Design Journal 10: A Samurai Cuts!

In her book Writing Down the Bones, which I recommend to anyone who writes anything, Natalie Goldberg talks about how, when you are editing your writing, you must be like a samurai. Why? Because a samurai cuts!

I'm finding that is more true of fiction, but it is still true of game design.

It has been a unique challenge. Writing what is essentially an instruction manual, but one that people will want to read, which describes something you do with your imagination.

I'm now doing more editing than writing of new material. It looks like I'll ease past 30,000 words total in the near future. There's no question that given this amount of effort and time I could easily have written 100,000 words of fiction, but designing and writing a game is a lot slower going.

I'm still aiming for finishing the playtesting copies by December so I can send them out and run playtests myself. I'm nervous about it. Because of the time constraints on the whole project, I'll have to send out relatively rough material in some cases. I'll actually be depending on my friends' suggestions and the playtests to let me know if/how this whole thing works. My nagging fear is that I'll try it out and it'll...you know...suck. It won't be fun, it won't make sense, I'll have overlooked massively important systems, or created systems that are broken. And so on.

I don't mind editing, but I hate other people reading what I write, with a few exceptions in a previous Mage game and a current BESM game. I think many people feel this way, actually, but at the very least I do.

There are definite glaring weaknesses in the text as it stands now. Resources in general - money and equipment specifically - have no system that works at all. There is actually, at the moment, no fixed damage system for combat. And no recovery system once you're damaged. Maneuvering is a little shaky, and while I like the concept of "the initiative", I definitely need playtesting to see if my ideas of how it can work stand up.

Basically, I'm putting a lot of weight on playtesting and getting feedback.

But, I keep grinding away. I'm going to finish this thing, and hopefully also not fail any of my classes or let anyone down at my internship in the meantime.

Design Journal 9: The Initiative

Lastly we come to the initiative, another concept from Parsec that I think of as cool.

When combat in a roleplaying game begins, it usually begins with these two words "Roll initiative!" Everyone knows that now, there's going to be a fight. Get out the damage dice and miniatures. Lay down the combat map. Etc.

When I talk about initiative in Parsec, I am using the word's more common meaning - where initiative just means going first, or more generally perhaps, being pro-active. In Parsec combat, one side starts with the initiative. It is usually the side that started the fight, but if not, then it is the side with the best position, or with some other advantage. In situations where no side has clear initiative, then the first round of combat will determine who has it after that point. For that first round, everyone should act in order of their Resilience scores.

The side with initiative has the privilege of declaring what they are doing first. This means that they will control the tempo and the action to a large degree. In Parsec, you basically get either a normal action in a turn or a long action, depending on what else you do. But you don't get multiple actions. That means that the side with the initiative during a combat can force the other side to defend if they remain aggressive.

For the side without the initiative, the challenge is to use tactics to steal the initiative. It is possible to defend in various ways, depending on terrain, the kind of fight you're in, etc. Also, the side without the initiative has the chance to capitalize on any mistakes the initiating side makes. Attacking usually leaves you vulnerable to counter-attack.

No question, though, having the initiative will be a big advantage. It is one of the things that makes ambush more powerful in this system than in many others, as well as other kinds of tactical decisions. Its rare that in an rpg, combat depends on group tactics per se. Usually its more an issue of how the various individuals work together - or not. I wanted some components to the conflict system that were broader than particular characters' decisions, and the initiative is one of them. I like that the 'tide of battle' is something that is tracked rules-wise and has an impact on what is going on and what decisions you can make in a conflict.

Addendum: I forgot to mention this in the original post, but if you're paying attention, you'll realize that whichever side in a conflict has the initiative also sets the stakes. This means that they define the conditions of their own victory over their opponent. So if one side has the initiative, and they are out to kill the other side, then the stakes of the conflict are "life and death". If, however, they only want to capture their opponents, then the stakes of the conflict are "capture".

When/if the initiative is taken away, then the side that now has the initiative can set new stakes. So, for a simplistic example: a security officer is in a conflict with a suspected criminal. The security officer gets the initiative on the suspect and tries to subdue him. The suspect, however, turns the tables on the officer - capitalizing on a mistake or utilizing a clever tactic. Now, the suspect ups the ante - he feels he needs to incapacitate the officer and get away or else the background check will reveal outstanding warrants for arrest. So in this example, a change in the initiative means a change in stakes from "arrest" to "incapacitation".

Design Journal 8: Orientation, Abstract Combat and Ship Attributes

Continuing in my little series where I talk about specific cool things in the Parsec system, I turn to orientation, abstract combat and ship attributes. These three are crammed together because they are all somewhat connected and I think I can talk about each without taking up too much space.

Orientation

I'm sure other space-combat systems have something like this, but orientation is the system for figuring out what part of my ship is facing what part of your ship. This is to make it easier to target specific parts of a ship - say, the engines or the command deck - and also to bring to bear particular weapon systems on your own ship which are only oriented to be able to fire from a certain position.

As far as the rules are concerned, every object in space is a cube, and each of the six sides corresponds to a particular surface of the ship. In game, you can even use a d6 to represent your ships' orientation if you don't want to revert to expensive models and miniatures. For the names of each side, I went with some nautical terms and some physiological ones - the face, dorsal, ventral, starboard, port and rear surfaces are the terms I'm using for now.

