On the first day...

Today marks the day that I begin turning notes into brilliance. I'm officially beginning my manuscript for my own RPG system. Beyond that announcement, there seems to be very little to talk about, so lets go into a couple of concepts I've been bouncing arround in my head for this game?

Feats:

Why feats? Why every three levels? What does the idea of limiting yourself to a certain few things every couple of levels round out the game? How does killing a bunch of kobolds teach you to get +3 to Profession: cook? Did you sautee the things and serve them to the party? How does disarming a couple of traps make you learn how to cast your spells without verbal components? Gaining feats with levels seems like a bad way to progress a character.

My ideal solution:

Why not have them gained through actual in game actions and progression? Your character wants a feat to be able to climb a wall with a +2 bonus? Well, why doesn't he use his climb skill more often? Perhaps even doing some strength training? Hitting kobolds wouldn't help much in itself right? Well that sword is mighty heavy and that must be able to tone his muscles and relate to climbing in some way, however sweet talking the bar wench would have absolutely nothing to do with climbing therefore the "XP" gained from that should have nothing to do with the other.

Individual progression:

What if there were different progression charts for spacific skills, feats, powers etcetera? If I use my strength to fight a monster or climb a wall, my strength would improve, but not neccisarily my charm.

Would this lead to alot of bookkeeping? Perhaps, but... how simple could one make a system like that? Mutants and Masterminds (www.greenronin.com) has a system of purchasing feats and stats, and powers and skills with XP, with levels bundled in packages of 15 xp. But my game isn't about Superheroes... or is it?

It's time for breaking down what I'm wanting to do and where I want to go with my RPG.

Currantly there is no working title. I'm trying to consider what would bring my concept to life in a name, and in order to do that I think I should analyze what my RPG concept is.

Why use WoTC's OGL?

There are several reasons to start with this as a framework. There is a nearly limitless and open source of terms, tables, and pre-existing information to draw upon freely with no liscencing fees associated to use it at all.

The end goal is not neccisarily to copy the system we already all know and love. D&D 3.5 already did it so well, and Pathfinder RPG already changed up the sytem and supports that style and type of gaming. On top of all of this, D&D is not what I'm trying to do, it is just a very good starting point to get across my concepts and ideas to the point where we may not need it any longer, or it doesn't even look like that system at all.

What am I trying to accomplish?

I want a fully player driven character design process with easy set up, and quick character generation. One with no static classes, everything you do means something, and has limitless potential to make any and all characters immaginable. I want to have "True" 0 level play be the norm. A character will go through thier own common life, and learn their role as the player plays the game. I want simple advancement, with a easy and flowing method of getting precicely where you want your character to be.

Every action means something. There's more to the world than combat. Every single experience your character has influences thier progression.

How will I go about this?

Again I'm starting with the D&D OGL as a starting place, I'm going to break down the system, take what I want, modify it to the rules system I have floating in my head, and share with all of you my concepts and ideas. This is just step one.

My first report: Breaking down statistics

The first question is do we need numbers instead of just having bonuses? Does the 12 in strength mean anything, and can it work just as well only showing the +1?

I really think that the bonuses in this game are way more important than the base numbers. To reflect this, I'm removing the "roll for stats" "point buy" and other such concepts from my OGL so far. Game statistics will be measured only in modifiers, keeping things simple, but still holding true to the known and practiced 1d20 + Modifier vs. Target number method of determining success.

Levels, good or bad?

I want every character to be able to play together and be effective, and for the game to always be fun. This isn't possible with the typical 20 level progression. Someone at Level 1 cannot compete along the same levels as a Level 20 character. The problem with doing this is making an arbitrary cap to how far things will go. To remedy my problem, I'm removing Levels entirely. Experience will still be gained but it will be used in very different ways that players may be used to. To reflect my design goal, I want experience to be used to purchase bonuses. The system I have in mind is more specialized than having a group of points you can spend any time to improve things, but I'm keeping the true method under wraps until I'm ready to open my game up to the public.

I think this is a good blog report for this week. Stay tuned for more, and if you like what you see, please donate and support the creation of this progect.

Thank you for reading

To the Presses!

I just finished a project I’ve been working on for two weeks. Its a meta-setting for Monsters and Other Childish Things based on Nightmares and the dream world. It offers rules variants, and 13 familiar but still Nightmarish monsters for characters to face.
Next week I’ll start my play-testing and soon I hope it will be ready for submission to Arc Dream, the creators of Monsters and Other Childish Things.

I have 2 other projects on the back burner that are both moving back in to my main focus now that that is done. The first of which is designing my own RPG system. I’ve got the basics down, now all I need to do is flesh it out, make sure things make sense to potential players, and write it in such a way that it’s entertaining to read. I have no doubt in my mind that it’s a good system, because I think it’s pretty genius stuff myself. But then again, that’s just me.

The second project is the Written form of E6. Basically, its the first 6 levels of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 presented as its own book. A lot of people seem to enjoy this game variant, and hopefully, after I get my ass in gear and get it formatted and the layout done, it will be something people like and might give me money for.

Way in the back of my project list is still the novel I started for last years NaNoWriMo, and didn’t finish on time. I’m eventually going to get back to that and finish it, hopefully making it a publishable piece of fiction.

My currant monetary situation is dire. Here’s hoping something positive happens soon!

Thank you for reading

So, I’ve officially started two projects. I’m working on designing my own RPG from the ground up. Its slowly building up into Alpha stage and will soon be play tested for the first time by a select group of close friends and players. My guess is that the first write up will be done by the end of January.

