Friday, February 26, 2010

A little light spam

I actually had comments on a few of my posts. Except it turned out that they where both spam. One was an advert for cheep pharmaceuticals and the other an aside about the 2012 nonsense, that even the Mayans don't actually believe in. Oh well, here's hoping for more relevent comments in the future.

NW RPG Update

I think I have my RPG rules where I want them. All I need now is a new name. I'd iike to keep the Initials though, if I can come up with something useful. One nice feature Is that character generation can be quick. I Sat down (admit idly with a basic concept in mind) and had the character sheet filled in, in well under 10 minutes. I made a Miu (A Cat boy) who as Cat people are want to be has rouge based skills, and is reasonably handy with a Dagger.

So I have this, and some screens and some Adventure ideas. I'm getting my Boys to decorate their own Screens and character sheets. All I have to do is set up stats for the actual monsters (I have basic templates) and I'll we'll have a short dungeon Crawl on the weekend. Then somthing a little longer latter on.

Monday, February 15, 2010

My Homebrew RPG

Someone has informed me that I was beaten to the punch with the Never World name. Well there goes a long held idea that has had its day I guess. I actually have cover art that I made a good 20 years ago for my Never Worlds (yes I had an S on it back then) rulebook. I didn't have any idea of what would go into it, just the Idea that I would write an RPG called Never Worlds one day.

Other than that I spent soem time coming up with a moderatly different setting and a set of customised races for my game. Only to have my Sons (aged 5 and 7) declare that they wanted to be a Dwarf and an Elf (or a Dragonian) respectively. So there goes my desire for an original setting.

At the moment I'm wrestling with getting a magic system that I'm happy with, and really haven't had much traction on the idea so far. I'm still wavering on how customizable spells should be, and casters will need to pay for using magic. I originally wrote customizable spells which do not have set duration or number of effects but now I'm thinking that this should be changed to a more riged set of effects so that spells have a fixed cost.
And maybe a generic rule about maintaining spells once they are cast.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Never World RPG 2nd instalment

Minor tweaking has continued so to speak. Mostly I've been trying to simplify things, make skills work more consistently with each other and remove as many modifieres and rolls as possible. At the same time i don't want to loose variability too much. In the process I found more inspiration here and there. Including some even better ideas about how wounds should work. These let me get rid of the large, and very clunky table of Damage classes, and the need to roll damage as a seperate activity.

Now I'm down to a system where the Attacker will make one roll, and the defender might make one roll, if they are wounded.

I'm still increasingly happy with the rules and have even managed to get a character sheet together which is simpler on the one hand and gets the important numbers down on the other. And all this while making space for a portrait as well. All together a good feeling.

Now I just have to work on some of the other areas that have special dozens of special modifers like reaction rolls, hiding and sneaking etx. The goal is to ahve a set of tables that easily fit on half an A4 page, while still being readable.

PS: This post seems to be getting a lot of spam comments in Japanese, so I've been forced to disable further comments on it.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Creating An RPG

My latest pet project has been creating my own set of RPG rules. It has been an interesting to say the least. And an interesting one as I have morphed the rules through phases of expantion and contraction. The contractions mostly triggered when I realized my Character sheet was getting too complicated, and had too many modifiers and derived values.

At it peak I simply had too many special skills that could mofify rolls made with other skills and the sheet had something like eight special purpose bonuses. I've now paired that back down to two. So you have bonuses for being very Strong and for being Very Dexterous. And if you use magic your main magic skill works that way as well.

At some point I decided to change the damage system from hit points to a wound based system (which isn't so obviously numeric). Still a few simulated battles have shown me that it is workable and a basic (not combat optimized) starting character has a good chance of beating two goblins in a straight out fight.

I've ended up with an essentially 2 Stat system Mind and Body as the main way of getting things done. Now all I have to do is some play testing and a lot of wording refinements. With so much flux I still have sections that refer to attributes and modifiers that no longer exist. Or give bonuses that are not relevant anymore. Or are simply not explained properly because I know what I mean.

So my plan of action is:
  1. Clean it up
  2. Develop a setting
  3. Develop a starting adventure
  4. Self publish
  5. ...
  6. immense Profit
  7. Buy whats left of White Wolf, Games Workshop & Wizards of The Coast, after my RPG's success has driven them to near bankruptcy, mu ha ha ha.

Nothing could be simpler really (well except for point 5 there, that might require some reality manipulation).

On the technical side I've used Monkey Pirate Tiddly Wiki. as my content creation engine. And it has been a very nice way to work, and rearrange and cross reference. I started with an ordinary TiddlyWiki but then I liked what MPTW added in terms of extra buttons and such. And it only took a little hacking of styles and macros to get a look and feel I was happy with.