Creating a RPG – The Journey Begins

by | Apr 18, 2016 | Notes From the Dungeon Master

Hi i’m Tondi

I’ve played many games from many genres, rules heavy & rules light.  I like games that promote role-play but also like power gaming and the mechanics of gaming.  I’ve been part of the Legends of Tabletop network for about a year now.  I’ve only made one post 🙁 I like to have big ideas and often plan many interesting projects.  These things often never get out of the concept phase.  I love to procrastinate.  I’ve decided my next project is creating a tabletop RPG ruleset here on Legends of Tabletop.

The Genre

My favourite genre and the setting i’m most knowledgeable about is Fantasy.  I’m not doing a Fantasy setting.  Frankly the genre is saturated and their are some big players that are very imposing in that pool.  My second expertise would probably be super heroes / powered genre.  I love comics and comic characters.  In the age of comic block buster movies this is tempting but i’ve never seen a supers rpg handle the variable power levels of supers well and don’t really want to try tackle it.  I’ve never really been into sci-fi but I work in IT, have an apple watch, and studied one lit course about it.  So I’m trying Sci-Fi.

Decision: RPG Setting = Sci-Fi

What i’m Actually Doing?

During this process i’ll be using these posts to brainstorm ideas, contemplate decisions, ask questions and maybe even request reader input.  I intend to compare different options to rules and game design decisions and perhaps the final output will be an actual game.  No promises though. I’ll try to focus on specific items per post and tag the titles with mechanics or settings keywords.  If I come to decisions in a post i’ll highlight them.  I’m going to try post something fortnightly and will purposefully chop and change post subjects to try keep things from stalling.

Decision: Post Frequency = Fortnightly

How Can You Help?

I don’t know if I will crowd source any specific decisions but we have the comments on the posts, social media and the LOTT forums for in-depth discussion if we need them.  Even if i’m not asking anything specific if you’d like to make a suggestion or comment on something i’ve written or call me out on something you disagree with I welcome you to do so wholeheartedly.

What Next?

I’m going to brainstorm a few post headings to get the juices flowing but the first things I want to dive into is rules light or rules heavy and global setting boundaries.

Lets hope that this isn’t my last post on the matter and fingers crossed this turns out to be something cool.