General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Well, I started writing today. As the ideas came pouring out, I realized I have a lot of work to do to cram a complete RPG into 50 pages. Font size and formatting can only take you so far...and I doubt there will be any art to speak of!
There. Fixed it for you.
Quote:
Still, for entertainment purposes only, I thought I'd share the outline. Is anything missing?
I. Setting and Themes
A. A spiritual world, a different kind of magic
B. Parallel prehistory, an ancient worldview
C. Creating the world through play: stories within stories
D. The Jewel of Virtue
II. The Player Character
A. Attributes
B. Skills
C. Races
D. Heroic Archetypes
E. Equipment
III. Skills and Exploits
A. Prowess skills: athletics and weapons
B. Gnosis skills: lore and analysis
C. Charisma skills: manipulation, negotiation and performance
D. Heroic exploits (mundane powers with skill prerequisites)
IV. Forms of Magic
A. True Speech, the enigma of lost grace
B. Miracles of Virtue
C. Consorting with spiritual beings
1. Angels
2. Djinn
3. Demons
D. Artifacts, relics, and other remnants
E. Gates
V. Playing the Game
A. Before you begin
B. Conflict and task resolution
C. Frameworks and stories
D. Exchanging roles
E. Character advancement
F. Example of play
VI. Hazards and obstacles
A. Beasts and monsters
B. Unique and spiritual creatures
C. Environmental hazards
D. Conspiracies
VII. Advanced options
A. Parallel frameworks
B. Multiple incarnations
C. Ahriman’s tempation
I don't know if an Example of Play is really necessary; I think it's safe to assume that we all know what an RPG is - no point wasting space. I`m a little interested to see how conspiracies can tie into a biblical RPG.
What sort of Heroic Archetypes (I`m assuming classes, here) are you working on?
__________________ Current Campaign:The Shattered Isles Homebrew - Hammer (Minotaur Fighter 8), Kirra (Drow Rogue 8), Shedin (Dragonborn Paladin 8), Zahar (Half-Eladrin/Half Drow Bard 8), and Seahorse (Halfling Rogue 8). Currently the group is in the Feywild, trying to discover who is poisoning the drow.
50 pages... OK, that helps a lot. Thanks for the reminder!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wik
I don't know if an Example of Play is really necessary; I think it's safe to assume that we all know what an RPG is - no point wasting space. I`m a little interested to see how conspiracies can tie into a biblical RPG.
What sort of Heroic Archetypes (I`m assuming classes, here) are you working on?
I wanted an example to demonstrate how a player's story can be inserted into the game, even interrupting the action. I don't know if that aspect of the RPG is really possible yet, but that was the intent.
The archetypes are just going to be brief construction kits, a bit like Shadowrun. The purpose is to provide a nice long list of what sorts of people are likely to be 'adventurers' in the setting.
Conspiracies is shorthand for social obstacles :-) There are monsters and physical hazards to challenge the body, mysteries and puzzles to challenge the mind, conspiracies against players or the whole party to challenge their social acumen.
you and I are developing a number of project themes in parallel (though I doubt in the same forms/formats/specific approaches). Specifically these:
A. A spiritual world, a different kind of magic
B. Parallel prehistory, an ancient worldview
D. The Jewel of Virtue
II. The Player Character
A. Attributes
B. Skills
C. Races
D. Heroic Archetypes
B. Miracles of Virtue
C. Consorting with spiritual beings
1. Angels
3. Demons
D. Artifacts, relics, and other remnants
E. Gates
VI. Hazards and obstacles
A. Beasts and monsters
B. Unique and spiritual creatures
C. Environmental hazards
D. Conspiracies
I suspect we won't be the only ones independently developing parallel themes, elements, basic background parameters, and even philosophical approaches.
I look forward to studying many of these projects.
Khuxan wrote: Magic is only magic if the players don't have it.
Jack7 wrote: Magic should be closer to the soul than to science, more terrifying than technological.
These two statements really resonate with me. How have other RPGs addressed the issue? I'm not widely read in RPGs, but it might be interesting to toss some ideas around.