In 3D zero-G combat, its almost impossible to represent what's going on on a 2D surface like your gaming table. Instead, you make maneuvering checks and based on the result, you can determine which side of your target is facing which side of your own ship. At the very least, you can move things to a more favorable position. I think that this system is a simple way to avoid having to keep track of 3D maneuvering on a 2D battle map. All the map is needed for (if you're using it at all) is to determine relative distance between objects. The assumption is always that they are moving dramatically through three dimensions throughout the combat.

Abstract Combat

This is in contrast to what is more common, which in Parsec I just call Tactical Combat - that is, combat involving a battle map, moving a particular number of hexes per turn, finding lines of sight and determining cover, and so on.

Abstract combat relies on the gaming group to supply the dramatic details of what exactly is going on, or how maneuvers look in the game-world. For example, if an opponent is behind cover and you can't get a shot at them, you can take what is called a "long maneuver" to move to a new position from which you can fire on your target with less obstruction. Depending on how well your roll for the long maneuver goes, you will find yourself in a better or worse position at the end of the round.

Of course, while you're moving you can also be targeted, and the new position may or may not have good cover for you to hide behind. Rather than letting this be determined by objects on a battle map, these details are just determined abstractly by dice-rolls and narrated out during the resolution phase.

Ship Attributes

In Parsec, ships have the same attributes that characters have - Power, Precision, Mobility, Connection, Appeal and Resilience. I always got frustrated by systems that made you learn an entirely new set of rules and whatnot for vehicle and spaceship combat. To get around this, I came up with attributes that thoroughly described a person and also described a ship. This means that all of the connections between characters and ships are much more logical and really, both function with essentially the same system. Quicker to learn, quicker to use and to adapt in a game.

I also like the idea that in a setting where, depending on what kind of game it is, a lot of time could be spent aboard a ship, I liked the idea that different ships are like different characters, having some of their own personality. This is reinforced by the fact that both characters and ships use a lifepath-type system to build their backgrounds before the game begins. Again, its another take on the idea of ships and people functioning by the same basic set of rules.

Next time, the final installment on (the) Initiative, as well as some of what's next.

Design Journal 7: 100th Post!

Well, this is the 100th post. Not much of a blog at the moment, really. A few sporadic random hits, some hits from Google searches that send people my way, a few friends who check on a pretty regular basis. Not much more than that. I just don't have the time to post as much as I'd like, and I don't have the time to be as active on forums and other blogs as I'd like to be, which would drum up more hits. Ah well.

As I continue to work on this game, I tell myself that there are some things that are cool about it. The things that come to mind are advancement, orientation, abstract combat, ship attributes and (the) initiative. I'll probably break up a brief discussion of each one, or maybe two at a time, over the next few days.


Advancement

This is usually driven by some sort of experience point or character point system or whatever, in which you save up and then purchase new things for your character progressively. A few systems, like Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Burning Wheel, have you keep track of how often you use abilities and they raise as they see more use.

Of those two options, I prefer the first one for player control of development and the second one for realism. Often in the first case, in a point system, groups I've played with have developed house rules where you can only spend experience points on things you do in-game. This is almost always added onto the rules, however, and in many circumstances points are spent on things that don't come up in game anyway.

What I've done with Parsec is to take what I like from both methods. Advancement is entirely bound to what happens in-game, but what happens narratively rather than mechanically. The first way to advance is to achieve a Goal, spelled out during character creation and also while developing a group template.

The second way to advance is to face an Obstacle - whether or not you overcome it. Obstacles are also part of character creation and group template building, and I like that you advance whether you succeed or not. These are also separate from Goals. Meaningful Goals aren't just overcoming Obastacles - there is also something positive to be achieved.

The third way to advance is through either learning Secrets or having your Secrets revealed. Essentially, Secrets are a big part of a game that is intended to be at least somewhat driven by intrigue and conspiracy, and in a story secrets are meant to come out. If the Secrets were developed well in the beginning, when they are revealed it'll be a big moment for the game and for the character(s) in question.

The fourth way to advance is to receive Scars. As mentioned a couple of times before, Scars make you tougher - they modify Resilience the way that Skills modify the other Attributes (lower the target number). They also hurt, and count as anti-Traits - in certain situations, you will lose dice because of the Scar. Not every injury or setback or betrayal will leave a Scar, but when it does happen, your character has learned something. This also encourages the kind of actions that will lead to Scars - dangerous and emotionally charged ones, which are exactly the kinds of things that make a game fun in the first place.

Design Journal 6: A Change of Pace

I've realized that I have probably made a mistake in the last three Design Journal posts. They were essentially barrages of information, and in retrospect I've decided that this Journal will do better as just that - a journal. As I move through the process of designing, playtesting, and editing a game for publication in the coming year (I hope!), it will be nice to have some sort of chronicle of the process. Being a first-timer in this sort of endeavor, I'm sure that things will happen which were unforseen.

I've heard that you're not supposed to edit as you write, but I'm not sure that's true of game designs. Yesterday and today I spent a lot of time on airplanes, meaning I had lots of time to kill while sandwhiched in at 30,000 feet. Before I left I printed out the current rought draft of Parsec, now at just over 13,000 words, to look over.

