So, there's only a few days left in the Contest. I'm sure I'm not the only one in a mad panic to get this thing done. The clock is ticking, and I'm hoping I can get a semi-finished product out the door.

I have thirty pages done, and I'm doing about five pages a day right now. Today, I had a few things I had to take care of (the girlfriend needed a favour), but when I got home two hours ago, I leapt to work. Tomorrow will be more more of the same.

Unfortunately, I'm seeing things that will have to be cut. I just don't have time to do them. Some of my psychic powers will be cut. I've already cut out a few skills (social interaction skills are now gone, as is the throwing skill - meaning the game will lack grenades for now). Many of my interesting creatures are now gone - Spirit Bears may not get in, and I won't be able to detail as many types of Nightmare Runner as originally planned. Gear was cut short, combat options are reduced, and a neat idea I had involving character concepts and non-combat skills probably won't make it.

What I'm really noticing now, though, are the details. My damage system doesn't really work as it stands, but I did a last minute fix today that will make it presentable until I can patch it up after the contest is over. A lot this game is really in the idea stage - and I like that. Hopefully players will look at my product and tinker with it, until they arrive at something that fits their own view on how a game should be.

All that negative stuff said, I'm really excited about showing off all my work. Hopefully, I'll have 40 pages by then... and a nice product to show off. Until then, I'll leave you all with this little teaser - a couple of psychic powers available to characters (I currently have about ten... hopefully I'll get the number to about sixteen or seventeen by the end of the contest, but no promises!)

Wik

So, I just finished the damage section on my RPG Design entry. It's two pages and a bit long, and I think it works pretty well in a small-scale RPG like Awakening. While it may be clunky in writing, I hope to clean that up during edits.

The main intent of damage was to have a system that reflected nicks and scrapes as well as ongoing wounds. Wounds happen, and they can be brutal. But much of the damage PCs suffer is considerably less.

Much like 4e, PCs will fully heal (or, at least, almost fully heal) in between encounters. However, in Awakening, PCs can suffer wounds that can get pretty bad. Furthermore, if a character gets really banged up, healing those wounds is going to get tricky.

Wik

Work on The Awakening hit a lull for a week or so, due to the sheer number of good hockey games on TV. But, now that it's the all-star break (22 goals in a game? Wtf?), I can get back to work.

And you can bet I'm looking forward to it. Because now, I get to work on the nitty-gritty - psychic powers.

The main design theme of this competition was "magic", so it makes sense that the supernatural should be a big theme in my post-apocalyptic RPG... and I'm almost ashamed that it's taken me almost a month to get to it!

I'm not going to go into huge detail on my game... because I'm tired and my hands hurt. Instead, I'll give some insight into the design process of psychic powers in my RPG.

When I designed powers, I followed a few main goals:

1) Powers are not balanced against one another. I love games where you can get either cool powers ("ooo! Drain Life!") or kind of lame powers ("ugh.... Heal Other.") Essentially, this difference in power makes those cool powers all the more interesting.

2) Powers improve as skills. Since The Awakening is based around improving skills one percentage point at a time, powers have to follow the same approach. In the game, there are four psychic skills. As they improve, you unlock new uses for existing powers. Also, if you have multiple powers keyed off the same skill, as you improve that skill, all the keyed powers improve! This encourages players to specialize, leading us to rule #3...

3) PCs can get new powers. If you roll a random crappy power, you're not stuck with it. There is a mechanic in place that makes acquisition of new powers possible, if difficult.

4) Powers are useful inside and outside of combat. If a power is only usable in a fight, it's not in my game. There is no Magic Missile in The Awakening. Likewise, if a power can only be used outside of combat, it is also out - so, no Clairvoyance (at least, not as commonly seen in D&D). A character's power should be something that can be creatively employed to overcome obstacles, whether or not the character is dodging hot lead.

5) Powers should be important, but not all-important. One time, when I was playing Dark Sun, I had a friend make a Half-Giant Gladiator. He built this character around being an uber-melee character, and was looking forward to playing this former slave-turned explorer. Then, he rolled his wild talent.... and got disintegrate.
While this character would draw his blade and fight with the best of them, whenever things got bad, the giant would use Disintegrate to essentially end the encounter. He'd take some damage, and zzzZZZZZAP! The rampaging Mekillot was dead, and the group just earned some nice XP. Essentially, the half-giant had a "get out of jail free" card.
This is something I want to avoid in The Awakening. Powers can be very useful for a a creative player, but they cannot be a gimmick that is resorted to every encounter, ad nauseum.

6) Powers should encourage creative play. This one is simple to write down, but hard to implement at times. How do you make a power that encourages creative play? Basically, every time I get a power idea, I try to think of at least five different uses for that power (knowing that if I can think of five, there are probably fifteen more that I didn't think of). If I can't think of five, then the power is out.