Warhammer: There is always a small but significant chance of incurring a nasty side effect from Chaos. Seventh Sea: PC access to magic is very specialized, and later sourcebooks indicate that magic is a poisoned apple, granting short-term power but harmful to the universe itself. Grim Tales: magic greatly and immediately weakens the caster. Cthulhu d20: magic not only weakens the caster, it is a limited resource (due to SAN loss) over the character's entire career.
All these ideas have one thing in common: magic is kept rare in the campaign world by making it dangerous. This also limits it to all but the most dedicated PCs, in opposition to D&D v.1-3 where spells are just another tool available to the majority of adventurers.
Jack is hinting at a different approach: the rules of magic can change over the course of play, preventing the players from ever knowing its rules fully. (I may, of course, be completely missing the mark--but that's to be expected.)
Injecting mystery and rarity into magic is a worthy goal of any fantasy RPG. One of the things I am considering is how I can do this without necessarily making magic a sinister force.
One possibility is to set up the rules so that beginning characters don't have the resources to actually use magic. At best they can construct a character who is capable of learning it as the campaign progresses. In this sort of RPG the players don't have it, and you at least have the potential to maintain a sense of wonder at the beginning of the story--perhaps at the risk of grandstanding.
I'm interested in hearing other people's ideas on this matter, and any other examples of RPGs that have successfully made magic rarer, dangerous, and/or mysterious.
you and I are developing a number of project themes in parallel (though I doubt in the same forms/formats/specific approaches). Specifically these:
I suspect we won't be the only ones independently developing parallel themes, elements, basic background parameters, and even philosophical approaches.
I look forward to studying many of these projects.
Me too. I just looked and your 'Developmental Proceedings', and found it interesting if vague. Your project certainly sounds more ambitious than mine!
BTW, 'fuindordm' is an age-old handle from an early attempt at PBEM. The campaign was 'Fuindor--the shadowed lands', and I was having fun at the time constructing place names from Tolkien's elvish roots. So please, everyone, just call me Ben.
Regarding your question on magic. One approach I've always loved is that of Dark Sun, which makes magic a dangerous force in the world but not inherently dangerous to PCs. Plus, it's D&D style magic - which usually encourages frequent magic use!
Basically, in Dark Sun, everytime you cast a spell, you drain some of the surrounding plant life. Since the world is a massive desert, made that way by centuries of too-frequent magic use, the populace naturally has a dim view on arcane magic. So, if you cast a spell (even if you're a preserver, who does his best to save the environment; people don't often uderstand the difference), you better hope people don't see you - that's an easy way to get lynched.
So, even though you can cast spells just as often as you can in mainstream D&D, there's a social element that encourages you to be a bit more selective in your casting. Coupled with the fact that magical spell components are illegal (and sold only in the secretive Elven markets), there's definitely a limitation on spell use in the campaign world.
Personally, I'm heading in a similar direction - how to make magic mysterious and rare without making it insidious. I'm simply saying that no one really knows where it came from (everyone simply woke up months or years after the "apocalypse" with these powers, and are unsure where they came from), and as for "rarity" - while every PC has a neat power, most common folk do not. Common folk do have powers, but they are often so mild that they are functionally useless (one guy might be very mildly magnetic, while a second is now a very lucid dreamer). The common theme being that the only people who wake up from the years-long "Sleepwalking" are those who had psychic powers - the rest either die fairly quickly, or become "Nightmare Runners".
the powers themselves are not good or evil, and there's no negative effect for using your powers. in fact, you can use them an unlimited number of times per day, though some have the equivalents of hit point or action point activation costs. Each power is tied to one of four psychic powers (corresponding with the four card suits - I'm using cards to determine initiative order, and if your suit comes up, you get a bonus on your spellcasting rolls that round). As your skill improves, you can use your power to do bigger and better things.
For example, you might get the power to walk through walls. At start, you have to concentrate to use this power, taking your entire round to move through relatively thin walls. As your power improves, you can use it to move through walls as an action, and later on, you can even do so as part of your regular movement, or use it to drop through the floor to an open ground below.
One of my main design goals (I have it written down in red ink on my hand-written notes sheet) is to make each magical power something that must be actively invoked, and each power must be usable both inside and outside of combat. So, no permanent buffs (i.e. +10% to skill X) that characters write down on their character sheets and promptly forget, and no simple blast attacks (i.e. D&D's Magic Missile) that essentially cannot be used outside of a fight. Conversely, powers like Clairvoyance will probably exist, but I need to find a way to make them usable inside of combat - maybe a short-range scrying effect that can reveal the movements of hidden enemies.
