Last week I talked about playing roleplaying games. This week, I’m going to talk about my past and present efforts to create roleplaying games.
There are two ways of going about creating a roleplaying game. You could start from scratch or adapt an existing rules system to your needs.
One of the biggest advantages to adapting an existing rules system to your needs is that you can focus more attention on creating the setting. Why reinvent the wheel right? The only rules you need to worry about are the ones that are particular for your game.The disadvantage is that it might be difficult to market your game. In fact, unless you’re using a system with an open game license (like the d20 system), you’re likely plum out of luck.
Creating a system from scratch is understandably a lot more work, but also potentially more satisfying when you really nail the product. Even if you’re starting from scratch, you’re probably going to look at other game systems to at least figure out everything you need to cover. You can make the game as easy or as complicated as you like.
Last week, I talked about my first attempt at creating a roleplaying game using the Starfleet Battles rulebookless box set I had. That set had the grid map and counters I needed and ship layouts. The system was super simple. Even you succeed, odd you fail. The space battles were a little more elaborate. You rolled a die to see what direction you had to move your ship and another die to see how far. You fired your weapons (again using the even-odd method of determining success) and then rolled dice to determine where you hit your opponent’s ship. The ship layouts used a lot of little squares so you could check off. If you hit a certain section enough to fill in all the squares, the section was destroyed…at least that’s how I remember it worked. That was a while ago. I no longer have the box set to be able to check it out. Having to roll for direction made little sense, but it added a little bit of challenge which the game was lacking. It also led to a hilarious situation where Fab was controlling my friend Richard’s ship while he stepped out for a half hour. When Fab rolled to see where the ship flew, the results made it fly right into the sun. Okay, so Richard didn’t find it so hilarious when he found out his ship was destroyed (his character made it out in an escape pod) but it sure was funny to the rest of us. “What did you guys do while I was gone?” “Oh nothing much…destroyed a few Romulan ships, did some repairs. flew your ship into the sun…” “WHAT?!!!”
My next attempt was making a Peanuts roleplaying game. I created a system from scratch that was eerily reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons only I used a d12 instead of a d20. We only played it once or twice. To be honest, as much as I love Peanuts, the setting is rather limited in what you could have the characters do that would be interesting to play out. The adventures I created featured things that you’d never see in the comic strip, so really it was only Peanuts in that I had created stats for the Peanuts characters and if you played Linus you could find creative uses for his blanket.
I was going to talk about the work I’m doing on the Age of Animus roleplaying game, but I finished work late today and it’s getting late, so I’ll keep that topic for next time.
Have a good week folks!