Wik

It seems like whenever I'm working on one project (in this case, my RPG Design entry, "The Awakening"), I get flooded with hundreds of other ideas that I just won't be able to tackle. Today, I got no less than THREE RPG ideas - we're talking system, setting, the whole kit and kaboodle.

One, in fact, came to me on my walk to work. In the fifteen minutes between leaving my apartment and swiping my ID Card through the front door, I had a system that fully supported the setting I had in mind.

Now, I know that were I to actually try to develop this idea, I'd run into snags with the system. But the great thing about these half-formed ideas is that, because we never fully work on them, they always seem as if they're perfect. I'm sure that if I had gone with this idea of the day instead of The Awakening, then I'd be writing right now about this great idea for a post-apocalyptic RPG where the PCs actually "level" during play. Or some such nonsense.

The idea in question? Well, the setting is a cross between The X-Files and the HBO series Rome, with a bit of Call of Cthulu thrown in for good measure. The system? A very rules-light (we're talking Dread, here) engine that befits an investigative RPG. Players would write down their character's defining aspects, and could be as specialized or as broad as they'd like. So, I could write down "Fighting", while you could write down "Fighting in Imperial Legions", while another would write down "Gladiatorial Fighting with the Spatha and a Trident". Whenever a test comes up, you choose the aspect that is closest to the situation at hand, and roll a dice - a d4 if the skill has absolutely no relation, a d6 if they're only barely related (ie, you're drawing straws), a d8 if you have a broad skill that covers it, or your uber-specialized aspect could belong under the same general category, a d10 if you're close, and a d12 if you're spot on. If you beat a 4, you succeed.

That's the basics of the system. Of course, there are other touches, but that's the core mechanic.

Other ideas I had today? A 4e setting in the vein of Dark Sun or Mad Max. A steampunk version of Shadowrun set in the Wild West with some Native American imagery. And a modernish (early 1800s) fantasy setting where the PCs can each shapechange into an animal, and would somehow have to navigate both the human world and the animal one.

In other news, I got absolutely no work done on my actual project today. Instead, I watched South Park on my iPod.

yyyyyyyYYYYup.

Wik

So, I finally got started with my Character Creation chapter.

When I was a kid, me and my equally-dorky friend used to make "our own RPGs", which usually consisted of stealing everything from our game of the moment, throwing away game balance, and adding in our own "art". So, we'd have a game in a fantasy future where characters made "runs" against corporations, using a Priority-based character creation scheme... and we'd give it some lame name, like "Shadow Heroes".

Nowadays, I'm much better at stealing ideas and passing them off as my own. It's what growing up is all about, I guess.

Of course, each time we'd get together and make up a game, we started (and usually finished) with the Character Creation chapter. To put it simply, creating a character is the fun part of any RPG book. It is always the first part of the book I look at, and it tends to be the most re-read part of the game.

If you look at many successful RPGs, you'll see that a huge part of the game is dedicated towards character creation. The Player's Handbook from D&D, for example, is FILLED with creation information - I'd wager about half the book is aimed towards creating a character or character-specific information (in pretty much any edition).

By "Character-Specific Information", I mean neat little things like skills, powers, spells, gear... things that a character can have and use. And if you look at the successful RPGs, many of them dedicate their product lines to expanding upon such Character-specific Information (i.e. "Splatbooks").

People like making characters. And they like options. Odds are, you never even thought about playing a half-blind mexican midget biker with crohn's disease and an aversion to cheese until you found that the "Lactose Intolerant" flaw in the latest splat gave you a +2 bonus to buttkicking, right?

So, now that I'm finally starting on the Creating a Character chapter, I'm trying to preserve that sense of fun, and keeping the options open - while limiting the amount of space dedicated to character-specific information. ALthough, to be honest, probably half my book will be character-specific info.

Character creation has a few major steps. First you come up with a character concept (I always encourage players to think of a concept before creating a character, to move away from the "pick from a shopping list of powers" syndrome). Then, you allocate 60 points among your four attribute (Body, Intelligence, Agility, and Spirit). All attributes begin at zero, and they can't go higher than +30. All attributes should be in multiples of five (for ease of math).

After this, you determine characteristics (derived values based on attributes, much like saves in D&D 3E) - right now, we have Dodge, Parry, Willpower, Health, and Wound Threshold. Each characteristic is based off an average of two attributes - Dodge, for example, is based off the average of your Agility and Intelligence. Characteristics can improve through gameplay, but only rarely.