Hope that gives you an idea where I'm heading.
__________________ Current Campaign:The Shattered Isles Homebrew - Hammer (Minotaur Fighter 8), Kirra (Drow Rogue 8), Shedin (Dragonborn Paladin 8), Zahar (Half-Eladrin/Half Drow Bard 8), and Seahorse (Halfling Rogue 8). Currently the group is in the Feywild, trying to discover who is poisoning the drow.
Now that the new year has started and things can start, it seems like a good time to mention what I am working on at the moment. Mechanics seem to be going in a more narravist direction while placing a focus on group efforts toward resolving a conflict instead of individuals succeeding at a task. Character progression will hopefully be something that everyone finds refreshing since I am attempting something that isn't exactly level based nor is it pure point buy either.
Let's see if I can break it down in a way similar to Jack and fuindordm
I. Setting and Themes
A. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and what its literal interpretation would mean to a setting.
B. Post war paranoia
C. Rediscovering wonder
D. Interwoven character stories
II. The Makings of a Hero
A. Attributes and Focus groups
B. Backgrounds
C. Character Quirks
D. Plot Points
E. Equipment
III. Magic
A. Alteration
B. Destruction
C. Creation
D. The Unknown
IV. Playing the Game
A. Group storytelling
B. Conflict resolution
C. Degrees of success
D. Personal plot advancement
E. Group plot advancement
V. Challenges
A. Adversaries and Rivals
B. Remnants from the war
C. Bestiary
D. Environmental hazards
E. Guilds, Unions, and Conspiracies
Quote:
Originally Posted by fuindordm
Jack is hinting at a different approach: the rules of magic can change over the course of play, preventing the players from ever knowing its rules fully. (I may, of course, be completely missing the mark--but that's to be expected.)
This is a theme I am trying to touch on with the my setting as well, but am still trying to get my head around possible mechanics for it. Setting wise the rules for magic were very clear until the past decade or so, but now many things are in a state of flux after the equivalent of a magical Hiroshima.
Last edited by RandomCitizenX; 3rd January 2009 at 05:45 AM..
Jack is hinting at a different approach: the rules of magic can change over the course of play, preventing the players from ever knowing its rules fully. (I may, of course, be completely missing the mark--but that's to be expected.)
You're not misinterpreting at all.
I'm saving the mechanical aspects for the work itself, and I wouldn't have described it exactly in that way, but what you said makes a great deal of sense.
Arcane magic in my project will have side-effects, and will, to a certain extent, be ungovernable, both as to effects, and as to how it is generated. It will also produce "pollution," for lack of a better term. Pollution that may or may not be dangerous, and that may or may not be easy to "clean-up."
As for Divine magic, God controls how it works, not his clerics (being his representatives). That is to say God doesn't just say, "here, take this power and do with it as you will." He acts as a regulator on divine magic (miracles). (I suspect divine magic would really be not magic at all, as it is normally construed, but would in actuality be miracles, meaning clerics and hermits and monks and paladins and just ordinary devout people - in my setting ordinary people can "create miracles" as well as clerics, but in different ways - would be not just conduits, or catalytic agents, or vessels of divine power, but would be intimately connected to the way in which the miracle functioned. He would not create the miracle, God would, but rather he would shape the expression of it, and perhaps act as a sort of focus for all of the things the miracle does that men cannot anticipate, but that God would use for his own ends.) And miracles can have funny, unforeseen, wide-ranging, and even completely unexpected and unintended consequences, as well as methods of working. That's my basic approach to magic, arcane and divine.
I like many things Ben is doing, and many things RCX mentioned.
Like these:
C. Rediscovering wonder
D. Interwoven character stories
II. The Makings of a Hero
A. Attributes and Focus groups
B. Backgrounds
C. Character Quirks
D. Plot Points
E. Equipment
III. Magic
A. Alteration
B. Destruction
C. Creation
D. The Unknown
C. Degrees of success
D. Personal plot advancement
E. Group plot advancement
V. Challenges
A. Adversaries and Rivals
By the way, for when I don't get back around to you guys or your comments for awhile, these are the reasons. Why Not?
