First RPG you designed?

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Back in the mid 90s, I tried to make a hybrid of AD&D 2nd Edition, Storyteller, and Palladium called QX RPG (Q was my first initial at the time and X represented the tenth campaign set in my homebrew setting of the time...I'd actually only run (ish) 5 campaigns up to that point, but had outlined the rest).

I made another go of hybriding D&D and World of Darkness in the late 90s, this time calling it Darkness & Dragons as it was mostly the Storyteller system adapted to include D&D classes (organized in a manner similar to Vampire clans or Werewolf tribes). I also threw in Trinity's psionics system.

 

[steenan]

I remember the first game I created, together with my brother and our friends. Our RPG experience was then limited to Call of Cthulhu and WHRP 1st edition. We decided to create a fantasy game, more heroic in style and with more mechanical options. You can imagine how it went.
I remember that this game was a carcerous monstrosity that kept growing and increasing in complexity, at some point requiring 4-page character sheet and several 3-digit arithmetic operations for each test. We played a short campaign with it, but then abandoned the concept and never returned to it.


I made many approaches to game design later, some with better, some with worse results. None was original enough to be worth of publication, but several are quite playable (including one setting that went through 3 completely different mechanical systems and two campaigns before we got bored with it).


Nowadays, I prefer homebrewing settings and using systems I know and like - usually Fate Core and variations of Cortex+.

 

[Nytmare]

I'm not really sure what my first one was. Prior to college, everything was probably pretty much by the book D&D, Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, or Rifts. I don't remember any of us even really playing with any house rules.

When I got to college, I probably threw my hat in with about a dozen different people who were all working on their own systems. I don't remember much about the mechanics for any of them other than that they were all insufferably bulky attempts at trying to describe the world with half understood real life mathematics in an attempt to have a role playing game that was "more realistic."

Within a couple of years, I had thoroughly burned myself out on that philosophy of gaming, as well as trying to run a solid weekly campaign with a bunch of flakey college students. I started putting together (albiet usually very railroady) stand alone games, each with their own system. The eventual idea was to publish them in a book entitled One Night Stands, but the idea eventually withered and died.

I think that the first game I made was a two part, sort of Twilight Zoney, science fiction, prison break story. In broad, and nowhere near as serious and gritty strokes as the game itself was presented, the world is embroiled in a war between the people who like technology (who are all mostly cyborgs), and the no good hippy psychics who are trying to ruin everything. The first half of the game, the players play a bunch of cyborg prison guards trying to track down and capture a bunch of escaped psychic POWs. After the players capture them, the tables are turned, and the players are informed that they're now playing the part of the prisoners, who just woke up from a prophetic dream where they are now able to foresee the coming events. The mechanics of the game centered around a deck of cards I made up that was basically a normal playing deck with Zener Card symbols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards) instead of the normal four suits.

Each character had a different ability that interacted with the cards in some way. If I remember correctly, the cyborgs abilities were all mechanical benefits tied to having a particular symbol show up when they were flipping cards. For the psychics, the abilities all involved predicting what the symbol of the next card was going to be. The deck was also never shuffled, and although there were abilities that would slightly affect the way that cards were discarded, the players could effectively count cards and try to memorize the order. I'm trying to remember the exact mechanics, but it's been almost 15 years. I think that I had a basic list of DCs, and that you'd flip over two (maybe three) cards to see if you beat the number. Combat, or any other head to head challenge was basically a game of War, but with two cards instead of one.

 

[Dethklok]

I remember that this game was a carcerous monstrosity that kept growing and increasing in complexity, at some point requiring 4-page character sheet and several 3-digit arithmetic operations for each test.

Ah... so largely indistinguishable from D&D, then.

the world is embroiled in a war between the people who like technology (who are all mostly cyborgs), and the no good hippy psychics who are trying to ruin everything.

Hey I did that too! Only the cyborgs were psychic, and the hippies were outlaw bikers!

The mechanics of the game centered around a deck of cards I made up that was basically a normal playing deck with Zener Card symbols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards) instead of the normal four suits.

Awesome. I love old school parapsychology.

 

[amorgan_28]

My first design job is the one I am working on now.

Lore-wise, it is a high-technology sci-fi world, but instead of scientific discovery driving forward technological advance, the use of magic and the desire to emulate the wizards of old is what drives it.

System wise - I haven't designed as much as adapted - I have taken the Qin system (roll 2d10 and subtract the results) and stripped it right back, then built on top of it (there was a lot of what I felt to be superfluous stuff there), for example the chi system has been replaced by Luck points - you can expend a Luck point to roll 3d10 instead of 2d10 and choose which you wish to use. This is governed by a Luck stat eg. Luck 2 gives you 2 Luck points per session to use