Let the sexy begin!

On July 14th I was in a traffic collision that has rendered me incapable of continuing my labour work. My income has pretty much come to a halt completely and it is time for a change.
The RPG is still in the works, being a one man project is making it take a little more time that I want it to, but I assure you all it is still a viable thing that will exist at some point in one form or another.

For now, I'm working on my writing. I've started freelancing, writing for call outs, and on the side making a novel of my own. I plan on using kickstarter to get this going, and doing as much work as I can to keep myself alive, but beyond that, I'm focusing on my writing. Hopefully with a little luck, a few friends, and some nice people in the community can help me turn this into a carreer.

I've been keeping a decent 2000 word a day writing count. This is a good start I think. My focus has been on erotic fiction... Hence; Let the sexy begin!

Progress report

I've been hard at work writing and self-editing. I have a couple chapters down, a system in place and am almost ready to playtest. It's time for another update and thought experiment.

An absolute 0 starting point was among my original ideas of starting games off with my RPG. Where a player can grab a blank sheet, and jump right into a game. The other thought was that even if there are more experienced characters in a group, they can still contribute.

In a conversation with a friend over my concepts it came into light that an absolute 0 starting point might leave players, new and veteran wondering where to go, what goals to reach, and what to do. It's came into light in that conversation that some kind of starting point and goals for characters to strive for as part of character generation.

How fast should this go? How in depth? I've gone through many character background steps for other games in the past, and found myself bored and uninterested. At the same time, I've seen other background generators that make alot of sense and give good bonuses and penalties that could lead to fairly decent plot lines.

Race should be part of this. This is all good and well when it comes to fantasy settings. This might be a little bit more touchy if the game is made for a more modern setting without monsters and strange creatures. Part of this can be alleviated by a modular type of system where the base game glosses over the idea of fantasy and modern and just gives a base "Background" section where the ideas of racial bonuses and penalties can be broken down into generic terms and conditions.

This can lead to both positive and negative fan reaction though. If it's too generic it could lead to a bland game with no direction.

Designing a game from the ground up has made me consider my normal game running techniques in a new light. Forcing myself to think as a real designer instead of a Dungeon Master has helped me refocus and come at designing adventures in new and exciting ways. I've been finding myself dissect monsters, rules and what might have gone behind the things that made it into games I run.

On a side note, I just picked up the Marvel Heroic Roleplay from www.rpgnow.com. It is an extremely well put together game, and fans of the Smallville RPG will find familiar elements, brought up to a more comic-book level. I highly recommend it for any heroic roleplaying experience! Bits and pieces of that games ideas might leave their mark in mine. It's definitely worth a look at.

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.