Okay, I am almost pretty positively kinda certain that I will be heading to Brisbane in October for Auscon II. This is amazing and I can only attribute this stroke of good luck to the fact that my wife hasn’t realised it’s our wedding anniversary. I won’t tell if you don’t. Anyway, I had this crazy idea that I almost didn’t share, but here I am, umm, sharing it.
Can we make a complete, ready to go roleplaying game in 10 weeks?
That’s my question to you. It’s kind of rhetorical as I am so arrogant confident that I think I can do anything. But the question is can WE make a game in ten weeks? What I am thinking is you encourage me with stupid chanting (“Chug! Chug! Chug!”) and helpful advice and together I will write a game we all want to play. And by all, I mean “the majority, as moderated by your benevolent dictator – me”. We decide the “big picture” elements of genre, game system, themes, setting and the like, then I put it together, with regular updates to you and feedback from you. The ultimate goal is to have a complete, playable game in an ashcan-like format ready for you to pick up and playtest at Auscon. I might even run a game of it.
At this stage I haven’t committed to doing this. What I want from you is a green light (no, nothing to do with the Green Lantern, though my imagination is just as powerful). Tell me if you like this idea and are prepared to offer feedback, advice, strong opinions, chanting or some other support. Tell me if you think I’m crazy (don’t worry you are not the first); that I should be supporting my students as they approach their final exams; or I must spend more time with my young family. If I get enough interest (as measured by My Gut™) then I will move forward with this. Leave your comments below.
I’m only interested if I get something in return or you write in legal binding it can’t be sold for profit. I’m personally tired of guys freelancing RPG games outside of their day jobs and asking people to “open beta-test” when they aren’t getting paid for it and the guy sells it to the public. There are jobs out there call Quality Assurance or Testers and they should get their fair share if money is involved. If no money is involved, I’m all for open beta testing. Honestly though, that is just something that has been a thorn in my side and your request irritated it a bit since it feels like you are asking for free labor to make a game that is ready to “sell” at the event.
I like the idea and will help pending those restrictions.
I’m happy to offer feedback, and I’m excited about contributing some ideas. However, how do you plan to avoid “design by committee”? – which is notorious for producing tat.
But why not set yourself the challenge of writing a RPG your wife would want to play? That way, when she realises about the anniversary, you have a special present ready to go 🙂
awesome idea, nathan!
i would like to see Verge RPG expanded and fully done. if that is not an option I would go with some punkish post-apocaliptic mayhem or some afterlife warrior’s slugfest that mixes everything (from sci-fi to gritty fantasy).
system? Verge’s has a nice potential, otherwise I prefer d100.
cheers from the Balkans
Yes we can! I recommend some good project management, though, including dividing the project into appropriately sized pieces which can be worked on separately.
Not really enough interest to drive me for 10 full weeks, though thanks for commenting guys. Streebor, Verge is never far from my mind and I will do more with it… one day.
I might make an attempt at another FU hack or two. I am open to suggestions for genres, themes or properties to tackle, and ideas on how to “FU” them.
If you hack the gear rules in FU to enable characters to pool their adjectives and nouns and purchase more versatile “stuff”, you can enable lots of anime and science fantasy stories. A giant mecha, a secret power source that teenagers stumble across, or even a TARDIS.
For example, let’s say three characters want to purchase robots that combine into a more powerful form. Individually they can only get “Combining Robot” – a bit boring. Instead they each contribute one gear “slot” to a common pool. Now they have six words with which to describe their robots. (Plural nouns cost two words.) Thus the character together get “Heavily-Armed Supersonic Brain-Linked Combining Robots”.
To balance things out, each character can only get a maximum of two dice from the group gear per roll, and they can only get two beneficial dice if none of the other descriptors are hindering.
I’m in Nathan, well Im in from sometime in late August anyhow.
I’ll try to nurse some FU hack ideas to fruition in the meantime.