Also I have taken on the project of creating a E6 based RPG rulebook (which will be accompanied by its own website... or a page on my future website). That shouldn’t take too much time either, because it essentially is just a bunch of editing and layout.

My web design learning have come along quickly, I still haven’t quite memorized each and every code, but I know exactly what to reference and look up when I want to do something specific, and can re-write it to do what I need it to. My website will be coming up in the very near future, pending money issues.
My plans include maybe writing a couple free websites for people so I can increase my portfolio, and eventually get paid for doing this sort of thing professionally.

That’s my update for this week, thanks for reading it.

Well, here it is. My computer is back up and running. I no longer have to live my life off of my laptop and this is a good thing!
I’ve been working on web-design lately and am trying to build professional websites now. Hopefully by the time I know what I’m doing there’s still a market for that sort of thing.
I still don’t have a job or any kind of income and am growing further and further in debt as time goes on. Hell, I can’t even get a job at McDonalds… I have no idea what’s so bad about my resume that I can’t land a job. I even got it professionally looked at and modified and still got nothing.
I’ve been working on creating a new and exciting Role Playing system when my brain is on fire from learning web coding. It’s coming along fantastically! I have a character generation system, an advancement system, a weapon and armor system, but no money system or combat system yet. Nor do I have a good way to assess challenges and award XPs.
I’m hoping to be able to launch my RPG with my first website available for free, and then hold monthly ransoms for adventures geared toward it. My fingers are crossed that this takes off and makes me a little bit of money… hopefully enough to sustain myself and the website. I’m hoping the launch date will be early in the New Year, if I can get it up by Jan 1, all the better (but I doubt that will happen).
If none of this works though, I might have to hunt down a red paperclip and pray that people will trade me a house for it.

I realize I haven’t written here for a long time, but I can explain. I’ve been struggling... alot. I haven’t been employed all year thus far, I haven’t been able to get on social assistance either. Hell, I even went out begging for change for 8 hours one day, and came home empty handed, hungry, and cold.

Which brings me to my next point: Having no money means I can’t pay rent, bills or buy food. I have a meagre amount of soups and rice I bought with the slim remainder of my credit card (which is now maxed out) and currently have no way of paying off my debt whatsoever.

Asking welfare for assistance was the last thing I ever wanted to do in my life. I remember being a “welfare kid” when I was young and how hard life was for everyone. I was also on welfare when I first moved to Ontario. I remember being able to pay rent with enough money left over for 1 box of rice, 2 packages of hot-dogs, 2 loafs of bread, 1 small bottle of ketchup, 1 bottle of soy sauce, and 1 bottle of tobacco sauce. That was it. I did live off of that for 6 months while going back to school to gain my grade 12, and let me tell you it was pure hell.

UPDATE: It turns out that I don’t qualify for welfare, so I’m stuck with no money, no job, no food, and a general in-ability to get around the city.

Anyway, that’s the general reason why I haven’t updated my blog as of late. I will try to keep it going, even if I’m not adding to it from a nice comfy warm home.

Computer problems

I realize it's been a while since my last post, but I'm restricted to my laptop and whatever internet I can find floating in the air at the moment. My PC needs a new power core and I really can't afford one at the moment.

So... whats new in the world of Lord Xtheth?
I picked up Halo Reach this past week. Now, the last halo game I played was the first Halo and I enjoyed it alot, but this one... Aside from the graphics upgrade it really felt like the exact same thing. I mean sure it's got a good plot, and some nice weapons but a few things strike me as odd.
Reach is supposed to happen before the first Halo game right? So why do these soldiers have access to guns that didn't exist in that game? Master Cheif was supposed to be some kind of cyborg-robot-supersoldier thing right? So why do these normal human guys have the same strength, or in some cases more than M.C.? These normal guys can kick tanks over when they flip, and they can tear guns off of turret mounts, this doesn't quite seem "human" to me.
Respawning also pisses me off. If Reach was supposed to be the firt planet destroyed by the Covenant and everyone on the planet is supposed to die, why do you respawn? I know from a game standpoint, its to allow you to play the game with minimal frustration, but seriously, why wouldn't all the guys who died on reach just respawn? Stupid suspention of disbelief breaking game logic!

I'm getting excited about Fable 3. I loved the first 2 Fable games, and I'm looking forward to anything new the 3rd title will bring to my platform.

The D&D essentials line just started. The books themselves are alot smaller than I expected. I thought they were going to be produced in the standard format, but WoTC decided to make them "pocket sized". The new character options presented in the books seem pretty good, and none of it is game breaking. I'm glad WoTC got away from the "Power creep" that older editions suffered from.
The essentials line does however update the classes and races to hapily co-exist with the new race and class format that they just recently learned to do (and people like). Humans STILL feel like they deserve a 2nd +2 to a stat though. I'd give them +2 to any stat, and +2 to Int, or Wis. as their options myself.

I've been taking care of kittens for the past 2 weeks. The mother gave birt to 5 kittens on September 12. One of the kittens was still-born, and 2 died over the next 2 days. I've been taking care of the other 2 personally since then. It's not hard work really, it just eats at my sleep. The kittens like to wake up crying in the middle of the night, only to fall asleep again by the time I finish mixing their milk replacement formula.
Both kittens love the formula, and they cry to have more forever every time I feed them. They eat it until their full, puke, then they want some more! I've learned how much to give them so they won't puke now... so no more of that!

I think thats all I have to share this post.
Here's hoping that I can get back to my regular updates!