Yeah, I'm just putting down ideas - I want to compete, so I don't wanna hammer in any hard and fast rules. Hopefully, that'll be the job for the judge to figure out.
A few comments:
Lord Xteth said:
We still don't have a judge, or themes.
This is your pet project, YOU should be the judge and set the theme!
Yeah, but then I've got nothing to do. REally, the job of "judging" is just to set a few guidelines and then screen the entries (and the screening should be pretty easy - count the pages and make sure there's at least a superficial following of the theme).
jdrakeh said:
I'm in, but only if you drop that namby three month work time thing. I mean, three months is great, but people do the 24-Hour competition every year and come up with killer stuff, so it's not necessary. I say the work window should be one month max.
Well, as I've said, it's not really my place to drop anything - that's the as-yet-unnamed judge's job. Or we could vote on it. I could probably do one month, and I'm sure a lot of people can, too, but I don't want to force out the people who can't commit to a big project like that. Three months means we can have more people participate. It also means we can share thoughts and progress reports, and maybe even playtest our work before releasing it.
Maybe six weeks would be a fair compromise?
(In any case, I'm thinking this shouldn't start until sometime in January, when things calm down a bit).
Lord Xteth said:
Heres some more rules questions:
Can we still use the SRD? I know you don't want "Refer to the SRD for rules" but if we include things like the 6 main stats, the bonuses for said stats, the concept of feats and such would that be alright?
What if we accidently "create" an existing yet obscure (or less obscure) game? (I've read so many RPG books, I'm not sure if any idea I have going through my head is orriginal or not)
Is blatant copywright infringement out of the question ("This is my '300, the RPG!!!' ")
I may have more later, but I'm tired and can't think of anything but bikini babes and banana cream pie.
Well, I'm thinking your rules have to be self-contained. So, if you can take the SRD and boil it down to 30 pages or so (and still have room for a setting!), more power to you. Really, though, I dunno if that'd work so well. Also, since the point is to create something new, and maybe think outside the box a bit, I think the SRD could be a crutch.
As for the "Accidental Creation" bit, that's fine. There are a lot of RPGs out there, and most of them have borrowed from other RPGs in one way or another. For example, a few ideas I've got running in my head use the Shadowrun d6 mechanic as a starting place; another set of ideas is based around West End Games' d6 "multi-action" rule.
Borrowing is fine, so long as it's not a wholesale porting of the game rules.
As for copyright infringement - yeah, that should be a 'no'. If you make "Fallout: The RPG", that's kind of lame. Now, if you make a game
inspired by Fallout (or 300, or whatever), more power to you.
roadkill said:
I've already designed a system I use for myself. It's written in MS Word and has a 72 page count (which is longer than your suggested 30-40 pages).
So my question is can we submit something we've already writtten, or does it need to be something newly designed for the contest.
See, the reason I suggest we have a theme is to get people creating expressely for this contest. I too have half-finished RPGs sitting on my hard drive, and I won't be using them for this.
That being said, you could easily take out your rules, tweak them to fit one of the themes, and boil them down to 30 or 40 pages. That'd be fine.
pawsplay said:
I think three months is about right for a well-conceived but not intensively designed pamphlet style game. I for one do not have a week or a month until well into January I could just throw at something like this, but with a wider time frame, it would be fun. This is something different than a 24 hour game design or something... my impression is something more old school, more of putting a framework on paper that someone could run a campaign in for years.
Yeah, that's my feeling, too. I first got this idea when I was thinking about the Omega World d20 mini-game found in Polyhedron, and how I've used those 30-something pages to run mini-campaigns. A lot of these tiny games are packed full of ideas, and they're open enough to interpretation that campaigns can grow out of them.
Personally, I'm hoping to make a game that plays differently than most RPGs - something that'd make a for a fun one-shot or a few months' worth of play. I really want to do something a bit off the beaten trail, and I'm hoping some other entries do the same.
But, if a judge doesn't step forward and narrow down things like time limits and themes, I think we should probably put things to a vote.
****
Now, a few of you people who can't get involved (and don't worry, I totally feel your pain)... would you be willing to step in as a judge? Pretty much, your only job at first would be to:
1) Decide the design themes: Pick about three or so. One should be a design theme ("the main mechanic must use a specific die", "the game must use a deck of cards", etc...) while another could be setting-based ("Dark Future" or "Must involve Cthulu")... and the third could be something really weird ("Make a game that could be played during a roadtrip", or "the game has to involve a player-vs-player element"). Keep at least one theme broad in scope, so we can get a variety of entries. Entries only need to follow one theme - they don't get 'bonus points' for following all three.
2) Decide upon a time frame: We're looking at anywhere between one month to three months. Tell us when the game ends (I imagine it starts the second the judge announces the details!).
3) Decide upon a page limit: How many pages? 30? 35? 40? Or, optionally, the judge could announce a word count limit, which would allow participants to include as much art as they'd like. Personally, I think that makes things harder to count, so I think a page limit would be the best track. If you want to add a lot of art, you're going to be losing out on content.
And that'd be job of the judge. So, is anyone interested?
Why not give people the time to create something playable?