I definitely found a lot of things I'd missed and plenty of weak spots, but what surprised me was that reading through the project, I actually felt like it was pretty good. Normally I don't read things after I finish them because I tend to hate what I write after the fact - but I could really see places where I think the text flowed well. Its a challenge to write rules - its like writing an instruction manual that someone will want to read. As always, its turning out to be harder than I imagined.

As I work on Parsec, I have to find a happy medium between what the publisher seems to want and what I want in the game. We don't want the same things, but I think we want compatible things. Ultimately, he'll be the arbiter of whether the finished product is going to print. I hope so, and he remains interested and engaged with the project. If not, as I said, I'll print the damn thing myself. I can lose the parts of the game that came from his setting ideas, make it more generic probably, add some story game elements, drop some systems I don't need, and go.

So either way, I'll finish the damn game. I know it will be a painful process - it alread is, and it isn't like I've quit my jobs to do this full-time.

But I also find that I consistently enjoy working on it. Its is engaging and challenging and rewarding in its own way. Whether anyone else will think so is another matter.

Design Journal 5: System and So On (Rough)

Three: System

The Basics

As mentioned previously, Parsec uses a system wherein six-sided dice are rolled in groups against a target number, where every number showing equal to or higher than the target number is counted as a “success”. The shorthand for writing the number of dice to roll is a number followed by “d”; for example, “5d” means “five six-sided dice.” To represent the target number, we use “@” followed by the target number, written after the number of dice. So, for example, “5d@3” is shorthand for “five six-sided dice against a target number of 3”. In that situation, you would roll five dice, and 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s would all count as successes.

So, all you need to know is how many dice you’re rolling and what the target number is. Your Skill will determine the target number, as described in the Skill section, so most of the rules are focused on figuring out how many dice you roll.

You always start with the Attribute in question, whether it is a character’s Attribute or a ships’ Attribute. This Attribute gives you your base dice-pool, or the starting number of dice you have. This total is then modified by a few different things – dice are either added to the total or subtracted from it.

If your character is doing something and no one is trying to stop her, then the only important thing is the number of successes you roll – the more successes come up, the better you do. If someone is trying to stop your character, however, then you compare your successes to theirs, and the one with the higher number wins. Ties go to no-one – neither character succeeds in what they are intending to do.

There are three categories of things that modify the number of dice you roll. The first are your Traits. No more than one positive Trait can modify a given roll, but both positive and negative Traits all modify rolls – otherwise, there isn’t much reason to mention them as far as game rules go.

The second thing that modifies the number of dice you roll is your Equipment. There aren’t many things you can do without the right tools, so in many cases there will be a penalty for not having the right Equipment. There are special items, however, which are very well-suited to what they do, or are very high-quality, which will give bonuses to Skill rolls when they are used. Like Traits, these modifiers don’t generally change, so they are easy to keep track of. In item descriptions, any bonuses or penalties associated with the item will be listed.

The third thing that modifies the number of dice you roll is the Situation. Unlike Traits and Equipment, the Situation modifier changes constantly. In most cases, it is the Director’s job to keep track of Situation modifiers – it is also the Director’s job to make those clear, unless there is a reason the PCs wouldn’t know about them.

Conflict

Terrestrial Combat (range, cover, tactics, melee, movement, weapons and armor, grenades, firearm types)

Space Combat

Advancement

Four: Setting

Civilization

Technology

Conspiracy

Space Travel

Five: Advice

Story

Adversity

Design

Design Journal 4: Character (Rough)

This is the very rough Character section of Parsec - thus far.

Two: Character

Everything Starts With A Story

In order to create a Character in Parsec, you have to have a story. It doesn’t have to be detailed, or filled with adventure – those will come once the game starts. Rather, this story is your Character’s story – her history up to the point that the game starts. What is her family like? Where did she grow up? What did she study in school? What does she do for a living? What, or who, does she truly love? And what has happened in the past to hurt her? Those are the first questions you need to answer for your Character.

There Are A Couple of Ways to Do This

When you’re creating a Character, you make decisions about the Character’s story and these determine what kinds of things your Character will be capable of doing in the game – what she’ll be good at, who she’ll know, what she’ll own, and so on. This is one method, and it leads to pretty balanced characters who are ready to go. Another method is to just tell your character’s story up to this point, plug some numbers in (once you know what they mean of course), and go! This chapter assumes that you’re taking the first option, since if you’re taking the second option, there isn’t much we have to tell you.

Birth
Even in the future, where you’re born has a lot to do with what your life will be like. Its unlikely, but possible, that you were born ‘offworld’, that is, not on Earth. You might have been born on one of the geosynchronous space stations surrounding the Earth, or on Luna (the Moon), on Mars, or even on one of the distant colonies on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

One important thing about where you’re born is that it will help determine where the game takes place and even what kind of game it is. All of the Players need to talk about what kind of game they want to play so that everyone’s Character fits together from the beginning. This is called a group template, and it is just a way to keep Characters from being redundant (no one needs two hotshot space pilots – unless that’s what you want) or from being too hard to get together for the start of the story (“You all meet in a space cantina…”).

