The Empire left this place a mess when they retreated. They destroyed the things they left behind. The Land and its people were scarred by the Empire.
But the war has been over for years now. The young ones know the war only in stories. The trolls, humans and fairy-folk of the Land are rebuilding, side-by-side. The rolling hills are dotted with small farms. Ruined settlements are fixed up by new residents. The Empire’s trash is a valuable material to be repurposed.
Some of those valuables are still locked away. Abandoned Imperial forts and outposts are said to hold great hoarded wealth and resources, but they are perilous places. They were sabotaged by the fleeing colonizers, and many are now claimed by frightening beasts. The treasure that may lie within these places is simply not worth the danger.
So they say.
Okay. That’s the pitch. Let’s talk about what kind of RPG I’m actually writing.
It’s a fantasy adventure game. There are “dungeons” and magic and monsters. The core rules will seem familiar if you’ve played any D20-based game (but not the same). Players take on the roles of “adventurers” or “delvers”: brave folks who go to dangerous places looking for lost treasure.
That all sounds familiar. But this game isn’t meant to just be a stand-in for D&D or whatever. This game isn’t meant to do everything. It’s being designed for a particular sort of experience, and everything about it is meant to make that type of experience more fun. So here are my design goals:
Easy to learn: This sounds vague, but I mean something specific. RPGs can be daunting. I want you to be able to bring in a new player and have them playing in 20 minutes. Spend no more than a few minutes explaining rules, roll up a character in 10 to 15 minutes, then start playing. New players should not need to have “homework” reading the rulebook, and they shouldn’t feel lost the moment the other players start talking about the rules. Partly, I’ll accomplish this by keeping the core rules simple, allowing the GM to introduce complexity with optional elements, slowly brought out during play. Nothing should get more complicated for a player than they want. The GM will also be responsible for more of the “crunchy” elements than the players, in the interest of minimizing the burden on new folks. This does make the GM’s job a bit more challenging than the players’, so I’m also working on tools to help the GM keep track of everything, and to help the GM improvise when need be.
Treasure is fun: I want players to enjoy the part at the end of the adventure where the characters find a big treasure. These are pulp adventure stories. In many fantasy rpgs, the fights and other conflicts are fun, but once you’ve won, finding gold or equivalent things is dull, because the stuff you can do with that treasure isn’t especially interesting. In this game, gold is exciting to find, because it gets you fun things, and it’s also what you need to level up. Not all treasure has to be money, but it needs to be fun even when it is. Also, even mundane items have interesting qualities, making non-monetary treasure interesting even when you don’t get a magic item or artifact.
Shopping is fun: This is really a continuation of the above. I want the players to have fun having their characters buy things. I’ll accomplish this by creating a deck of unique merchant/shop cards for the GM, each with their own menu of items and services for sale. This will make it easy for the GM to quickly design marketplaces, villages, merchant caravans, etc. Every time the characters go to a new shop, they’ll find something new and unique, whether it’s a weapon, armor, tool, spell, service or special training. It shouldn’t be boring or feel like a waste of time if the players decide to spend a while shopping. The cards will also serve as prompts for roleplaying as the merchants, making it easier for the GM to turn any transaction into a fun scene.
No sub-optimal characters: You should be able to play the character you want. A brainy orc vagabond? Sure. How about a gnome magician with big beefy arms? Sounds pretty cool. A suave, charming hobgoblin pilgrim? I want to see that. In this game, character classes don’t have “primary ability scores”. You don’t need to be strong to be a good warrior, or wise to be a good pilgrim. You don’t need to pick the ideal species to boost your primary ability. Instead, all ability scores are useful to all characters, regardless of species or class, and all species have unique advantages that are useful regardless of class or ability scores. There are certainly synergies that will be rewarding to use, but no one should ever feel that they are missing out or failing to contribute just because they chose a unique combination of characteristics.
Dungeon crawl sandbox: This game is meant to be played as a somewhat open campaign, where the players get to proceed at their own pace, sending their characters to ever more dangerous places for greater and greater rewards. It is meant to be player-driven and character-focused. It’s not about epic plotlines and world-shattering tales. It’s about ambition, exploration and discovery.
Diversity and inclusion: I’m trying to avoid the racism, sexism and colonialism common in fantasy fiction. These ideas are not necessary for a fun or interesting fantasy world, and they actually make the experience worse for a lot of people. I’ve chosen to portray a recently decolonized land that is being reclaimed by its native residents. This land is fully integrated, with people of all sentient species living side-by-side. Each species has individuals from a variety of cultures, ethnicities or races. For example, some elves are Black. They’re still elves. They have the same capabilities as other elves. There are other things to be done, of course. Making the fiction inclusive is only part of it. I will have to educate myself on how to better make the experience more welcoming to different players, as well.
This is just the beginning. For the foreseeable future, I plan to post at least once a week. I have a group playing the game right now, once a week, so I’m going to write a weekly postmortem after each session, going over what happened, what went well, what went wrong. These sessions are invaluable for developing the rules. I’ll also write up a few other posts here and there, discussing game elements in more detail.
And hopefully, we’ll come up with a name for this thing soon.