November 10, 2013

Good and Bad News

So I wrote a mecha game once, and it was alright, you might have heard of it. It works pretty well for this whole anime robots thing, and also works for other anime action things with a little bit of creative interpretation of rules. And I really want to make it work even better for those other things! I want intelligent robots that don't need pilots, I want magical girls with all sorts of elemental-themed magic powers, I want to command platoons of ghosts, demons and pocket monsters with a single PC.

And I want to pull this off without making the system collapse into a black hole of incomprehensible rules or one type of character being obviously more powerful than the others. It would be pretty cool if it were possible to have heroes in costumes and giant atomic lizards fighting side by side as allies of Tokyo Justice.

But the current ruleset wouldn't work for it. It pains me to admit that a supposedly generic system doesn't really pull it off, but without some major rewrites to the rules the magical girls won't get along very well with the giant robots.

For the most obvious example I can think of, consider that Mecha moving at similar speeds and being virtually always faster than humans is fine by itself. But things get more complicated if you're going to include human sized characters into the mix, suddenly we either have some PCs being always slower than others or the average guy in a powered suit running as fast as a plane can fly.

Yes, I am saying we would actually need a Speed Attribute.

To make the Mecha work well together with the other character concepts I need to touch up the rules, simplifying them in places and adding complexity in others. It would keep a lot of what gives GGG its distinctive feel, like Genre Points and Tension, but some of the rules that are obviously only meant to work with giant robots in mind would most likely have to go. The four Weapon Types are the most obvious offenders here.

In short, I would need to rewrite the entire darn game. On top of that, it would not necessarily be a better game, it would for the most part be a different game.

And now the Good and Bad News

The good news is that I'm basically writing a new game altogether that can handle robots and non-robots better, because GGG works for the whole "robots only" thing. It will be similar in parts but aiming for genre versatility rather than variety of robot-themed options. I also don't want to be working on it forever either, so I want to get it done right without having to spend two years of rules fixes after the initial release.

Time flies, doesn't it? But I digress.

This means a more intensive design and development process than what I've been doing up till now, and as many delays as it takes to only release it when I am positively sure that is ready.

The bad news is that it also means no more more updates to GGG. Not even any supplements.

So today's post is a little short, but over the next few weeks I'll be explaining with more detail what I'm doing. I'll go over what I am going to keep from GGG and what I'm changing, plus the whys and hows of the process. Expect a lot of game design theory (and some playtesting stories shenanigans) until, at the very least, the holidays.

Next post will be about the basic mechanics of the game: Tests, Advantages and other general conflict resolution matters plus Attributes and the fate of Natures and Chassis templates. Hopefully that sounds like fun.

2 comments:

  1. Rest in peace GGG, may explosions fly you to sleep.

    No but seriously, a new system sounds interesting though I can't help but feel a tad disappointed that GGG won't get any more content. I personally was hoping for some more content before you moved on but beggars can't be choosers. I'm glad you're moving onto a project that you have passion for though, and i'm personally excited to see something with magical girls, having played (and playing in currently) some campaigns of that nature myself.

    So all in all, best of luck! And thank you!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the good vibes!

      I'm going to start with the robots as a proof of concept, but I will get to the magical girls eventually.

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