Shall We Design a Game?

So I'm gonna write a game, and I'm gonna do it right here on this blog. Sorta. I suppose I should say I'm going to reason through the process here on this blog, because the final game text will probably not appear here in totality at any point. But I'm going to present my process, such as it is, for my benefit probably more than yours.

I feel like it's worth saying that this is not intended as a tutorial. My background in game design is not nearly so impressive as it probably needs to be in order to pretend at tutorializing this process. Even from a research perspective I'm only somewhat well-read regarding other tabletop games, and my formal education on this subject pretty much ends with a familiarity of user interface design/document design and that one class I took on gamifying interface design. Some of my most helpful reading has come from Twitter threads and blog posts, so quite frankly you'd probably be better off reading those.

Have I sufficiently lowered your expectations then? Good. Let's continue.

With this new, as yet untitled game, I initially thought I was going to just be writing another setting or module for Density, that other game system I already authored (have I told you about Density? You should go check out Density). My current main project, Ebonmire, lies along those lines. But the more I think about what I'm trying to accomplish here, the more I've realized I need a system that min/maxes better than that.

See, when I'm starting any new project the first question is always "what is the goal here?" If you're creating a game without specific gameplay goals, I figure what you're actually creating isn't a new game at all, but rather a new story or setting. Maybe you have a couple of novel mechanics you'd like to introduce, but it's not a full ruleset. Which is perfectly fine. Probably what you've got is actually just a fresh setting, and you're going to be best served by writing that up as a module for an existing game system. And as long as you follow the licensing instructions for those game systems, you can go ahead and sell that module too.

But what I'm trying to pull off here isn't really compatible with that. My actual goal, in terms of gameplay, is to get as close as I can with a pen-and-paper RPG to mimicking the dog-fighting feel of the game Descent.

Which if you actually go watch the video I just linked there, you may recognize as being utterly incompatible with combat in 5e.

And that's the issue with Density too. See, the gameplay goal I was shooting for with Density was fast combat, yes, but with a heavy emphasis on random rapid character generation especially for NPCs/enemies. That emphasis slows the combat down between encounters, which is fine for some types of stories, but the feel I really want out of this new project is that, in essence, combat never stops. I want it to be as close to real-time as I can feasibly get it with a dice-based table-top game.

And I'm genuinely not aware of any other systems that would give me that, so I guess I'm going to start this out by creating another system. Step 1 of that effort is to list the requirements of that system.

1. Fast paced combat with very little inertia for quick starts and stops and virtually imperceptible turns.
2. Focused overall character design centered around clearly delineated and heavily customizable upgrade paths.
3. Freedom of character, allowing players to enact story however they would like without contradicting design upgrade paths.

It's always nice to have a list of requirements spelled out. I like to keep these simple, sticking to just three or four objectives. I'm not a team of people, and I don't want to turn this into a passion project on the scale of Lord of the Rings. I want to produce a playable, fun game that people can enjoy in, say, six months from now. While I'm developing I may stumble across a fourth objective I'm not tracking at the moment, and that's fine so long as everything still feels obtainable afterward.

So, where am I at in addressing those requirements so far? Well, I've gone and bought myself a whack-ton of cheap d4's. My thinking there is that I want character upgrades to be easily associated with individual dice, but I also want to keep the rolls small because math slows everything down.

The next issues is that I want these character upgrade paths to be clearly spelled out, as in heavy systems like D&D, but I also want my players to be free to role-play however they'd like without regard to their upgrade tree. Consider also that I'm just one dude, and I want to have a draft of this playable in six months.

Large systems like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder address roleplaying freedom and sophisticated upgrade paths by having things like class systems, backgrounds, and races. That all requires significantly more design and balancing than I've got the time or stamina for on my own. My solution, at least what I'm thinking is a decent solution at the moment, is to have the upgrades external to the character. So no charisma or wisdom points, no emphasis on strength or dexterity. Characters will be upgrading their tools and weapons, not themselves.

So that's what I'm hoping to achieve so far. Fast paced, low inertia combat facilitated by rolling large numbers of low numbered dice. Characters with detailed, easily min-maxable upgrade paths that don't restrict character role-play. In the end hopefully it can feel like you're aerial dog-fighting with your enemies. Stay tuned to see how that turns out.