So, as some might have surmised, I am toying around with a new game. I keep writing rules and rules and rules in an effort to come up with a reasonable facsimile of what I want at the gaming table. As I am reaching the elderly statesman age, I better hurry up. (Ok, not as elderly as our average politician apparently, so sub-statesman would be better. Yes, I actually meandered across that information this morning which in turn prompted this blog post. :) And, back to the subject at hand.
I keep futzing around with the rules. I think I hit upon a few good ideas which prompted me to write a bit late last night. Now, this ‘new’ game has been floating around in my head for a few years and I keep promising Stephen that I should be able to write it up – three years ago. He has thrown in the towel. I have not, much to his chagrin. But I have to hurry or these ‘new’ rules will never see the light of day lest my ghostly visage can pen the draft.
I say new, but they are not new. In going over the vast amount of gaming material I have at hand (print or electronic), it occurred to me that there are not any new rules out there (maybe – I am probably wrong on this as I usual am when I make grand sweeping declarations). It seems to me that most rules have been tried. If one cares to include the rules that have never been printed but remain as in-house rules or table rules, I am fairly certain every single rule has been tried at one point or another by someone. There is nothing new under the sun. The sun just does not shine on some. As to variations of rules, there are hundreds if not thousands of variations on simple core rule concepts at this point.
Maybe my brain is too old to think of anything new? Maybe it is in a rut? Maybe the most durable rules for The Game have been found and everything else is noise? I tend to think the latter is the case. I don’t mean noise in a negative sense. The noise is the music of anyone’s game. Those are the sets of rules that work perfectly (at least Ok) for that person or group. However, bundling the rules and sub-rules and variations together and mixing them up might has produced interesting results.
One rule or observation or natural phenomena that rarely shows up in games is the law of averages. It might appear that it does, but, off the top of my head, it only regularly shows up in attribute generation. This is something “The Dragon’s Crucible” intends to address. A lot of averages show up in the game. Not sure if they will work, that will be in the hands of the play-testers when I have the document ready.
Another non-rule is the chaos of combat. I feel combats should be chaotic, unpredictable, and fluid. In my little game I have removed certain restrictive elements in traditional rules. There is no initiative. This is not new, but to those who have not tried running without a static initiative, I would suggest giving it a shot. It might surprise everyone at how fluid battles become and the fog of generates many interesting and unexpected results.
I can’t wait to get this draft document finished. As soon as I do, I will be looking for play-testers.
No comments:
Post a Comment