Wik

So, the design contest is over. My game has been "finished", and it's getting some looks. I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. I've also been all primed up and ready to write some more stuff.... which is great.

Of course, I've only got two weeks or so to do this, because I start my Paramedic-Level first aid at the end of the month - and once that starts, writing will be on the backburner for a while. Which is too bad.

This contest gave me so much confidence in getting things done. I'm finding myself wanting to write something, and getting it published. Just some small PDF, you know? I wonder how many 4e publishers there are out there - I have an idea, and I'm working on it as we speak... er... type.

In other news, I've decided that I should stick to RPGs. I just lost around 50 bucks on internet poker in the last two hours, and I lost another 25 last night. I was up around 30 bucks before I started this slide, so I'm really only down 45 bucks. But, considering how a bad month for RPG purchases is around 45-50 bucks, that really puts things in perspective.

Also, here's an idea for all you budding designers out there - Unearthed Arcana. For fourth edition. I know people have mentioned something like it, but trust me. If one were to write a good one, it'd sell like hot cakes. Actually, scratch that. I don't even know what "hot cakes" really are, so they can't be selling that well.

It'd sell like a good celebrity sex tape.

throw in some rules that "fix" rituals, healing surges, skills, craft skills, and all those other "faults" that people gripe about. Try to find a system that would house-rule out powers. And just have a field day with all the other minor tweaks. It'd be a great book.

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!)

I love NHL 09. Especially the "Be a Pro" mode, where I control just one player on the ice. I get to improve this character as I wish, and worry about his placement on the team.

And I have to play position! It's nice to actually worry about being in a team, in a game that's all about team play! For example, in 08 (When I controlled the whole team), if I had the puck, I'd always do the same thing - try to set up a one-timer, or push the puck back to the blue line and hope a defenceman got a lucky shot. In Be a Pro, I have to really watch where my teammates are. If someone else has the puck, I slide behind the net to catch any missed shots, or I move near the goalie in the slot to catch a rebound.

I haven't played it on Live!, because I don't have Live (yet), but I think you could make a damned good game based around Be A Pro. Imagine a game where every player on the ice was played by a person. Imagine if the game had two lines only, so that you would spend roughly half the game off the ice, watching your teammates play. I don't know if this sort of game would appeal to everyone, but I know it gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

So, what does this have to do with gaming? Well, not a whole lot, really. Except it has me thinking about character roles in an RPG. In NHL 09, you play a position (Forward, Defence, Goalie...) as well as a role pertinent to that position (so, if I'm a forward, I could be a power forward, a grinder, a playmaker). Each role has different skills, and a different approach to that position - I play a playmaker left winger, meaning my goal is to pass the puck to teammates, and keep the puck in our possession. A guy I work with is a power forward right winger... his goal is to score goals, and to stay close to the net.

The point here is that each position has a use in the game, but also that each position has many different "flavours" of play. Two right-wingers can play the game in entirely different ways, and have entirely different goals.

This really jives well with 4e's "roles" system. Roles in 4e are much like position in NHL 09 - you're a striker (Forward), while I'm a defender (Goalie). Classes are more like the approaches available to different positions - you could be a playmaker foward (a sort of striker with leader-like abilities), while I could be a butterfly-style goalie (a focused defender, like the fighter).

One thing I love about hockey is the role of assists. Basically, in hockey, helping someone get a goal is just as important as getting the goal, in terms of "Player points". If you get three goals, and I get three assists, we both have three points - you're not really considered a better player than me. In fact, even if you don't get any assists at all, you can still be seen as a good player in terms of the +/- ranking (every time your team scores a goal and you're on the ice, you get a +1; every time your team has a goal scored against it and you're on the ice, you get a -1. If you have a high rating, it shows that you're really helping your team get goals, and stopping goals from being scored against you).

I love that the game encourages team play, as opposed to individual glory hogs. The best hockey players are those that work well in a team, as opposed to the big roles in other sports (the Quarterback in Football springs to mind).

But I'm rambling now. I think I have hockey on the brain today.

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.

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.