Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Icehouse RPG

  • FromJoshua Kronengold <mneme@xxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 6 Mar 2007 11:50:46 -0600
Brian Campbell writes:
>My recommendation would be to not try to make it a generic RPG  
>system. There are plenty of decent (depending on your preferences)  
>generic systems already (D20, GURPS, Storyteller, Fudge/FATE, Rifts,  
>etc),

Not necessarily.  Frex, PTA is as generic system as most of the above
-- yet far more different from any of them than most are from one
another.  (OTE is another "different" generic system which is more
similar -- but still pretty different).

Actually, for all their flaws (of most of them, anyway), -most- of the
games coming out of the Indie Explosion centered on The Forge are more
different from the above games (and from one another) than most games.

>I've found that most of the interesting work in designing game  
>systems has been in the parts that are specific to the game in  
>question.

Pretty much.  Design your game by looking first at how you want it to
be played -- using rules that foster that play.  IOW, design your RPG
less like "it's like GURPS, except..." and more like a board game.

-- 
       Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\      _,,,--,,_  ,)
--^--   "Did you know, if you increment enough, you   /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
 /\\    get an extra digit?"  "I knew," weeps Six.    |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\     
/-\\\   "We knew. But we had forgotten."	     '---''(_/--' (_/-'

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