When you decide where your character was born and what her family is like, you need to determine whether she is a Citizen or a Pariah. Citizens are born to privilege, and have the benefit of gene therapy and medical care from birth. They are the oligarchy of the solar system, and the majority of the people in space. Most of them have positions in the world government or in a major corporation virtually guaranteed. On Earth, they live in sealed arcologies protected by security personnel, and if they commute to work at all they do so in sealed commuter tubes riding maglev trains. Citizens start with higher Attributes and will have more Property than Pariahs. The main languages spoken by Citizens are Portugese, Mandarin and English.

Pariahs live on the edges of society – and those edges are vast. For every Citizen, there are at least 10 Pariahs, living in tenements and slums all over the world, sleeping in factory dormitories or in tiny berths in space. Pariahs do not have the full rights of Citizenship. Their main options are to either join the military police or indenture themselves in the hope of earning citizenship for their children. The common languages for Pariahs are Arabic, English, French and Afrikaans. Pariahs – the ones who survive – are tougher than Citizens, physically and psychologically. They have seen more and have had to endure far more, and are much harder to break.

You also need to decide whether your character was Terraborn or Colonyborn. If she was Terraborn, she is pretty ‘normal’ for a human being. She may make the move to space, but she will be unaccustomed to long periods of time spent in zero-G and will need to become acclimated. If she was Colonyborn, she is unusual, and there will be something different about her. Reproduction in fully artificial settings, even with artificial gravity and excellent medical care, is still unpredictable. She will have one negative Trait as a result, physical or psychological. However, she is already acclimated to work and live in zero-G. In fact, her problems will come when she is someplace where the gravity is constant, like Mars or Earth, for a long period of time – it is like a sailor having to get their “sea legs”, and is disorienting at first.

Education

Education might be take place in a government orphanage or school, in a private academy, or on the mean streets of a slum. This part of your character’s story covers her late childhood and adolescence, and it is the time when your character will learn her basic Skills. It is also when she will begin to build Relationships.

Work

Only the very wealthy can afford not to work at all, and they will still have hobbies or pastimes of some kind. For most of the rest of humanity, if you don’t work, you starve. (For many, you work and starve.) Work is what you do. It is the stage where you choose which of your basic skills you have improved in, and how far.

In Parsec, there is a lot of specialization. General education is for the most part something of the past, and jacks of all trades are rare. If you are a Citizen, you are valued for the way you function in society, the way you contribute, and to make this contribute as efficient and predictable as possible, you are strongly encouraged to specialize. If you are a Pariah, you often have a little more bredth of skill, but it is very difficult to survive as a migrant worker, so at some point you settle down into some kind of work, and that will still be what you are best at.

Characters will have a Relationship to their employer and to society in general. They may also have Relationships with coworkers or adults they know socially.

Passion

Your Passions are what really drive you. You might be religious or love art. You might be deeply in love or have children you care for. You might have a cause or a vision that drives you. Through your Passion, you build further Relationships, you might gain some new Skills, and most importantly, you tell the Director what you want your character’s story to really be about.

Scars

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If only this were true. What does kill you Scars you – you survive, and are probably marked forever, but you are also stronger in a certain sense. Your Scars don’t just provide great ways to develop your character’s story – their game effect is to add weaknesses to your character which will drive the story forward. They also increase your character’s Resilience – despite the Scars, you did survive, and you learned how to survive better next time. Fear, Pain, Privation and Temptation are the four things that Resilience helps you resist – and your Scars make you better at doing so.

Attributes

One of the most fundamental things about your character are her Attributes. These are basic measurements of what she’s good at and where she’s weak. The amount of dice she rolls for a given conflict will be mostly based on her Attributes. In Parsec, there are six of them: Power, Mobility, Precision, Connection, Appeal and Resilience. (These are also the Attributes that every spaceship has – more on that in the Space Conflict section in the next chapter.) For human beings, an Attribute of around 4 is average.

Power is a measure of physical strength and overall health, including endurance. Energetic athletes and muscular soldiers have a high Power score. Power helps keep you from getting tired when you exert yourself, and it also helps in any conflict that involves strength or physical prowess.

For spaceships, Power is the amount of energy that a ship has available to dedicate to different tasks. It is the output of the ships engine at any given time, as well as the amount of reserve energy a spaceship has.

Mobility is physical speed and agility, and also represents how accustomed a character is to working and living and maneuvering in zero-G. Acrobats and characters who spend most of their time in space have high Mobility scores, and without a decent score working in zero-G can be incredibly disorienting.

Spaceships depend on Mobility to maneuver, which is absolutely crucial in combat.

Precision is not only hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills but also the ability to reason quickly and decisively. It involves some critical thinking as well as accuracy with most weapons. Skilled technicians and stealthy assassins have high Precision scores.

For spaceships, Precision is the quality and speed of the targeting software of the ships’ weapons as well as the speed of the central processor. It also represents the sensory instruments the ship has and how much detailed information it can receive.

Connection represents the ability of a character to find and understand information. With worldwide information networks, memorization is no longer an important skill. Even offline, vast stores of raw information are available at any time. The trick is to understand what information is important, and how it all fits together. Researchers and social networkers have high Connection scores, and they know how to find things and people in any situation.

For a spaceship, Connection represents what is available on board and how connective the ship is to whatever networks might be available. It also represents how powerful the ship’s communication array is.

