Stop Complaining and Make Your Own Game

[machineiv]

By that logic, there's no reason to ever write a book, or sell one.

As a hobby, you say there's no reason? It's a completely different experience. It's not a video game. They're apples and oranges, for the most part. If you like RPGs and you don't like video games, why play video games?

If nobody plays them, why does Hasbro, one of the biggest toy companies in the world, bank on one?

Do note that I'm not trying to be condescending. Yes, RPGs are a niche market. But I happen to make my income on them, and I know a number of people that do. I think you might be looking at it as an outsider that doesn't play, so you don't see how big they are. Gen Con Indy, a major gaming con, pulls in about 30,000 people from all over the world every year.

 

[Woem]

1/ Use a Mini RPG. Mini RPGs take up a couple of pages of rules at the very most and they include a really basic set of generic rules about combat resolution for instance. A really good (and free) example is Matt Romaro's Zombies!!! Mini-RPG [http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=fbad08742af1bd7561d4646c62b381cb0992ecf2af9b6edf5be6ba49b5870170].

There's a lot of good examples out there. In fact, I've got one called Terminus Est that's currently in layout. It'll be up as a Creative Commons thing soon, so people can download it at their leisure.

Is there a preview available already somewhere? I'd love to see it. And it's great to see that you'll put it out under the Creative Commons license!

Yeah, this definitely warrants a second article to address mechanics. I completely agree.

I'm looking forward to it already. Finding the right system for the right player group and campaign setting gives me headaches sometimes, and having the tools to create my own ruleset would be awesome.

 

[machineiv]

I'm looking forward to it already. Finding the right system for the right player group and campaign setting gives me headaches sometimes, and having the tools to create my own ruleset would be awesome.

Terminus Est: You can download my first draft here, http://machineageproductions.com/?p=139

It's in layout right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take, since it's all a volunteer effort on that part. But you can actually read about the whole process here, http://machineageproductions.com/?cat=4 since I blogged throughout the whole thing and let blog comments assist in my design choices.

 

[machineiv]

When I was a about 13 I made a crappy table top with my friends and younger brother, It WAS TERRIBLE!
it was set medieval and called islands and the idea was that the earth was blown into tiny pieces of land in space, and you go through them defeating each islands boss, you could be either fighter, teleporter (mainly used to switch islands and heal), Sorcerer, or archer. the problem was i hadent played any real table top games before, only mmorpg's so we only had 3 attributes and none of them where roleplay related and there was BARELY and role playing involved, the item system was crap, and it was SOOOOOO GODDAM FULL OF GRIND, o and i referenced it of from candy land so its movable spaces were as such.

tl;dr My intelligence was not 8 or higher.

Weird though, when I first started gaming, I started playing 1st edition D&D. It's the furthest thing from a modern concept of an RPG possible. But we had some amazing roleplay moments, they progressed naturally out of it.

You should design something new. It's fun to get your creative chops going.

 

[Woem]

I'm looking forward to it already. Finding the right system for the right player group and campaign setting gives me headaches sometimes, and having the tools to create my own ruleset would be awesome.

Terminus Est: You can download my first draft here, http://machineageproductions.com/?p=139

It's in layout right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take, since it's all a volunteer effort on that part. But you can actually read about the whole process here, http://machineageproductions.com/?cat=4 since I blogged throughout the whole thing and let blog comments assist in my design choices.

I read through the rules and the process blog posts and I can't believe you achieved this in under 6 weeks! The whole concept of "rule of 4" is worked out perfectly, the cavaliers and nightmares and the 4 different settings/periods add an immense amount of flavor.

I also like how I could use a light and more generic version of the rules to move away from the post-apocalyptic setting and run it in any setting. In this case Divinity would represent the use of magic, psionics, clerical healing, a paladin's smite, super hero powers, ... I do think the use of dice pools would make for a faster game, for instance by rolling an amount of d4 equal to the number of points in the trait.

 

[machineiv]

I'm looking forward to it already. Finding the right system for the right player group and campaign setting gives me headaches sometimes, and having the tools to create my own ruleset would be awesome.

Terminus Est: You can download my first draft here, http://machineageproductions.com/?p=139

It's in layout right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take, since it's all a volunteer effort on that part. But you can actually read about the whole process here, http://machineageproductions.com/?cat=4 since I blogged throughout the whole thing and let blog comments assist in my design choices.

I read through the rules and the process blog posts and I can't believe you achieved this in under 6 weeks! The whole concept of "rule of 4" is worked out perfectly, the cavaliers and nightmares and the 4 different settings/periods add an immense amount of flavor.

I also like how I could use a light and more generic version of the rules to move away from the post-apocalyptic setting and run it in any setting. In this case Divinity would represent the use of magic, psionics, clerical healing, a paladin's smite, super hero powers, ... I do think the use of dice pools would make for a faster game, for instance by rolling an amount of d4 equal to the number of points in the trait.

You know, I've heard that. I'm not sure. I've yet to playtest it that way, but the one thing I really wanted to do was emulate the push/pull of a struggle.

It's certainly not my ideal system, but the point was to try to really focus heavily on the thematic purpose of the system. I had the chance to be really ambitious, so I went for it. I think if the final version is remotely successful, I might follow it up with a free option for miniatures rules.