After this, you determine your psychic power, in the traditional post-apocalyptic method... random rolling on an impartial power. The powers are not balanced against one another, nor should they be. But, unlike traditional post-apoc games, there are no disadvantages... no midget bikers in my game, unfortunately.

Next up, we have skills. You get one Primary (Expert) skill, two major skills, and three minor skills. Your primary skill gets a big (+30) bonus, and once you improve it to a base skill of 30 (you start at a base skill of 10, so after you improve it 20 times) you unlock a special power (other characters only improve their skills at base skill 20 and 40, and so miss the base skill 30 "level up"). The game is geared towards non-combat skills - the expert improvements for combat-based skills are less than the improvements for the more rarely-used skills.

Then you pick your gear, which is a very simple process (I'm aiming towards no more than 3 pages of gear).

Finally, you choose one adrenaline ability (a special ability like a 3E Feat that you can only activate with adrenaline points), and an aspect. Your aspect can grant you bonus on attribute checks (but not skill checks) if it comes up during play. So, a lawyer would get a bonus on any Intelligence check involving knowledge of the legal system, but he wouldn't get a bonus on using the Barter Skill. Also, if you roleplay out your aspect, you can get an adrenaline point out of the deal.

Currently, I'm thinking a character can be created in less than five minutes, which will be good, because the Awakening is gearing up towards being a very lethal RPG.

Wik

So, I've hit a snag. I'm still working on my "basic mechanics" section, and I'm trying to write out the rules allowing for characters to take multiple actions. Unfortunately, while I know what I want to do mechanically, I'm having a very hard time writing it down.

A quick primer on the system:

1) Players declare their actions at the start of their turn, and can't deviate (Well, they can, but there are a few drawbacks to doing this).

2) If they take only one action (moving, shooting, or whatever else), they get a +10% bonus on the attempt. (Essentially, "aiming").

3) If they take two actions, neither action has a penalty (so, they could shoot a gun twice). For every additional action, ALL actions suffer a cumulative -10% penalty. So, if a character moves behind cover (1 action), fires his gun twice (2 more actions), and then throws a grenade (1 action), he suffers a -20% on all checks made during that round.

4) If any skill is reduced to a level of 10% or lower (before difficulty modifiers are applied), it automatically fails. If you have no training and no attribute bonuses, your base skill is 20%. Meaning, don't shoot your gun three times a round if you're not trained!

5) If you take an action outside of your turn (perhaps from an adrenaline ability, or maybe if I institute an "out of turn dodge" rule), it counts as an action on your next turn.

6) You cannot perform the same action more than twice in a round. So, you can't fire the same pistol three times in a round (unless you have an ability that allows it). You can take two move actions, but not three (instead of a normal move, you can choose to "run", which gives you a minimum +10 feet bonus, or more if you take two run actions).

So, that's the rules... but I'm havign a helluva time writing them down clearly. It's sort of like writer's block. Which sucks... I want to get past the pure "rules" of the game (Mechanics, Levelling, and Combat) to start writing character options (particularly the skills chapter, and the psychic powers chapter).

Wik

So, I've started work on my entry for The RPG Design Contest! I've got to admit, I'm excited and a little nervous at the same time. There's a lot to get done, and it seems hard to figure out where to start!

I decided to start things off with the basic game rules, because, well, that's probably a pretty good place to start! What's surprised me is how long it takes to write in rules-speak... I have about four pages of game rules (and another 4 pages of point-form notes) in my "official" draft - and it took me a good two hours to type up.

Doing the math in my head (I'm excellent at math, apparently), that means to get 50 pages of work done I'll need to spend a total of 25 hours. And that's not counting play-testing time, rewrites, editing... gah. Luckily, I'm thinking if I spend three hours a week on my game, I should be hunky-dorey.

Of course, I only have a half-hour break at work each day to work on this project... and I only work 4.5 days a week (5 on one week, 4 on the other - I love government work!), meaning I'll have to spend some home time on this. Oh well. I never had much of a life, anyways.

So, here's my first preview of The Awakening (I changed the name, because it seems cooler than "The Dreamers").

A few quick explanations:

1) Difficulty Numbers: I arrived at these numbers by comparing them to 3rd edition D&D, and finding I generally liked how the probability of character actions worked out. A character averages around +10% on an attribute, and if he has even basic training, he'll have a +10% modifier, meaning a base chance of success around 40%. Since I have a few rules that will allow characters to improve their odds of success (Spending adrenaline points, invoking a character's aspect, etc...), that seems like a good place to start.

As a sidenote, I found out after writing these numbers down last week that the DN's are the exact same as those used by Chaosium in their universal game system (a la Call of Cthulu). I'd just like to say that I've never played a Chaosium game, and only skimmed over their rules before. So, it looks like we had the same starting place, and use the same logic to come across our numbers. It's good for me, because it tells me that I'm doing something right if I get the same numbers that a company like Chaosium got.