Appeal is physical attractiveness as well as social skills. It is the ability to get what you want from people when you meet them in person. Sexy socialites and clever spies have high Appeal scores.

For spaceships, Appeal is not only how shiny and smooth the ship appears – it is also the ship’s service record and reputation. If you want respect, or at least work, for the ship then it needs high Appeal.

Resilience is simply how tough a character is. Slum scavengers and spiritual gurus have high Resilience. Resilience helps you resist fear, pain, privation and temptation. Resilience is increased when things go wrong for your character but she survives to fight another day.

For spaceships, Resilience is simply how well the ship holds together when it is stressed or under attack. Space is a hostile environment without taking into account pirates and privateers waiting for the next score. Resilience is increased by armor, shielding and reinforcement of a spaceship’s design

Skills

Skills represent what your character is good at. Anyone can attempt to do any task, even lacking the requisite skill, but the roll is going to be against the Default target number of 6, meaning that only 6s will count as successes. This means that significant success is very unlikely without at least some skill.

Any significant training in a Skill gives your character a Basic rating. That means that when she uses this skill, the target number is 5 – so 5s and 6s count as successes. Basic represents a talented beginner or someone who has just begun to train in a new skill. The next step in training is Intermediate. For Intermediate Skills, the target number is 4 – so 4s, 5s and 6s count as successes. Intermediate training is at the low end of professional Skill but enough to earn a living. It is appropriate for an apprenticeship or an internship, or possibly a Bachelor’s degree equivalent. After Intermediate, a Skill is raised to Advanced. With an Advanced Skill, the target number for rolls becomes a 3 – so 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s count as successes. Advanced skill is a high-level professional making significant contributions to their field or with plenty of responsibility. The highest level of Skill a person normally has is Master. With a Master Skill, everything but 1s count as successes. Masters in a given Skill are rare, and are almost always well-known. Masters of a given field are the ones who make the breakthroughs. Masters of professional Skills are renowned and sought-after.

Each Attribute has Skills which are linked to it. The level of the Attribute determines how many dice are rolled for that skill. So, for example, a character with a Power of 5 has 5 dice to attempt a grapple or to lift a heavy object. The target number for the roll is based on the Skill that applies in the situation. Here are the Skills for each Attribute:

Power: Striking, Hand Weapons, Athletics

Mobility: Zero-G, Acrobatics, Evasion

Precision: Firearms, Gunnery, Larceny, Analysis

Connection: Research, Networking, Science, Navigation

Appeal: Deception, Seduction, Persuasion, Intimidation

Resilience: Fear, Pain, Privation, Temptation (Remember, these are a bit different from normal skills…)

Traits

Traits are a further way to describe your character. Every Trait either adds dice or subtracts dice from particular kinds of rolls. Of course you can describe your character in ways that aren’t represented by Traits as well, but Traits are aspects of your character that are not covered by Attributes and Skills but that still affect the dice you roll in a conflict.

Traits are selected based on the work you’ve done in character creation, and they can also be awarded during the course of the game. Spaceships also have Traits, which are a way to customize a ship in a way that has an effect on the game.

Relationships

A character has many relationships, but only a few of them need to be mentioned I character creation. Minor relationships can come up organically in-game – there are even rules for that, which we’ll talk about in the System chapter.

In character creation, you begin with a story, and we break that story into five categories: Birth, Education, Profession, Passion and Scars. For each of these categories, a PC needs to have one major relationship. Relationships brought out in this way need to be ones that will have bearing in the game if possible, or at least influential ones for the character herself. In writing down what your character’s significant Relationships are, you as a player are telling the other players and the Director part of what you want the game to be about.

Birth: the Relationship from this category is almost certainly a family relationship – it could be a parent or a sibling, a grandparent, and so on. This Relationship might also be someone from an orphanage or a foster system if the character doesn’t have living parents or doesn’t know who her parents are.

Education: this Relationship is most likely a friend or a mentor who was influential during your character’s formative years.

Profession: the main Relationship here is going to be with the character’s employer or patron. Who does the character work for? If the character is self-employed, there will still be professional relationships based on what your character does.

Passion: this Relationship could be to an individual or an organization. In the case of an individual, that individual is very likely your character’s significant other – spouse, lover, and so on. This Relationship is probably the one that your character fears to lose more than any other. This Relationship is one that the Director is almost certainly going to push in some way.

Scars: Relationships drawn from your Scars are very like with antagonists, even enemies. Who are the people who are scarred you? What did they do? What is your relationship like now?

Profile

Here you take a chance to step back and look at your character overall. What stands out? What themes have emerged? What do you need to ‘flesh out’ or expand on in their background? Do you need to switch any Traits around to make more sense? How will this character fit with the other characters and with the overall game as your group has envisioned it? And so on.

Property

It isn’t important that you write down every object that your character possesses. In fact, its probably just going to slow the game down. In some situations, it will be important to know what your character is carrying with her – the Director should let you know when that is, and there is a place on the character sheet to write down what you have on your person.

Aside from some specific items you have on your and a few major things you own such as ships or vehicles or homes, everyday objects can just be assumed to be available. The game system that determines whether you can afford a given piece of property is your Status. Status is pretty much equivalent with financial wealth – there is some variety here, but the powerful are also the wealthy and vice-versa.

Status is determined in a cumulative way by your Birth, Education and Profession, as well as whether you are a Citizen or a Pariah.

