How many of you have made your own RPG?

[lotuseater]

i remember when i was a kid and really into ad&d, me and my buddies would always be making not only our own campaigns, but entire gaming systems. off the top of my head, i can remember at least 5 different games we started making at one time or another. and as i recall, i don't think of them never made it past the planning stage. we'd lose interest after a few weeks, and go back to d&d. but our past failures never seemed to stop us from dreaming up another new game a few months later.

i can remember we made one outer space game. we made one super hero game. we made a couple standard fantasy games. and most interesting of all, we made one 'real world' game, right after we saw the movie red dawn and decided we wanted a way to role play that one ourselves.

anyway, i was curious if this kind of experience was unique to just us, or if it's fairly typical of the community.

 

[pawsplay]

When I was 14, I ran a several week long campaign using my own game design. Later, I wrote a fantasy spinoff from D6 but couldn't get the magic system to work like I wanted.

 

[Angellis_ater]

Yes I have, multiple ones actually. But then I'm an RPG Publisher now and one of these days I might have to release some of it!

 

[Maggan]

anyway, i was curious if this kind of experience was unique to just us, or if it's fairly typical of the community.

Roleplayers are tinkerers. They create stuff all the time, all over the place.

Paradoxically, they also demand reams of pregenerated stuff.

But, yeah, I've created about half a dozen simple systems that we played on and off. A police rpg, a sci-fi rpg, some sort of cyberpunk rip-off, some hi-tech thriller thing ... and a bunch of us created a WH40k rip-off, stuff like that.

/M

 

[weem]

I have done some in the past, and have one in the works now (though, "in the works" is probably not the best way to describe it).

I find the process of creating them is the most enjoyable aspect, regardless of the outcome

 

[drothgery]

I've started some reskins and d20 spinoffs. Never got them to an even remotely playtestable state, though.

 

[Mark Hope]

Yes. My first rpg was one I wrote myself. I had heard about D&D and knew a few of its conventions, and so with my wholly inadequate knowledge decided that I would make my own version. It was called Castle. It had two stats (Strength and Power), a sprawling map that players (ie. my sister, parents and neighbour) moved around taking turns like a boardgame, and any combat was resolved by rolling 5d6 (all the dice I owned!) and subtracting the result from Power. I can't remember what Strength was for. The object of the game (yes, you could win at Castle!) was to find the Castle Lord. The Castle Lord was the GM, but also existed in-game as the overlord of this huge castle in which the game was set. If you found him, you won and became Castle Lord and could then run the next game.

Castle kept us happily amused for several months until I was able to acquire a copy of the magenta-box Basic D&D. We still played it from time to time thereafter, too. In fact, my sister said that she always preferred it to D&D, which demonstrates her surpassing taste and discerning insight.

Later on I also fiddled around with an SF game called Hunter. It was basically Basic D&D with SF rules and setting. Only played a couple of sessions of that. Oh, and many years later myself and a couple of friends did the groundwork for a diceless rpg set entirely in dreams, with plans to publish and market it. Thankfully we thought better of it.

 

[the Jester]

Oh hell yeah, many times.

Starting with "aags and adventures," which was a FRPG set in a post-apoc setting- VERY post-apoc, like a thousand years later. Then Crossroads, in which you could play, literally, anything. There were many more over time; most recently, I've been working on a "D&D Jazz Edition" that takes the best pieces from each edition of dnd.

 

[TheNovaLord]

yep, loads


maybe 20 over 25 years

in last year have gmed 3 of them, even at cons

victorianquest, blacknova & blackpowder tales......

 

[Raven Crowking]

Please see the link in my .sig.