2) Opposed Tests: They seem weird, what with "use the highest if both succeed, and use the highest if both fail", but it's easy to remember (important in any game, I think) and it works. If PC #1 has a 75% chance of success, and PC #2 has a 25% chance of success, and they both fail, odds are pretty good PC #1 will still be rolling higher than PC #2 (#1 will be rolling at least 76 to fail a skill, while #2 will be failing on anything higher than 26).

3) Degree of Success: Originally, much of my design hinged on a system sort of like that in Savage Worlds (where characters can score "raises" to up their degree of success). But, I've realized that this system doesn't port well to a percentile system, and so I dropped much my degree system. However, degrees do come into play when characters make attack rolls (they indicate extra damage - a character's attack roll and damage roll are the same roll in The Awakening).

4) Automatic Success or Failure: I had a more complex system, and it may come into play, but it was too confusing and fiddly. I figured I should go with a simple system like this; it saves page space and makes the game easier to play.

5) Extended Tests: I borrowed this concept from Shadowrun 4th edition. I need to figure out a table for Extended Tests in play (i.e., the average interval of a test, and the number of points needed for each type of test), but that's something to worry about later. Right now, I think I'm headed in the right direction.

Coming Up...
Next time, I plan on showing off my multi-action system (based off an idea from the old d6 Star Wars RPG), the character Aspect system (I got the idea from Earthdawn, though I don't think anyone else will see that), and the feature of the game I'm most excited about - the in-game improvement system! (Unique to RPGs, to the best of my knowledge... my brother has aptly compared it to the CRPG Oblivion)

Wik

So, for the last while I've been stressing over where to start with designing an RPG - with the setting, or with the mechanical structure? It turns out, the answer is fairly wishy-washy: both. I'm reminded of all those people who cannot settle on a firm answer, saying "well it depends..." as if it were some sort of religious mantra, and all those times I've wanted to kick them in the junk. And now, I'm saying it.

Wishy-washy. Gah, there's an awful taste in my mouth.

So, you work on both at the same time. You work on the setting for a little bit, and then you establish the basic mechanics, and then you use those basic rules to expand upon your setting, which then informs you where you need to work on your mechanics, and so on and so on, a nerdy sort of positive feedback.

I now have a basic map of the setting figured out - a ruined city haunted by giant worms and ravenous cults; a floating "barge" city that functions as a metropolis for trade; a military state based off a fuelless aircraft carrier; a confused semi-religious state calling itself "Little India"; and a commune of former hippies that has declared psychic powers illegal and prosecutes psychics (the twist? Everyone in the community is a psychic, and just hides it from his neighbours).

Sounds cool, right? Well, that's not what I'm going to talk about here. Instead, I want to talk about Difficulty Numbers. Because, hey, those are fun too.

I've got the basics of my mechanical system figured out - a percentage-based system with a boolean "Success or Failure" mechanic, similar to the systems used in Call of Cthulu as well as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - both games I'd love to play, but never have. The system is also a cousin to the old thieving skills from D&D and the skill system from RIFTs - both games I've played, and I actually enjoyed the one that didn't, you know, suck.

Essentially - you have a base percentage of success, you modify it for difficulty, and if you roll under it on d100, you succeed.

Here's the problem: what is the success rate for a task of average difficulty? Some games will say that a character should succeed on an average task 75% of the time, while others will say 50%. Since I'm using a system where difficulty numbers are modifiers to a character's base chance of success, should an average difficulty have a modifier of +0%? Or something else?

This ties into another question: where should a character's base skill rating start at? 50%? 60%? Higher? Lower? There's a lot that goes into this, and I could go on for a while. But I do that too much already, so I'll cut to the gist of things.

I decided that a character of average skill should succeed on an average task 50% of the time, provided he does not prepare for the task (he doesn't aim, he doesn't get help from a companion, etc.) It's an arbitrary starting point, but it makes sense in my head to sort of level the "middle of the road" for everything at zero. If anything, it makes the math easier.

Difficulties modify your base chance in 20% increments, though nothing will stop GMs from using the smaller 10% modifiers. An Average difficulty task has no modifier to your attribute, while an easy task gives you a +20% bonus; likewise, a hard task will stick you with a -20% penalty. So, an average character with a bit of training in the skill at hand (base skill 50%) will succeed on an easy task 70% of the time, and a difficult task 30% of the time - seems good to start with.

In fact, I think the game seems hunky-dorey. I wish I could post up my math sheets, but there's a lot of big math errors on it, as well as Help me Satan, my dark lord and master written in goat's blood right near some poorly-conceived bell curves.

