre.

King Nate

So I began designing another game today...

Ever since I can remember I’ve added rules to everything I’ve ever played with, or modified existing rules into something more of my liking. I’m sure there is some name for this mental disorder I have, if you know it please let me know so I can seek help.

You see, I couldn’t play with my action heroes until I created rules for them, usually with some kind of resource management abilities, when you run out of poker chips you can no longer fire your weapon until you restock your chips.

Legos? Everyone gets a certain number of specific colored blocks to build their spaceship (or what-have-you) out of. After everyone is finished we fly around shooting each other. Each person gets one shot a turn. When you take a shot, you pull a random block out of the pillowcase. If your spaceship has that shape and colored block, then it is destroyed and removed from your ship. If you lose a wing you crash and burn.

A large piece of paper? Turns into a board game.

Books? I might have done well if I read them instead of building houses out of them. I would then decorate each “house” with bad guys, hostages, weapons stocks. My little brother would be armed with nothing but bombs (AAA batteries) and listening devices (a scrap wire with a broken toy tied to the end of it). He could only use the listening devices a certain number of times before it broke and at times had to guess whether or not he should use bombs on certain houses risking the lives of the hostages he was trying to save. Each hostage saved was a point, each one killed lost one point.

Drawing? I even made rules for my art and turn pictures into games. Depending on what the picture or drawing was determined stats for the picture. It’s still a bit fuzzy remembering how I made my drawings come to life, but I remember having fun with it.

Then one day I was introduced to D&D and had a blast in my only game. I played someone else’s character, a wizard armed with all kinds of magical devices. The one that stuck out at me the most was something called the wand of wonder. The first opportunity I got to use that wand I went for it, and it didn’t take long, “I wonder what is behind this wall” I said to myself before pointing the wand and unleashing holy hell into the dinky room I was in. I was hooked. I bugged my mom for days, weeks, months, and yes, years for her to buy me the game known as D&D.

But I didn’t just sit around doing nothing waiting for her to buy me the game…I made my own D&D game. I called it “The Beginning of Dungeons and Dragons”. Ok, so I wasn’t very original with the name and I wasn’t very original with the game either. The game started exactly like that one game I played, we were all sitting in a bar minding our own business when a stranger walks up and asks us to go on a treasure hunt. I guess my first DM wasn’t very original either; he helped lay the brickwork for all those tavern starting games in my youth. Did I mention that everyone who played The Beginning of Dungeons and Dragons always started out with a wand of wonder and that we were stuck with boring dice with only six sides?

Oh and when I finally got the red box for Christmas I added a lot of my own rules. “Why is there no ability for perception?” The seventh ability is called sight, then came hearing, smelling, and huge homemade charts to determine what color your hair was. Sometimes I think I went a little too far.

I’ve played so many different games growing up that mechanics or rules I liked in one game ended up in other games.

I even made rules for video games! Super Streetfighter II Turbo had a cheat code that allowed you to lock special moves of the fighters. I created charts where you roll to determine your character, his handicap (stars), and which specials he had unlocked. We would then randomly determine how many turbo stars each fight would have, then we fought. One of my friends ended up with Saget with max stars and a tiger knee attack. He was tough to beat, but if I remember correctly I was the one that finally took him out. This apparently was one of the most fun created ideas I had, since I still hear about it to this day.

These days I still find myself modifying or creating games. I’ve created a super monopoly game, added a campaign storyline to Magic the Gathering, made games out of boxing, pro wrestling, football, and baseball. I have homebrewed war games and my very own poker game (which I'm very proud of). I have numerous hard drives filled with homemade games, homebrewed house rules for just about any game you can think of, and folders of game ideas and started, yet unfinished games.

So I began designing another game today...and in my next blog I will go into details of why and what kind of game I am working on. Along with why I am making a blog about it.

KING NATE

King Nate