I'll take a look Greg, but probably not til later in the week. My email addy is andrew AT steampowerpublishing DOT co DOT uk

To help me help you, do you have any specific areas you're unsure about, any questions about it you want answering? That will help me provide feedback other than "seems ok."

Hi Greg,

Would you be able to post any further details about how the game works, perhaps so people can give feedback on certain sections of it? As Andrew said, is there anything specific that you feel needs addressed?

Please feel free to email me at the usual address.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

I would be interested in taking a look too as I am thinking about competitive elements in RPG design at the moment. You can reach me through 'The Giant Brain' site below.

Cheers

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

'The Giant Brain' has launched.

Hi folks,

Sorry for the delay, stuck in a meeting all of yesterday afternoon.

Cheers, I’ll whizz you all something over, except I can’t find your email Malc…

Basically, I have one gaming group. We play all sorts of games, board, card, rpg, miniature. My previous game was pretty much a straight RPG with some strong indie elements and a funky background (least I thought so). In this game I’m hoping for something different. I’m trying to make a game that (a) you can play to completion in a few hours, as that’s how long I have to game, and (b) has a strong board game vibe – all of my players play a lot more board games than RPGs, and we don’t have to the time to give trad. RPGing a good go these days (campaigns? – forget about it!). In other words, it is competitive and balanced so that anyone can win. Oh, and there’s no GM.

The idea of this game is that it has a competitive board game-esque mechanic but layered with a narrative element. The other idea is that it can be played in any genre and any world. I have a big problem with RPGs in that I buy them, my players don’t – so if the game world is complex and interesting, I have a hell of a time explaining it all. In this game we sit down and say something like ‘ok, this in middle-earth from the films’ and everyone knows what we’re talking about.

Basically, we agree on a setting and a protagonist. We then tell a story over 9 scenes. The story has a number of paired, opposing themes that we agree on that help to make the story (hope – despair, Love – hate, whatever you agree on that fits the mood of the story you all want to tell). Everyone is assigned a theme in secret and you win the game by having the highest theme after 9 scenes. You blind bid for control of scenes with destiny points, of which you have a pool at the start. When you win (or come runner up) in a scene, you can ‘invoke’ a theme, exchanging the destiny point you bid for bonuses to a D10 roll. You pick a facet of the protagonist, and another player rolls a D10 and adds the facet. If you beat the protagonist’s roll, the theme is raised. If you don’t the theme is lowered. If one theme of a pair goes up, the other theme goes down. The runner up to the scene gets to invoke as well, but the conversion of spent destiny to bonuses isn’t as good. Other players can also spend destiny to affect your bonuses. That’s the mechanics summarised.

The narrative aspect is that each scene can be narrated. You successfully raised hope with the protagonists’ martial facet? You can describe a mighty battle that took place where the protagonist crushed his enemies and left the path to the quest open before him. You failed to raise love but raised hate instead using the protagonist’s ‘master musician’ facet? You could describe how the young musician fumbled his playing in front of the princess and became the laughing stock at court, etc etc. The idea is you all weave together a story of the protagonist and their quest, introducing and reintroducing other characters, sets and props as you see fit. At the end, the winner of the final scene narrates how the quest ends, and you all then determine who has the highest theme who wins the game.

That’s the basic idea. What I am after at the moment are objective ‘does that sound like fun to play?’ comments, does it sound workable assuming the mechanics is sound, and would you actually play it? And then assuming it’s all positive, some playtest help to iron out the kinks…

Cheers,

Greg

Ruby...Worlds beyond Dream, a science fiction roleplaying game from Fire Ruby Studios and available through lulu.com.

fireruby.co.uk

Lulu storefront http://www.lulu.com/firerubystudios

So, anyone had a chance to review my game yet?

Ruby...Worlds beyond Dream, a science fiction roleplaying game from Fire Ruby Studios and available through lulu.com.

fireruby.co.uk

Lulu storefront http://www.lulu.com/firerubystudios

Hi Greg,

Andy sent it over to me and I'm having a look through it this week. Hopefully I'll have some feedback for you by the weekend.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Sorry greg, I have been a little bit busy of late. I should be reading over it this week and give you some feedback.

Cheers

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

'The Giant Brain' has launched.

