How many of you have tried designing youor own game?

[The Grackle]

I made my own RPG, or at least half of it, a few years ago and had my group playtest it. They all really liked it, but it was a huge headache to design adventures and be fudging w/the rules at the same time. Also I could tell they weren't really trying to break the system to see if it was balanced or not. Damn cooperative players. My roommate still bugs me about when we're going to play it again. :\

It uses a normal deck of playing cards (or three)

Each Player has a hand of X number of cards and can play Y cards in one turn. X&Y determined by character class and such.

A stat + a skill/ability= 1card.
On an action you can play 1 card from yr hand or drawn blind off the top of the deck.
Put these together and compare to the opponents cards.
Highest total wins.
A pair beats unmatched cards, highest pair wins.

There are special maneuvers (like feats basically) that one learns w/an ability. These are triggered by playing a face card or ace when you use that ability.

There's a magic system, but it's real wonky. Each spell requires a certain card to activate it. There was a whole elemental alignment with each suit.

It worked alright, but it had a VERY, Very different feel from a dice game. It gave the players way more control over when and where the good hits landed, but they also had to plan on saving some cards and plays for defense against incoming attacks. That's the part they liked- still random draws, but control over when they're played.

In the end, it got too complex to be usable, but I still think the base mechanic could work. Maybe when I retire I'll work on it again...


...or the next time I'm unemployed.

 

[mythusmage]

In my case it was in the late 70s. It was a d20 system, but not d20 as we now know it. As a matter of fact, other than die type the two have nothing in common.

I no longer have the manuscript, so I can't describe how it played. I do remember that it was a fantasy game set in the Napoleonic Age. This a number of years before the publication of Flintloque. I was informed by my players that it was, in their opinion, better than D&D.

 

[Azul]

I've lost count of how many different game systems I've designed over the past two decades. Some were good and some weren't so good. I've only had one game system published, which is the Silhouette game system used by Dream Pod 9 (designed during my brief stint in the gaming industry during the 1990s).

http://www.dp9.com/

I did the bulk of the system design for the original version of that game system, although several other people contributed. I also was one (of several) of the writers on the Heavy Gear game at that time, although my initial focus was on the game mechanics. That was back in 1994 and early 1995 mostly. I did a little freelance stuff with them for the next year. After I went back to school, I pretty much stopped focussing on game design.

The rules design process involved input from many people over time, each with different needs and desires, so the end product was the result was not necessarily always exactly how I would have preferred to do things. So Silhouette isn't my personal favourite out of the several game systems I have designed but all that really means is that it isn't custom tailored to my personal ideosyncracies... and that's probably a good thing. My personal favorite includes a lot of assumptions about a gaming group's playing style and I doubt it would stand up to robust playtesting. It was never meant to appeal to a wide audience, whereas Silhouette was.

That additional input is probably why the game seems to appeal to a fair number of gamers. It's not d20's level of success of course, but it's still around a decade later and from what I know sales are still decent. The system is robust, simple and fast-moving thanks to me and the other designers constantly chanting the KISS mantra (i.e. keep it simple stupid).

Today, the Silhouette system is up to its 3rd edition and used in five games that I know. I guess that's a sign that I did an OK job in my core rule design. I haven't really looked at the 3rd edition rules at all but I've heard that they've improved things thanks to lessons learned from years of people using it. That's cool.

I haven't even spoken to anyone at Dream Pod 9 in almost 3 years now (and the last time was just chatting with my former editor at a buddy's halloween party). I live in a different city and I'm a married civil servant who enjoys a steady salary and benefits. Game design is fun but it isn't the steadiest work or the most reliable source of income - that's just the nature of the freelancing in the gaming industry. It was fun when I was in my early 20s. Now, in my early 30s, I'm happy to have a steady job and be able to afford stuff like a house and car.

As a younger gamer in my teens, I used to think it would be so cool to get a game published. It was a geeky sort of dream, but hey, I'm sure many of you have shared it. Then I had a few minor contributions in some FASA material and got to see my name in the credits. That was pretty cool. Then I was in the right place at the right time and got paired up with an ambitious new gaming company and I got lucky - my childhood dream came true.

The funny thing about dreams is that they are often better than reality. Dream Pod 9 were great guys and it was a great experience, but reality could never quite live up to the childhood dreams. I always imagined that I'd make the "best game ever" and just making a good or very good game didn't feel like it was enough. My perfectionist streak came out and gaming became work to me. I stopped enjoying the hobby.

Strange as this may sound, leaving the gaming industry was the best thing to happen to my personal hobby. While I wrote gaming material for my personal pleasure, it was a lot of fun. When I started doing it professionally, gaming ceased being fun and rapidly became "work" in my mind. I couldn't read a game - any game - without analysing it as rival product, looking for strengths and weaknesses. That's a quirk of my personality - I have a perfectionist streak that game design brings out - I'm sure plenty of designers don't get bogged down in that sort of overanalyzing.

After I stopped working on gaming stuff, it took me two years to get out of those habits and relearn to just enjoy gaming as a hobby. I'm still a mechanics junkie but I like to think I can appreciate how hard it is to make a game that pleases everyone.

Despite that sort of weird feeling of "my baby is all grown up now" that you get from seeing something you created taking on a life of its own, I now think back fondly to the experience and I still get a grin on my face when I see a copy of Heavy Gear, Gear Krieg or Jovian Chronicles in a gaming store. No, I didn't write any of the current versions (although some of my prose might have survived the various editions - I haven't checked) but I know that my ideas formed an integral part of how those games are played.

The coolest feeling is when I'm reading on a gaming forum and out of the blue someone compliments the game mechanics I wrote, obviously being a fan of them. Knowing something I did 10 years ago is still appreciated and enjoyed today feels pretty good.