Spaceship Building

Spaceships are built, in game terms, much the same way that characters are created. It is very rare that the ship your character might be living in or serving on was built yesterday, and it is also unlikely that it hasn’t been tampered with at all since it came off the assembly line. The rigors of space travel alone require constant upkeep and maintenance, as well as sometimes drastic repairs. Also, once a ship is out, it might change hands, peacefully or otherwise, and be put to uses that weren’t the original intent – piracy, smuggling and so on.

As mentioned earlier, spaceships have the same Attributes that characters have, though they mean slightly different things. Often, on a ship, the ship’s Attributes determine die-pools for the crew’s Skill rolls. That is, if your ship only has a Connection of 2, because of a damaged communications array for example, it doesn’t matter if your character is a master computer scientist. There just isn’t the Connection available to accomplish much. On the other hand, if your ship has a Precision of 8, almost any idiot sitting in the gunner’s chair is going to be able to do some damage because of the superb targeting system and HUD.

Resilience, as mentioned above, functions differently for spaceships (and any vehicles, but we’re just concerned with spaceships here). Resilience protects against four things: Concussion, Electromagnetism and Radiation. (Yes I know heat is radiation…) A given ship will have different ratings against different kinds of damage that it might encounter in space.

Concussion is obvious. Things banging into the ship, including other ships, small asteroids, and so on. Bear in mind that it is the job of the astrogator and the sensor array to make sure that the ship doesn’t bang into anything on long-term, high-speed trips. Hitting a tiny meteroid at thousands of miles per hour on a trip from the Moon to Gannymede will be disastrous. Fortunately, space is very, very empty. This reinforcement is more concerned with someone banging on the ship, or other mishaps that happen when maneuvering tactically.

Electromagnetism is a threat when maneuvering near things like neutron stars or planets with strong magnetic fields, but electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is a very popular way to incapacitate a ship. If you don’t want to have your hardware fried, you’re going to need specific kinds of shielding and system redundancy to deal with this kind of threat.

Radiation, including heat, is simple – most military-grade weapons function by essentially blowing up near you or burning a hole in you. A missile, for example, is both Concussion and Radiation, whereas a laser is Radiation alone. If a hole is burned in your ship, all of your air (and possibly your crew) will be vented out into space, so heat shielding is crucial. Also, if the ship is intended to enter and exit any significant atmosphere, or to travel anywhere near an active star, Heat will be a serious threat. Space is actually full of all kinds of Radiation, and what dosen’t fry you in the short-term will probably fry you in the long-term

Design Journal 3: Parsec Introduction (Rough)

This is the very rough draft of the Introduction section to Parsec.

PARSEC

Title Page

Table of Contents

Cool Quote

Disclaimer: Since this game is set in a fictional future at least a hundred years from the present, there will be some names of places, cultures, languages, religions and so on which are present today. Nothing is intended by this – this is a game, not a political commentary. If you want your game to be about political commentary, then go for it, but Parsec is not intended to further any particular political views. Its just a game.

One: Introduction

Welcome to the Solar System

Parsec is a science fiction roleplaying game set in our fictional future. The cultures and societies of Earth have been united by a single world government, and faster-than-light (FTL) travel is a reality through powerful Baeder Drives. Humankind is stretching out into the solar system, founding permanent colonies on distant worlds. FTL convoys reach out into nearby solar systems, gathering data and seeking Earthlike worlds. Fission, antimatter production and solar arrays provide abundant energy to power humanity in its quest for the distant stars.

But all is not well. On Earth, gleaming arcologies and sealed commuter tubes are mere meters from filth and squalor. Unrest is constant and brutally put down. Insurgencies crop up in the slums, threatening to upset the manicured lives of the planet’s elite. Family members disappear and are brought to secret prisons, never to be seen again. There is order for some at a high cost for the rest, and while some dream of the stars, others live in squalor and dream of revolution.

Parsec is a game about our dreams of exploration. It is about strange worlds and human beings undergoing rapid change. It is a game about the world gone terribly wrong, about a world-spanning government which crushes dissent. It is a game about corporate powers fighting privateer battles with each other and conducting espionage while exploiting those who starve in the slums.

In Parsec, we give you elements of a basic setting, and as time goes on we’ll add details and expand the world, as well as what you can do in the game. This is your game, though. A lot of the details of the setting will come from your own gaming group. The game is like a structure that you use to hold your story up – but the story is all yours. The rules help you move the story along, but you paid for them, so always feel free to break them or discard them whenever they don’t work. (We don’t think you’ll need to, though…)

Parsec game begins with your character. Everything has been going fine, until one day something happens and cracks form in her illusions. His world begins to fall apart. Or he’s had enough of hunger and filth, and he’s going to do something about it. She’s faced with some terrible decision, and then makes her choice. Now you decide what happens next.

What happens when the government turns against its citizens? What happens when profit is the only value? What happens when human beings change their own bodies and minds with new technology? What happens when seemingly-absolute power corrupts absolutely?

What happens when they come for you?

How It Works

In Parsec, you take on the roles of characters in a shared story. Those who are taking part in the story are the players. One of the players needs to help facilitate things and will have the responsibility of forming the shared setting your story will take place in. She is called the Director. All of the Players will have at least one character each that they are responsible for. The Player-Characters (PCs) are the protagonists of the story. They may not be heroic people, but they drive the story forward. The story is about them.