Cheers chaps. I've made a couple of adjustments which will make sense when you read it. First up, the 9 scenes you play don't end the story. Instead the winner after the ninth scene gets to narrate the 10th scene, the climax of the story, as they see fit (that's the reward). Secondly, now each of the theme pairings is composed of a light (constructive, helpful) and an opposed dark (destructive, unhelpful) theme, e.g. suspicion (dark) -- trust (light). To raise a dark theme, the player must overcome the protagonists score as stated in the rules I sent you. However, to raise a light theme the protagonist must overcome the players score (note that the player must add the bonus from every destiny point they bid). This leads to some interesting situations e.g. you have to decide whether to bid big to win the scene but that makes it more difficult to raise light themes. Finally, invoking the secondary theme now costs the same as the primary theme (i.e. bonus of 1 for every destiny point bid).

I hope that makes sense and cheers again for taking a look.

Greg

Ruby...Worlds beyond Dream, a science fiction roleplaying game from Fire Ruby Studios and available through lulu.com.

fireruby.co.uk

Lulu storefront http://www.lulu.com/firerubystudios

Right I have had time to take a look and will now proceed to tear your game a new one, in a nice way. I have a list of questions so I will just go into them:

Firstly your game seems to me to be a tactical story game, is that about right? If I have got that wrong then the rest of this might be bollocks.

I think you need to be clearer about the kind of story this game is good at telling. I get the feeling you want it to be all encompassing but the rest of the rules seem to indicate you want stories that are very much about the themes rather than over the top action etc.

Firstly why d10? To me you have to justify not using the simplest thing you can go for and d6 is better than d10. As far as I can tell you don't really need the spread and you don't deal with percentages.

Why is there only one protagonist? Will there be rules for more than one?

What happens if you are unopposed in your theme? i.e. what happens if no one gets the other half of the theme you pick. Will it not be easy to raise yours?

I would disagree with your scene and act structure. I would say the longest part by far in most stories is the middle yet you have 3 sections for each part. Is there any reason they need to be the same?

At one point in your rules you say that the person who wins second place can adjust the theme for every two points they have invested. This kind of makes it tactically pointless to bid in anything other than multiples of 2.

You also say that the 'player may not invoke themes from the same pairing on subsequent turns'. This means he can only affect his own theme 5 times. I think it will become very difficult for people to make significant progress on their theme.

Oh, the opposed themes. Does the number swing back and forth or do they just both progress from 0 in opposite directions. I think it is the later, but the way you have it set up implies a sort of 'theme swingometer'.

This is the one that really got me, and it hasn't been fixed by the adjustment above: why are the players fighting the protagonist?

The idea is to tell a cool story about this protagonist and the themes affecting him but everytime a roll happens the players are fighting the protagonist for control. Surely they should be opposing each other as storytellers? It is like the protagonist knows he is in a story and is resisting the machinations of the tellers.

Phew. That is it for now Greg. I see what you are going for I think but the basic idea needs a lot of work. I just don't think the bid mechanic is all that interesting and their might be a better way to do it. Also I really need to know why the players are fighting the protagonist, I just can't get past that.

Hope this helps

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

'The Giant Brain' has launched.

Hi Iain,

Cheers for the comments. Some of them I have addressed in a newer version of the game, but some of them I need to look at. I'll get back to you in a bit on that next week. But you are right - sometimes the players seem to be fighting the protagonist. I have changed that in one way - now players raise 'dark' themes (bad stuff in the story) by beating on the protagonist, but raise 'light' themes (good stuff in the story) by setting up an obstacle that the protagonist can beat. The way I think of it is that the players are the 'fates' if you like: working like the greek gods in the old 'clash of the titans' movie. They are setting up obstacles in the path of a hero, some that help (raising light themes), some that don't help (raising dark themes) him complete his quest. Does that make sense to you? In some ways those sorts of stories of the gods opposing or helping a hero are kind of what i am getting at in the game. You're right though the game certainly needs a lot of work, but cheers for the mechanical points. As I say, I'll get back to you on them!

Cheers,

Greg

Ruby...Worlds beyond Dream, a science fiction roleplaying game from Fire Ruby Studios and available through lulu.com.

fireruby.co.uk

Lulu storefront http://www.lulu.com/firerubystudios