I've been playing catch up with myself - I got behind on my #dungeon23 locations and then hit a bit of a wall and wrote ...nothing... for a while. However, I *think* I've turned a corner and I'm back on the rails.
So what's happened since June? During play test, we found the combat rules were a little chunky - I had a whole system of body locations, so any hit would affect a particular area and a whole set of armour pieces that would protect different areas (from gloves to helmets and jackets, etc.). For a game that doesn't shove you in the direction of combat, the feeling was that this was quite complex. I'd made it that way because I love the detail it provides in games like HarnMaster, but on reflection I could see that it had to go. A quick rewrite and locations/armour are now abstract; a hit is a hit and armour provides generic protection. It means the approach to scars needs to be narrated slightly more to decide where the scar is located. I feel like i want to keep the scarring in, as it is intended to slowly record the characters' (spirits) interactions with the villagers over time.
Langwick, the setting for Treasured Possessions is developing nicely - various threads have recently tied themselves together and I have a feel for the overarching story behind the whole place. While the setting was originally intended to be low-magic almost-like-reality, I realise that with time-travelling spirits, vengeful wizards and animated glass soldiers I might be straying just a little from the brief. It's starting to feel more solid, and I have a feel for some of the remaining pamphlets to finish off the year.
The combat playtest isn't quite there yet - I cut the rules to have something playable, then got distracted. I'm now thinking I can make a really short game that just deals with the villagers and ignores the spirits altogether and *that* can be the combat playtest. It would be simple to re-skin as a version of dungeoncrawling or even skirmish level wargame.This is an interesting idea, I need to put aside some time to work on it.
I have been learning to use Perchance, the auto-randomising website thing. To learn how to use it, I tried to recreate the villager creation tables from Treasured Possessions and blend them with the extra tables for generating people in Threap. I've also been writing some generic tables for people you might meet *on the road* and chucked those in as well to give an all-round person generator. I think it works ok, you can find it here. Having managed that, I've written a few more to generate settlements and the day cycle for Threap. I've seen how you can write a suite of these and use them to generate a game on the fly and I think they work quite well for an ad-hoc solo game of Threap.
I wrote a faction turn sequence - one faction per week/session will advance their aims. Thinking about how to achieve that with a deck of cards was quite fun, I think I've got a mechanism that works well enough to trial.
What's next? The play test continues, my lovely players are exploring Langwick as we speak. They've surprised me (in a good way) in how reticent they are to fight anything. I think this is definitely a smart move in Treasured Possessions, but it's less of a "we might not win" motivation than a "we don't think it's right to kill this" vibe. I love that, it's at least a million miles away from where I started roleplaying back in the 1980s.
More work on Langwick - I've just about caught up there, with the August pamphlet almost ready. At the end of the year I want to consolidate the twelve pamphlets in to a single volume and (obviously) update for changes in the rules from play testing. At the moment, that sounds like a massive job, but I think it will be worth it.
Finally, I might have some time in September when I can run a live game, albeit over video. I don't know if it will come off, but I need to start getting things together in case it does and perhaps start looking for people to play.
Comments