The Director is in charge of most of the people the PCs meet over the course of a story. She is also in charge of the world itself – she is like narrator who lets the PCs know what is going on around them, and she also has to know about the rules of the game because she helps decide what happens when there’s a conflict. Sometimes Players will help with these tasks, but they are the Director’s responsibility.

Before you begin, your group should get together and decide what kind of game you want to play. In Parsec, there are infinite options, but its possible to point out some general categories that the game lends itself to. Basically, you’re deciding what the story is about – but you need to do this together so that when everyone is learning the rules and creating characters, everything will fit together nicely.

Generally speaking, in Parsec, every story will start with some kind of crisis in the lives of the characters, and every story will involve conspiracy – being part of it, fighting against it, fleeing from it, and so on.

The story could be about an insurgency – people who are trying to throw off the yoke of the world government and rise up in revolution. They have suffered too long, and now there will be justice! The slums of Earth or the dangerous refineries of the colonies are your world – let them come, you’ll be ready. Or take the fight to them – break the seals that keep them in and you out, and see what happens.

The story could be about espionage – the characters are part of the conspiracy, protecting its secrets, or they are trying to find out what is really going on. They could be corporate spies, hired to conduct industrial espionage or even sabotage, and then escape without being caught.

The story could be about being hunted – the characters are mostly normal people put into extraordinary circumstances. They are being hunted by the police or by private security forces or bounty hunters, and they might not even know why! Maybe they know something they aren’t meant to know, or maybe they asked too many questions and drew someone’s attention.

The story could be about pirates and privateers in space – early colonization of the solar system is a bit like the Age of Sail on Earth. The government and corporations scramble for new resources and new sources of wealth abound for those intrepid enough to seek it out. Out in the black void of space, the law’s reach is tenuous, and increased transport invites predators.

The story could be about being a conspirator – your characters know some of what is going on, and they need to protect their position. You work for the government and have some security clearance, or you work for a major corporation that has to protect its secrets or go bankrupt. How far are you willing to go for the “greater good”? As you learn more uncomfortable truths, will your belief in what you’re doing survive?

The story could be about space exploration – there are still things to learn about the planets of this solar system, but more importantly, voyages to other stars are departing. They go out seeking resources, but more importantly, Earth-like worlds. And everywhere, people talk about whether they will find alien life…alien intelligence…alien civilizations. In the meantime, interstellar travel is dangerous enough, and not every voyage is documented, not every ship accounted for…

What You Do

Players narrate what their characters do and say what their characters say. One Player might say “My character Sarah goes over to the security panel to see if she can rewire it before the police arrive.” She might also say “I go over to the security panel…”. Players can speak in first or third person – every group is going to be a little different. It depends on how you’re comfortable engaging in the story. Sometimes a Player talks to the Director (in this case, Sam) “Sam, I take a look at the security panel. Is it a type I’m familiar with?” Other times, a Player talks to the other Players, and so on. Whatever is the best way to get the idea across and describe what you want to happen.

In the same way, the Director tells the Players when something is going on in the situation around them – as long as its something their characters would be aware of. Either way, the Director at least needs to know what’s going on.

Obviously, a lot of the time a Player-Character will want to do something, but it won’t be something easy. This means there is a conflict – a conflict between a character and the world, or around a character and another character. When there is a conflict in Parsec, you roll dice to figure out what happens. Dice are just a way to make decisions about the game that can be surprising to everyone – they represent how things can go right, or go wrong. They also represent what a Character is good at. If she’s really skilled, the Player has a lot of dice.

All of the dice used in Parsec are 6-sided. You’ll probably need at least eight dice or so per Player, though having more will be helpful. When you roll a handful of dice, some of the dice come up “successes” – that means they count towards what you are trying to do. The more successes you roll on the dice, the better your Character does. You know a die is showing a success because of the number it shows – every roll has a target number, from 2 to 6, and every die showing that target number or higher is a success. So, if the target number is 3, and you roll the dice, 3s 4s 5s and 6s count as successes. If the target number is 6, then only 6s count as successes. There’s a little more to it, but we’ll get to that later in the chapter on Conflict.

In the next chapter, Character, we talk about how a Player creates her Character to use in the game.

Design Journal 2

(If you want more information about this project, check here)

So, a lot of my thinking has been going toward the setting for this SF game I'm trying to design. I've got a skeleton of a system that I think will be workable. I have been given some information by the guy who wants to publish the game about the setting, but he's also said that I'm free to flesh things out.

His idea is for a game set about 150 years in the future. There is a world government and FTL travel, but he doesn't want it to be too high tech - nothing similar to Star Trek, for example. He's also said 'I like conspiracies', so based on that I've decided to go with a conspiracy focus for the game overall. In thinking about it, I couldn't come up with another popular SF game that is centered around conspiracies - except Paranoia, which is an entirely different kind of game from what I have in mind.

The default setting is going to be a situation where the PCs have all been disassociated from their own lives somehow. Something has happened to clue them in to the fact that Something Is Going On. Maybe they've been inexplicably fired or someone they know has been disappeared. Maybe they've been accused of a crime and have decided to flee the law.

