Well this journey gets more and more interesting.
I'm in Vaasa, Finland (actually I should be calling it Vasa since I'm learning Swedish, not Finnish), and I am absolutely unable to find gamers here.
Apparently role-playing is fairly popular in this country, but not this city. There is a club for playing the Warhammer minis game, (and a store that sells that stuff), but that's about it.
This causes problems. I am not going to put any sort of rules on the web that I haven't been able to play myself. That's just ridiculous. I figure out if all these ideas work first, then I put it out there for other people to tear apart. That's how it works. So all of my team-oriented ideas have to go on the back burner.
The lack of gamers has given me another idea though. A one-on-one RPG, player vs GM. Easy to set up a game, easy for me to playtest. All I, or anybody else who wanted to play, would have to do is find *one* person to play with. Not several people who all have to like each other and have a compatible schedule.
Work on a set of rules for this is already underway. I don't work like most game designers seem to work (which is why they have books actually published and I don't, most likely). I don't have an idea of what I want the game to accomplish, and then build a set of mechanics that will work towards that goal. When I think of what I consider good role´playing, I think of AD&D, Traveller, GURPS, Champions... that sort of thing. They have an atmosphere, but also a complete openness, there is no one real way to play these games.
So what I do is come up with ideas for mechanics and rules, and then see where those mechanics lead, what sort of games will result.
And my current idea for a one-on-one game is this: Only the player will ever roll dice. The GM's role is strictly verbal when playing. Narrative control will be determined by a system using poker chips (or whatever). Chips are gained by either party depending on the rolls made by the player. The game right now has a fatalistic atmosphere as I've been listening to a lot of Reverend Bizarre, haha.
It seems my ideas for LotFP:RPG are leaning towards newer methods of gaming, while the 'normal' group RPG I was working on was more 'oldschool'. Hmm.
Anyway, as it gets fleshed out more, as playtests happen, and as I'm ready to put up a real preliminary pdf, I will update this space.
I'm in Vaasa, Finland (actually I should be calling it Vasa since I'm learning Swedish, not Finnish), and I am absolutely unable to find gamers here.
Apparently role-playing is fairly popular in this country, but not this city. There is a club for playing the Warhammer minis game, (and a store that sells that stuff), but that's about it.
This causes problems. I am not going to put any sort of rules on the web that I haven't been able to play myself. That's just ridiculous. I figure out if all these ideas work first, then I put it out there for other people to tear apart. That's how it works. So all of my team-oriented ideas have to go on the back burner.
The lack of gamers has given me another idea though. A one-on-one RPG, player vs GM. Easy to set up a game, easy for me to playtest. All I, or anybody else who wanted to play, would have to do is find *one* person to play with. Not several people who all have to like each other and have a compatible schedule.
Work on a set of rules for this is already underway. I don't work like most game designers seem to work (which is why they have books actually published and I don't, most likely). I don't have an idea of what I want the game to accomplish, and then build a set of mechanics that will work towards that goal. When I think of what I consider good role´playing, I think of AD&D, Traveller, GURPS, Champions... that sort of thing. They have an atmosphere, but also a complete openness, there is no one real way to play these games.
So what I do is come up with ideas for mechanics and rules, and then see where those mechanics lead, what sort of games will result.
And my current idea for a one-on-one game is this: Only the player will ever roll dice. The GM's role is strictly verbal when playing. Narrative control will be determined by a system using poker chips (or whatever). Chips are gained by either party depending on the rolls made by the player. The game right now has a fatalistic atmosphere as I've been listening to a lot of Reverend Bizarre, haha.
It seems my ideas for LotFP:RPG are leaning towards newer methods of gaming, while the 'normal' group RPG I was working on was more 'oldschool'. Hmm.
Anyway, as it gets fleshed out more, as playtests happen, and as I'm ready to put up a real preliminary pdf, I will update this space.