Oh, and a Hello Kitty sticker.

Because who doesn't love Hello Kitty?

Wik

A quicker post...

I figured I should probably have an idea of what my final product is going to look like, in terms of composition. So, I wrote up a loose allocation of page space, to give me an idea of the time I should spend on each section. OF course, this is a loose estimation, but it may give you an idea of where I'm going with this:

Core Rules: 4 Pages
Combat & Damage: 4 pages
Levelling/Experience: 1 page
Character Creation: 2 pages
"Feats": 1 page
Adrenaline Powers: 1 page
Skills: 5 pages
Psychic Powers/Rules: 8 pages
Gear: 3 pages
Foes/NPCs: 5 pages
Setting: 5 pages
Adventures: 4 pages
Map: 1 page
Total: 44 pages.

A few explanations. "Feats" are really a catch-all term for character abilities, and are really a way to flesh out your character a bit. Since I plan on using skills as the primary way to define a character, I don't need to spend too much on so-called "feats", but I think they should be there.

"Adrenaline Powers" are a subsystem I've been tinkering with for a few years, and I feel it's time to include them into the game. Essentially, they function much like a combination of action points and encounter powers in 4e D&D - each character can spend action points, but each PC has a different pool of abilities that they can spend action points to activate. They allow the PCs a little bit of wiggle room in a rather violent game.

As you can see, there is a fair amount of space (10%) dedicated to skills. This will be a skill-based system, and I want to include a mechanic that allows PCs to gain abilities as they level their skills. For example, if you get athletics to level X, you increase your speed by 1, that sort of thing. So, there won't be a huge number of skills, but each skill will get a fair treatment. I also plan on including relevant rules within the skills, to save space (so, the rules for repairing stuff are under the repair skill, scavenging rules are covered by the scavenging skill, etc...).

"Adventures" will be a selection of adventure ideas, and a quick discussion of various campaign models. If I have space, I also plan on including a few random tables to get the creative juices flowing.

Setting doesn't get a huge chunk of space, because I feel that, if done right, much of the setting will be reflected elsewhere in the product.

And, finally, I need to include a map - not everyone knows the Pacific Northwest as well as I.

You'll notice I left myself 6 pages of "Wiggle Room", which is just plain good sense. If everything follows according to my plan (ha!), I'll have six pages to add "goodies". More likely, I'll be able to use those six pages to cover some unforeseen expansions of other chapters.

Wik

So, I just realized how long my last post was. Sorry about that; I'll try to keep my thoughts shorter from here on in. Shouldn't be hard.

Preliminary work on the RPG Design Contest continues. Today, I've been thinking about how to approach the actual design of an RPG, and I now realize that I have no idea whether it is better to start with fleshing out the mechanics of a game, and building the setting up from there, or whether it's better to have a fairly well-detailed world and then start putting together mechanics.

It's sort of a "Chicken or Egg?" dilemna, in that you can't really design mechanics if you have little understanding of your setting, and you probably shouldn't design a setting if you don't know the limitations of your mechanical system.

This morning, I had a setting roughly in mind, but I didn't have any of the details fleshed out. But that was still better than the mechanical side of things; there, I only had a few very loose ideas, and no clue which system to follow. But, I didn't want to work on my setting if I didn't know exactly what my system would represent.

So, on that half hour lunchbreak of mine, I grabbed the trusty pen and paper and made up a "Phantom System" that would serve as my rough draft while designing the setting. In other words, this was a system that wouldn't actually WORK in play, but sort of gave me an idea of what my as-yet-unknown system would be capable of covering. My phantom system notes were as follows (I've expanded upon my own scratchings so that they make sense for people who are, well, not me):

1) Dangerous. A gun shot or two will kill a PC or an NPC rather easily. To survive, characters have to use cover, and the rules encourage moving and taking multiple actions per turn. If there's space, there will be a basic system to cover some of the grim and gritty stuff, like gangrene and water poisoning.

2) Resources. The game will have rules that support scrounging and bartering for gear.

3) PCs are special, but not too special. The edge belongs to the player characters, but bad luck can kill a PC very quickly. Luckily, PC Generation is rather quick, with only a few limited random elements.

4) Psychic Rules are similar to skills, which are similar to every other ability of a character. In other words, there is one universal mechanic in the game, and it truly is universal. (not like, say, d20, where hit points follow a different system than skill checks, which are different from moving)

5) The dreamland has a part to play in the game mechanics.

***

So, that's my phantom system. There were a lot of numbers written down, things like "Combat 60%" and "6 second rounds" that don't really mean much now. But you get the gist.

