July MMOverse

For the month of July I decided to get real ambitious. I decided to design and run my own role-play game (RPG). I had set out not to just design a setting, but to design my own mechanics as well. This project started simply, as these things often do.

I wanted to decide what sort of setting I wanted to design. I wanted to go with something simple, easy to understand, had room for good storytelling, and could be easily adapted to pen and paper RPG’s. I played with a lot of different settings: horror, mindscape, dreams, romance, humor, and the afterlife. I settled on fantasy.

My vision of a game setting was a MMO that had been crashing, the players would be non-player characters that would be attempting to save the world from external forces. Using an MMO model, would give me a built in mechanics system, a fairly simple progression setup, and a setting that most people would be somewhat familiar with. As a starting point, I thought this would be simple and easy to focus.

As for mechanics, I decided on a system using six sided dice. The system revolved around rolling a number of dice and choosing two of them to use as your roll. The dice being chosen would be picked by the player, but a few effects would allow the game master to choose one or more dice instead.

Characters were simple. All stats started at 2 and were then modified by what fantasy race you chose. Classes gave you access to skills, weapons, attacks, and special abilities. Weapons were designed with several stats including speed at which you attacked, damage, critical hot modifiers, and more impressive magic items would have bonuses and special effects. Then it went off the rails.

I designed an initiative system not only worked on how fast your weapon or skill was but how quickly you would be able to use it. I basically instituted the cooldown system from MMO’s. At the point where I was designing a special sheet for each player to track all of their initiative’s and when their skills would be ready again, I realized I had gone a bit too far.

I took a step back and walked away for a week. I find this helpful on any project where I think I might have made a mistake. When I came back to my notes I started to examine everything. That’s when I saw the cracks. The initiative system was an overcomplicated mess. The critical hit system required unintuitive math. The action system wasn’t useful. The skills were over powered. The setting had built in plot walls preventing the players from the freedom to really be their characters. In short I hadn’t designed a Role-Play game as much as a Roll-Play game.

I haven’t completely scrapped it.

I stepped back and went through it to find the bits I liked, the lessons I could learn, and the things I wanted to do with my next attempt. What were they? I liked rolling multiple six sided dice and only choosing two and who gets to pick being based on different things going on in the game. I liked the simplicity of the character builds in the beginning, before I piled two tons of crap on top of it.

I learned that I want a freer story telling experience. The idea of creating MMO characters and going forward with them was decent but blocked the characters from having backgrounds and goals. It took away past and future from the characters and left only the now. I find that tedious and dull. I want them to have goals, something to strive for, and the freedom to attempt it.

What else do I want? I want the players to explore the setting and find out what’s there. I want to let my players expand the world to their liking. I want fun characters and places for the characters to interact with.

Also, I’m scrapping the idea of fantasy. There are thousands of games out there with fantasy themes, I want my own setting and story. I don’t want people to finish and say, why didn’t we just play game X. I want my setting to be something they can’t get anywhere else. Right now I’m looking at an afterlife or slasher movie themed game. Hell, I may even do a game about Teddy bears who protect children from nightmares…or have I seen that somewhere before?

Will I try again? Yes. This isn’t a project I’m just stopping, but it will take time. More than I originally thought. As for August, what will I do? I had hoped to go to Gencon and help one of the booths, however, that seems to have fallen through. It is now too late to purchase tickets, get a hotel room, and all of the other things necessary to attend Gencon. So I’m not going to. Instead for August, I think I shall try and play an RPG over skype using Roll20.net. Now what game to play?