As an ever-continuing mini series of blog posts, I decided to challenge myself to create a fully playable TTRPG game between the beginning of April and the end of May this year. With five weeks of my self imposed challenge complete, I’ve decided to make another micro update.
Why The Challenge?
The main reason I decided to do this is that I have a hard time with prototypes. I’m not entirely sure why, but without there being a due date for a deliverable that I need to complete, it keeps growing, growing, and evolving slowly. Eventually I get burned out of the project without being able to realize it. That’s why I gave myself two months. If I could get my prototype done with my “must haves,” then that should be solid enough for me to set reasonable goals on to expand.
Whats the Game?
To describe it mildly, it’s somewhere between grim sci-fi in the next couple hundred of years mixed with the over abundance of violence that a 90’s anime would have, all bolted onto the chassis of a NSR/OSR-inspired game. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
What’s Done So Far?
As of this week, I’ve completed all the basic systems I wanted; Character creation, combat, hacking, and exploration. Everything’s in a functional state, but not in a finely tuned state just yet. That’s really what I’m trying to focus on for these last few weeks. In fact as of right now, one of my goals for this week is to have myself run a simple session. See what feels right, how everything clicks together, and what’s actually fun and what isn’t.
After I get myself playtesting it a bit solo, I’m trying to get a handful of people I know to test out character creation. I’m really aiming to find what’s fun, what’s annoying, and if they can create characters that are interesting to them and they would want to play. If players can’t express themselves how they feel they should within the setting I’ve built, then that’s a fundamental flaw that’s going to need quite a bit of work to get into a good spot.
How Deadly Is It?
Well I’m glad you’ve asked! I’ve tried to get back to the roots of the OSR movement with the philosophy that combat is war, not sport. In a setting where bullets fly, it really doesn’t make sense to be trading blows back and forth. Combat needs to be snappy. The fewer rounds it is, then the better. I’ve also tried to get away from traditional dungeon design at the same time. I’m aiming to keep the game to tense, quick encounters instead of a slog of attrition. We’ll see how that goes, however.
What’s Your Goal?
Once I’m done with this challenge, I’m going to be viewing it as the original first draft. The goal is playable but with the need of refinement. That’s what the second half of this year is going to be; Making small tweaks, running sessions, gathering feedback, and seeing how people are generally receptive to it. If things keep progressing well, I’d love to get the “zero edition” of the game as I am calling it out the door by the end of next year. With that I could hopefully get more eyes on it running the game so I can gather additional feedback as I work towards the first edition. It’s all very far away now, but I figure it’s better to have a general idea of what my plans are so that I can keep myself on pace for getting it done.
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