I'm not sure if my method is the best when creating a game, but at least it gives me an idea of what the mechanical side will look like while I start sketching out the setting side.

Wik

So, I've been considering the setting for the RPG Design Contest throughout the day, and I've come across three candidates. In all but one case, these were ideas that have been percolating in my consciousness for some time, and when I realized the theme of the contest, knew they would be prime candidates. The problem quickly became a matter of narrowing things down, rather than trying to come up with material.

In brief, my three main setting concepts (with really basic titles) were:

1) Space Colonies: The three main nations are all based off colonial-era european nations (A France/Rome hybrid, The English Commonwealth, and Spain/Russia), transplanted into a fantasy universe. The nations are competing against one another in a space race, trying to colonize the various pulp-like planets of their solar system. Each planet is very pulp in nature, in a sort of "John Carter" vein. There are no spaceships, however (space is still very lethal to humans, though "Space Suits" are similar to the "Dive Suits" you see in very old sci-fi), with travel between planets taking place in magical plants, shaped around human-built hulls and launched into space in bizarre organic space terminals that no nation has the power to create.

It sounds weird, I know - but it makes sense in my head, and if I had a few pages, it'd make more sense than it does here. "Magic" in this setting would be centred around the strange plants, as well as scientifically-minded wizards in a traditional steampunk vein. The actual spells and operations of magic would be rather different, though, being able to produce strange effects that would always have a drawback and would tend to replicate old-era sci-fi ("The Invisible Man", "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde").

2. The Dreamers: The apocalypse happened three years ago... and nobody remembers it. One day, everyone just started sleepwalking... and not everyone woke up. Those who did woke up, scarred and bruised, months (or, in some cases, more than a year) after the actual event. In fact, three years after the fact, there are still a few sleepwalkers around, mindlessly milling about and just aware enough of their surroundings to scavenge a bare minimum of food and water for survival.

Those who have awakened are in the possession of bizarre powers that are being labelled as "psychic" - some can move objects, read thoughts, or even walk through walls. However, many animals have changed, either mentally or physically, and millions of sleepwalkers have seem to become possessed and twisted into a variety of malicious psychic beasts that prowl the night.

3. Cthulu in Venice: This idea is a new one, though it is based off an old CoC Campaign I ran about five years back. Essentially, the PCs are all members of the Catholic Church, in an off-shoot sect designated to investigate "heresies against God" - everything from Elder Gods to Mummies to Vampires to Cults to Serial Killers. Set in a semi-historical (and much enlarged) Venice during the Renaissance following the Black Death, the PCs are given Carte Blanche from their immediate superiors, but have to keep their investigations quiet from the public, as well as the Church Proper (if the mother church found out one of it's own was investigating occurences of the supernatural officially condemned, there'd be hell to pay).

Naturally, it'd be a horror game, equal parts "Call of Cthulu" and "The X-Files". PCs wouldn't just have to solve the supernatural case, but would also have to conceal their activities from various conspiracies and the public.

The "Magic" in this theme would be the various supernatural creatures trying to destroy the PCs. Also, as in any good horror game, PCs would have the option of turning to obscene and "Ungodly" rituals to destroy their enemies... but they would have to pay the price.

***

Now, those are my three ideas. ANd I had to narrow them down to one. I did this by taking a long walk through an uncommonly-cold Victoria winter, shivering my way through snowbanks and weighing the pros- and cons of each setting.

The main theme of the contest is "magic", and I've shown that each example is centred around something magical - the first revolves around the unexplained plant spaceships as well as unexplained pseudoscientific "magic"; the second centres around how psychic powers have changed the face of the planet; and the third is based around the paranormal side of "magic", with PCs rarely, if ever, "Casting Spells".

Each setting addresses the main theme, but they do not all address the optional sub-themes, as I soon realized. And this is where I began to narrow down my search. Some settings deal with a sub-theme better than others, and I decided that I should go with the setting that covers as many sub-themes as possible. I'm not going to take apart each setting piece by piece; that would be monotonous for both of us. Instead, I'm going to skip ahead and fill you in: I decided upon the second setting, because it hit all of the sub-themes. The other two missed out in a few different ways (Setting #1 is difficult to give a source of magical energy to, without turning the pseudoscientific magic into "science"; "Prophecy" can only work if it follows a sort of Manifest Destiny vibe; and I'm having a problem trying to work in an "Omni-present threat" that works in such a large setting. Setting #3, meanwhile, cannot be a city-based horror game and still feature a "ruined city" prominently, and with it's church overtones becomes hard to factor in a prophecy unless it's something along the lines of the Necronomicon, which has been done to death, if you ask me).

Here's how "Dreamers" tackled each of the sub-themes:

Source(s) of Magical Energy: Where does the magic come from? The problem with this question is that if you explain it too much, you start to take away the "magic" of the magical.