Regardless, the story for a particular character starts when they realize they can't go back to their old life, or that things are falling apart around them. As this happens, they learn more and more of what is really going on - or at least they think they do. Meanwhile, they have to learn to get along somehow on the fringes of society.

I imagine this fringe actually being really huge. I don't see any reason why the future will be much more equitable than the present or the past, so Earth in this setting is something like a vast slum, pretty seroiusly polluted, with enclaves of wealthy people living in arcologies and in hermetically sealed communities. The truly wealthy have probably mostly moved to space.

I kind of see two general genres of games - games about conspiracies on Earth or games about conspiracies off-world, elsewhere in the solar system. The former will be something a little like Gattica or Blade Runner - people on the fringe in contrast to the System. The latter will be something like maybe Alien or 2001 - bad things happening in space and what you do about it in the most hostile environment possible. (The publisher keeps recommending Outland, which I have to watch as well.)

This also ties into my original idea that identity would be a huge problem for people living in this future. Its hard enough to figure out who you are now, but the rate of cultural change shows no signs of slowing.

Another issue, in my mind at least, is the place or role that religion will have, especially among the affluent who have access to high technology. In one of Sam Harris' books he proposes that a mature science of mind would be the end of religion forever. What would this science of mind look like? Its interesting how the philosophy and even theology I'm reading ties into this project so nicely. I'm still really excited about it.

Design Journal 1

I've just gotten the exciting news that I will be working on designing a game system for Jolly Roger Games. I've mentioned this before, and the rough draft of my proposal was also posted to this blog, and is available here.

This is essentially a freelance gig, so I still have to do my work in graduate school and at my intern ship, as well as other things. The plan is for me to have completed a core rulebook and one supplement by Origins 2008, and at that time to also have a rough draft of a second supplement and an outline of a third at least. Personally, I'd love to attend more local conventions, like KublaiCon, as well as GenCon Indy, to run and pimp the completed game. So this is going to be a huge amount of work, but is also the fulfillment of a long-term desire to design games and actually get recognition of some sort for it.

Periodically I'm going to talk about the design process as I experience it on this blog. I'll also upload some content, though I can't upload much because it is intended to become the property of Jolly Roger Games when completed. In the meantime, this is a lot of what will be on my mind, so its what I'll be posting about.

My friends and I are also still working on Horror!, as well as other projects like True20, which we'll also be talking about.

Any other game designers out there reading this - if you're got advice for a first-timer, it would be much appreciated.

As a side note, I'm removing the Creative Commons copyright from the site's material. This is just to avoid confusion about the material I'm working on. I may end up adding Creative Commons as a label for posts which apply under those terms - we'll see.

The Road to GenCon 2008

That's how I'm thinking about my progress toward self-publication. I've decided that I will be published by next year's GenCon - either through the game proposal going through (I'm still waiting to hear about that) or by going with one of the projects I've been posting about here.

Right now, the front-runner seems to be the Horror! system. The first reason for this is that it is simple overall, but is a strong concept. The second reason is that a friend of mine seems interested in helping me with the process, so that tips things in its favor as well. Its a lot easier to work on something with someone else.

So, in light of these decisions, and assuming that the game proposal does not go through (I give myself a 20% chance I'd say), I want to have an idea of what is ahead of me and how I need to proceed.

General Production Tasks
(these are in rough chronological order)

1. Finish writing a full playtest draft of the game. This will be a rough copy that includes all of the major rules that I'll hopefully be able to playtest myself and also farm out to any other interested groups.

2. Recruit people. This includes people in the categories of art, web design, graphic design, and editing. Ideally, these will be people who are in the project for the fun or are friends who will help me out for free, but I'm also willing to pay if necessary to get quality help.

3. Playtest. And then do it again. And again. As I do this, and as I get reviews (if I'm lucky) from other groups running the game, I'll continuously modify the playtest draft and then send it back out for more testing.

4. Research technical details of self-publication. Formatting. Costs. Setting up a system to sell the book online (I'm looking at pdf/print-on-demand with online sales to start). Getting a POS of some kind to run credit cards for when I go to Origins and GenCon with the game. Etc.

5. Complete a rough draft of the game. This will be post playtesting with rules I'm happy with and everything else I think the game needs. At this point, graphic design will have to be together and art will basically have to be together.

6. Get the rough draft copy-edited and content-edited. I can't do these things myself for my own game. I'll be blind to the problems, as will most who have worked on it with me. So I'll need to find at least one copy-editor and at least one content editor who will almost certainly have to be people I don't know personally.

7. Publish the final copy. This will also involve setting up all of the details of how I am going to sell it and deciding on a price (I'll err on the side of cheap in the hope that it will get the game out there faster, but will still seem like it is significant. It's hard to respect a $2 game.) Right now I'm looking at having two options - a cheaper pdf option for download with light art, maybe pared down in general, and then a somewhat more robust option for purchase on a print-on-demand basis.

8. Go to Origins and GenCon 2008 to pimp the thing.

Thankfully, I spent a lot of time at Origins this year at seminars in the area of game design and publishing, and I've done a bunch of research on both and will continue to do so. I've got a general idea of how all of these things will work, as well as some specifics, and some people I might be able to turn to for help in the future.

As always, any comments are welcome.