Creating my own System

[Senkusha]

So, I figured I'd take a break from writing on my newest creation, that answers most if not all of the problems that I need resolutions to, and hop on here for a moment.

Yeah, I'm building my own game system! A game specifically designed for Asynchronous play--that means I'm building it for Discord and forums (like this one!) And it's going to have my favorite puree of Settings baked into it: Cyberpunk, Space Opera, hi-tech, and of course my favorite, anime!

Anyway, I figured I'd give a little update, since I've been pounding the keyboard in the back room, and it's a bit dead out here right now. First, I've developed my own custom Oracle. That actually took a couple of week to hammer out, because I had to learn all about dice probabilities, dice tricks, and I had to figure out exactly what effects I wanted to have happen when rolling. Needless to say, I'm really happy with what I came up with, and I can wait to actually playtest it!

Then I started playing around with Stats. But, as I'm progressing, I'm not so sure I even need Stats. These numbers are just seemingly getting in the way of the role playing, so I'm leaving this open for the time being. I've gone from a fairly crunchy design to one that's really fast and flexible. So why don't I just jump on and play something already in existence, like Fate or Freeform Universal? Because, I really have a bad itch that needs scratching, and so far, I'm unsatisfied with any of the options I've got, and I'm running out of funds for chasing a wild goose that may not even exist. Over the past three months, I must have spent nearly $500 on role playing games and various other stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with all of my purchases, and they will find usage-- even if I selectively borrow awesome things buried within them for my own nefarious purposes.

So, I moved away from defining a big list of skills and stuff, and I've damn near broke the bandwagon of Tags Systems. I'm really liking the concept of something that's open-ended and totally upto the player's imagination. But I feel most games leave too much room for navigation. I often feel option paralysis because I get Writers Block. Am I doing this right? Anyway, I've got a crap ton of tables defined now-- including my first major work: Demeanors. A comprehensive listing of 200 basic personality traits! Yeah, you're gonna roll a d20 and a d10 for this table!

Now I'm working on the Life Path generation (Thank you Mekton!) But blending Cyberpunk and Space Opera is a bit more challenging that it seems. And then I'm throwing Anime Antics into the mayhem too. This is going to be a hilarious game to play! I'm foaming, okay?

After I plow through this stage (probably tomorrow), I'm going to start working on the Archetype system. This is essentially like Classes, but anime, of course. After all, we're playing an anime episode here, right? I'm envisioning being able to throw a character together in about twenty minutes just to start playing. My book is going to be massive, packed with lots of options and descriptive details with examples, lots of random generation tables and pretty, pretty artwork, but the core system should only take about five pages. That's the goal, anyway. Yes, I know. I'm crazy. But you knew that already, didn't ya?

Probably the most challenging thing with my game is that despite it being based within a Cyberpunk setting, I don't want to handle death. I know, why play Cyberpunk if there's no thrill of being exterminated? Because this is anime, and most anime revolves around the lives of school-children, dammit! And there's enough death in the real world. So, instead, I've stolen (from somewhere I've forgotten where now) about Stress. As you get damaged, you take Stress instead of lethal damage. This can cause glitches with your equipment of course, but also it increases the odds of you turning Chibi! And that's when the absurdity comes out. I mean, how else are you going to whip out a bazooka from thin air, kick a pervert to the moon, or be able to consume an entire cafeteria filled with food all by yourself? Of course, it's not all fun and games, there are consequences to being Chibi, but my aim is to make the punishment fun and exciting.

Anyway, that's probably more than enough for now. Back to work!

 

[Senkusha]

Alright, I suppose it's time for an update. I've been crunching the numbers and smithin' the words for like three weeks now. I've learned a lot. In fact, that's an understatement. After playing around with a number of different creation tools, I finally settled on using Obsidian, because I can work on my desktop and on my Android with consistency. Also, it uses MarkDown, which I'm finding to be very handy.

