Wednesday, 28 March 2018

One More Fantasy Heartbreaker

It's my birthday this week, so I'm taking some time off. The Earth has gone all the way round the Sun almost 23 times since I was born, and I think all that spinning is starting to get to me.

The blog continues in earnest next month.

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For now, I'm announcing a Thing, mainly so that I feel some pressure to actually do the Thing.

I'm making a game! I've made games before, this one's a little different. I love the DIY scene, the community of players and designers all cobbling away, sharing and adapting great ideas, each person building their own take on OSR gaming for their own group. This will be my contribution, I guess.

Here are a few general notes on what this game is:

- It's light. Very light. I've fit an early version of the rule book on 2 pages, and character creation with all the options and spells on another. You could copy a character sheet onto the palm of your hand.

- It's not d20, or based on old D&D rules in that sense. You use a d12 for everything, because the d12 is the best die. (You can convert any other OSR thing into this real easy, though.)

- The prevailing setting in most OSR stuff is historic-ish fantasy horror and/or New Weird. The implied setting in this game will be just as generic, but very different. I have no idea if anyone will want to play in it, but I do! At the very least there will be a new kind of aesthetic out there in OSR gaming.

Here's everything Joseph Manola has written about Romantic Fantasy, which Spriggan suggested should be called Hope and Heroism. It's a genre that is a natural fit for OSR play, and will be (I hope) exemplified in this game.

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If any of that sounds like something you'd be interested in, I'll be posting chunks of design and my process here until it's done or implodes or something suitably final happens.

I think transparency in any creative process is a great thing, and I think it's a large factor in what sets games like these apart. So, here I go.

More information next time!