Good luck and Godspeed everybody.
And Happy New Year.
I'll tentatively throw my hat into the ring. I go back to school Jan 19th, so free time may evaporate after that point...or it may not. I don't have a setting or anything yet, but at least now I'll be subscribed to this thread.
Here is me formally bowing out.
I haven't come up with anything at all.
My apologies
Ah, don't be intimidated! We're only 25% of the way through things.. I mean, I only have about ten pages of actual work finished!
If you don't have any big ideas, simply start with "If I were re-making D&D, this is what I'd do...". And keep adding on ideas that you get. Pretty soon, you'll have a game figured out. As for mechanics, just take ideas from a few different sources, try to blend them so that it all makes sense, and go from there.
Of course, if you don't feel confident about it, then maybe it's better to bow out now. Still, though, it sucks to see you go. I'm sure you can put together something good.
__________________ Current Campaign:The Shattered Isles Homebrew - Hammer (Minotaur Fighter 8), Kirra (Drow Rogue 8), Shedin (Dragonborn Paladin 8), Zahar (Half-Eladrin/Half Drow Bard 8), and Seahorse (Halfling Rogue 8). Currently the group is in the Feywild, trying to discover who is poisoning the drow.
Just how much leniency will there be in the scoring for these? I'm on page 26 and there's still the actual magic itself to cover, but I have a lot of material that could be expanded but will stretch my copy beyond 50 pages.
For example, my submission uses biomechanical suits to harness the surrounding radiation and process it to creating spells. The suits are mentioned and established, but I may not have enough room to get into the schematics of the suit and provide some sample suits. Is it enough just to mention the suits or will it cost me?
It's basically the typical submission problem: too many words, not enough space.
Just how much leniency will there be in the scoring for these? I'm on page 26 and there's still the actual magic itself to cover, but I have a lot of material that could be expanded but will stretch my copy beyond 50 pages.
For example, my submission uses biomechanical suits to harness the surrounding radiation and process it to creating spells. The suits are mentioned and established, but I may not have enough room to get into the schematics of the suit and provide some sample suits. Is it enough just to mention the suits or will it cost me?
It's basically the typical submission problem: too many words, not enough space.
It's not my contest EP, so I'm not establishing any rules of engagement. But I can give you a piece of advice regarding writing. Recently I wrote a paper for the Naval Postgraduate School detailing an idea about intelligence networks. I had only five pages, single spaced, 12 point type to encapsulate my ideas.
The paper was based upon a much longer and more formal theory paper on the same subject matter (but with a different emphasis, the emphasis of this paper was on giving suggestions to the next administration on Homeland Security matters through the CHDS, the emphasis of the original paper was on the general development of small-scale, functional private intelligence networks) but this paper required wholesale editing of my original ideas.
The point being that I could not submit my original paper, I had to change the emphasis, and had very limited space for presentation. Therefore I severely excised and redacted my theory paper, extracted the relevant and necessary parts, collated the information needed, and therefore arranged a paper which fit the requirements of the assignment. My original theory paper remains available for public publication in another format, and with a different emphasis, when I wish to do so (it is in private circulation now).
My advice, as a writer, is to meet the necessary parameters and rules of the contest, but write what you want. Develop the body of your work as you wish and then pare and edit as necessary to meet actual guidelines and restrictions, if you want to enter the contest as it is described. You will always have your more well developed opus for publication elsewhere with another party at another time.
Or you could do as I am doing. I will not be competing in the contest directly. That is my work will be available for voluntary review but I will not compete because I intend to exceed restrictions and more importantly because I intend to seek publication of my work later on, and many of the ideas I present will be proprietary and I wish to secure them.
So if you're using the contest as stimulus to develop a significant and involved work I'd suggest it doesn't much matter, but you can't expect to exceed guidelines and win the contest. You will be disqualified for exceeding guidelines.
If however you do want to compete and win the contest then the best thing is to develop the work you really want to write, then edit that down to produce a sub-work or smaller version of your real project that will meet guidelines. You'll always have your larger and more involved work to do with as you wish at another time.
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