I had a problem figuring out a source of magical power for the second setting, until I started thinking about the sleepwalking NPCs still shuffling around the city streets. When I realized there was already an element of "Sleep" in the game, I started thinking about dreams, and decided to merge the "Dreamlands" (a sort of astral plane accessible only while asleep) with the existing psychic powers.

Those who are still "Sleepwalking" are stuck in the dreamlands, and even awakened characters still have vivid dreams that would figure into the game (I haven't figured out how yet). This is one of those flashes of inspiration that expanded upon the game when I was trying to figure out how to make this sub-theme fit - and it really helped to cement the game in my head.

Ruined City: You can introduce ruined cities into almost any RPG fairly easily, because they exist fairly readily. But there is a difference between adding in a ruined city and making a ruined city (or cities) a major theme of your game. Shadowrun, for example, has quite a few Ruined Cities ("Bug City" - former Chicago, being the big one, though zombie-infested Richmond, British Columbia is another), but when I think of Shadowrun, I do not instantly think "Ruined Cities".

Of course, as a post-apocalyptic setting, "Dreamers" has many abandoned cities. While the apocalypse is recent, I knew the campaign would have many monsters, and I quickly decided that some of these monsters could really decay a city fast. Vancouver, for example, is inhabited by giant worm creatures (Purple Worms?) that burrow beneath the city - causing some buildings to collapse.

To be honest, "Ruined Cities" was probably the easiest sub-theme to include into the setting. PCs will be interacting with these cities frequently, as they will be a primary adventuring site. PCs will sneak into them to attack enemy groups, or scavenge through the ruins in search of whatever macguffin they currently require.

Prophecy: Prophecies give a game a sort of meta-plot, and help give the GM an idea of what the game should be about. The question becomes one of how to reveal the prophecy, and just what the prophecy is about.

In the Dreamers, I knew fairly quickly that I wanted the prophecy to be tied to the Dreamlands, meaning PCs (and NPCs) would uncover clues about what was going on as they slept. I sort of imagine the situation to be similar to the The Stand, with each group being fed information they have to piece together themselves. I also decided that it would be cool to have the sleepwalkers mumble pieces of the prophecy and offer glimpses into the future - and even have a few write down shippets of the prophecy as graffitti on city walls.

Near Omni-Present Threat: What does this mean? I pondered this for a bit, and eventually came to the conclusion that it meant a single source of danger for all PCs (and maybe most NPCs, too). The threat should always be at least in the background, and could be a driving motivation for events in the game world. In Earthdawn, this would be the Horrors and the polluted Astral plane. In Shadowrun, the threat would be the corporations.

In the Dreamers, the omni-present threat comes in the form of those humans who never "woke up" but are not "sleep-walking". These are, essentially, humans who lacked latent psychic powers when the apocalypse happened, and so succumbed to the dark side of the Dreamlands. They are now stains upon both the waking and dreaming world, and wander about in packs, attacking.

That might sound like "zombie", but I knew right away that I didn't want zombies in my post-apoc game. Instead, these "Nightmare Runners" (to use a spur-of the moment name) are fast, cunning, and co-ordinated, though they attack in smaller numbers. Also, they have psychic powers that they are really unable to control. Finally, each region offers a different version of Nightmare Runner; in one place, they may be very fast and capable of incredible leaps, while in another they may have an inate camoflage ability.

Because cities had the highest density of humans, they also have the highest density of Nightmare Runners (who will only attack Awakened; for some reason, nothing preys upon the Sleepwalking, not even vermin - there seems to be a compulsion that prevents people from harming the 'walkers). Those communities that exist have to create strong defenses to keep them safe from Nightmare Runner raids. The abundance of the Runners forced people to the more easily-defendable islands (I should mention that this game will be set in the Pacific Northwest, my home), as opposed to the open mainland.

(This design choice also means that boats become the primary means of transportation, which I love, since it means that the PCs will have their own ship. Having your home base always with you is great, since the PCs can upgrade their floating home and actually benefit constantly from doing so. It also allows the GM to have NPCs that stay on the ship but are still almost always accessible to the PCs, greatly enhancing campaign cohesion).


***

So, there it is. The setting I've decided to go with is a post-apocalyptic game centred around psychic powers and a supernatural "dreamworld". Of course, the surface has just been barely scratched. The next question (which will be looked at next time) is this: do I begin to fully describe the setting the game will be located in next, or do I instead focus on the mechanics of the game, and maybe backwards-engineer some of the setting to fit the mechanics later on? Which should come first in a design project: setting or mechanics?