But I've been doing a ton of brain storming, and I will say that as of right now, I've got five Attributes pretty much nailed down. I have 60 Archetypes planned, and I'm finalizing the one I know the most about to serve as a template for the others: Magical Girl. I would showcase it, but currently, it's a disaster, formatting wise. Over my weekend, I discovered that I can just Export my notes to PDF, and potentially save WEEKS worth of recreation time in a Desktop Publishing application. I just needed to take a crash course in CSS--I'm still recovering. But I will give a sneak preview of my Attributes page, which I'm quite happy with (bearing in mind that it's still technically a second DRAFT, but I feel that it delivers the overall vibe I want to push out through the book. It's not perfect yet, but it's close. Also, I'm gonna need to be either creating some artwork, or finding/buying some at some point.

Moving on to the Archetypes. As I've mentioned, I've defined 60 of them, broken down into three groups of 20. There's the Expressive ones (Magical Girl, Mecha Pilot, Ninja, Student, etc) that define your reason for just being. It's a What Are You? There's Narrative ones (The Loyalist, The Nurturer, The Analyst, etc). These are mostly about personality, and your reason for being included in the overall plot-- if the game were an anime. Finally there's the Functional Archetypes (Enforcer, Medic, Rigger, etc) and these function as your occupation. What you do in life to earn money, any why you're a part of a team. So far, the Expressive Archetypes look to take between five and seven pages each. Lots of details, you can roll on tables for too!

I've mentioned before that the game utilizes an Oracle Table to answer Yes/No questions, and based on the limited testing I've done, I'm pretty happy with it. Combining this with the freedom of using Tags, I feel that this game will be epic!

 

[Yityat]

I like what I'm seeing! I'm really diggin' what you got so far and what you plan to add. Try not to push yourself too much on this massive undertaking.
While there are concrete examples for when each of the Attributes come into play, I'd like to ask about what sort of thing Creativity can accomplish by altering the Narrative Influence or somesuch.

 

[Senkusha]

Creativity was born out of a need to give Players more agency during playing, specifically during Asynchronous and Solo play modes. I thought, how could I gamify, and make fun the act of changing the plot without breaking immersion to ask, "Can I do *this* thing instead? And because of this, I've really embraced the comedy that anime can provide, especially with Chibi characters too (as a consequence of receiving too much Stress (aka Damage).

I'm actually writing the chapter on Stress as of this afternoon, so I'll be sure to give some additional examples of how you use your Creativity Attribute.

Also know that because there's sixty (60) different Archetypes, that are layered, there are a possible 5.2 billion character combinations (and that's before I fully develop the 40 non-Expressive Archetypes. There could be more. Basically, there's an unlimited number of character concepts that could be played-- granted, some of them could be bizarre or even stupid, but there are options, nonetheless.

 

[Senkusha]

So, I took a break from this project for a while.

After reviewing Cortex Prime, I'm seeing a lot of other game systems I've seen contained within Cortex, but in a unique way. So I've begun looking at the system I was making and I've been re-invigorated to put my game down on paper again. Because I really like my unique dice mechanic.

 

[Senkusha]

Yup, I'm back. I've nailed down my own dice mechanic now-- I'm using the Step Dice method to determine competency. I've got my own list of Attributes, and I'm in the process of nailing down the definitions of each one, how each one will work in-game both mechanically and narrative.

I'm also reworking my character creation system. I've decided that I kind of liked what Traveller did with the Life Path system. But I don't like how you can't go into Traveller with a character concept in mind, because the random rolls will completely obliterate that concept. I think I may have a solution though, but before I disclose it, I want to get it down on paper more to see how it'll shape up-- how can I break it? I seem to have a loving relationship with random roll tables, but I also want the freedom to create from lists.

In a nutshell, I've decided that I'm taking certain pieces of Cortex Prime, Savage Worlds, Cypher System, GURPS, and Traveller and throwing them all into a giant blender. More to come with what specifically I've tailored in a moment...