Wik

The RPG Design competition has begun, and I plan on using this blog as a means of charting my progress through RPG Design. I've never fully designed an RPG before, though I have made a few attempts at severe re-workings. So, you can bet I'm excited at the prospect at tackling this challenge!

Today, the theme for the RPG Design Competition was announced, and that theme is "magic". At first, I felt that this theme was a cop-out, that it was so broad that it really covered nothing. After all, almost all RPGs have something that could be classified as "magic", right? Every fantasy system by definition has some element of the magical in it; many horror games (such as Call of Cthulu) have a magical element that cannot be explained by science; even many so-called science fiction games have psychic powers or mutations that fall under the umbrella of "magic" (for example, Shadowrun or Star Wars).

But, the more I think about it, the more I realized that the stated theme really has to be central to the design. And that makes things different, and a tad more difficult.

After all, how many games have magic as one of the central tenets of the game? Earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons do not, really; most of the classes lack magical powers, and the game doesn't really depend upon magical items. If my group consists of all fighters, and all I throw at you are human brigands, the game plays more as a medieval simulation of sorts!

So, I want a game where the magic is always present within the game, to capture that "whoa..." moment when players first realize how this setting is... different.

The problem with the theme is that, since the beginning, RPGs have had an element of 'magic'. It sometimes seems that, for an RPG to succeed in the market, there needs to be a magical element added (how many completely magic-less RPGs are there?). Sometimes, I think games that don't necessarily need a magical element add them just to draw in players - d20 Modern springs instantly to mind, and I sometimes think Shadowrun would have been a lot more fun if it was like Cyberpunk. Since magic has become associated with RPGs in general (both pen and paper and computer RPGs - there are even fewer magic-less CRPGs than traditional RPGs), it becomes rather difficult to attach a sense of wonder to a magic system.

In other words, magic is no longer "magical".

And that's the problem with the theme. It really wants the designer to introduce magic in such a way that it causes the players' collective eyebrows to raise an inch or two. The problem is, how do we do that?

With that in mind, I know that I want my game to follow a few key rules:

1) The magic in the game must be at least a little original: I want the magic system in my game to work in a way that doesn't make players think "Oh, this is like the magic system in game X" and then promptly be forgotten. I want a magic system that works oddly, both mechanically and thematically. However, it cannot be too creative - the second you get overly original, players feel like there is nothing solid to stand upon, and they can't ground their own original ideas.

I don't want a game that's based on the Greek Elements, which has been done to death, but I also don't want a game where a character's powers are taken from the dying dreams of a long-dead god and shaped in the realm of Phynisia to effect temporary changes on the mortal realm in a process that has been ongoing since Creation - that's a bit too much. Right now, I'm leaning more towards "Psychic Powers that come from Dangerous Surgery" (such as from the video game Mass Effect) or "Magic that springs out of drug use" (Akira springs to mind).

2) The Setting's Magic and the Game Rules must intertwine: I hate games that introduce a magic system that doesn't mesh well with the game rules. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, while it has a dark magical element, seems sometimes to be too magical compared to the world portrayed, and the rules don't really mesh well with the game presented. The magical system in the d6 System is similar, in that the magic (with the option to add effects to spells at increased difficulty) is another one - the system seems "tacked on", and very boring.

Ideally, I want a magic system that is inherent in the game rules. I have an idea that magical power is somehow tied to the initiative rules - certain phases of the round grant bonuses to certain spheres of magic. I also want magical power to be a derived characteristic (in the same way that fortitude and reflex are derived from a character's class and abilities in 4th Edition), though the exact process for this is still in the air.

3) Magic has to play fast: I want my game system to be fairly rules-light (after all, I've only got 50 pages to work with, and I don't really want to spend more than 15 pages or so directly detailing the game rules), and rules-light usually means relatively fast conflict resolution. I want my magic rules to resolve just as quickly. No reading up spell effects as in far too many games.

I always hated having to halt play and pop open the Player's Handbook when the wizard cast a spell to figure out the finer points of the effect. In my game, I want magic to be just as easy to resolve as an attack roll, or a skill check.

4) Magic has to be open to interpretation: What I mean here is, magic cannot just be a rule in the game. Too many games list magic as "When spell X is cast, effect Y happens", and leave it at that. For example, in Dungeons and Dragons, can you use magic missile for anything but direct damage? Probably not. And many spells work in just that way - the casting of a spell has a direct effect that is not open to interpretation.

I want my magic to have broad magical effects - "Create Fire" instead of a dozen fire-based attack- and utility- spells; "Restoration" instead of a dozen healing and curing spells; and "Manipulation" instead of all those charm- and fear- spells.

Of course, I have no idea how to do that yet, without causing the game to become horribly broken.

Wik