Anyway, leaving that aside, how do you view the concept of taking what you like from each game? Such an amalgamation would be a new design, but yeah, I guess beginning from scratch with just the aesthetic might work out better than cannibalizing other games, though I think that’d work out well as well (I’m considering something of the sort for something of my own right now).

I’m curious about Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, do you mean PDQ#? It seems to me that setting is not irrelevant and disconnected from what you’re aiming for. Even if it’s modular and should fit several settings, it still seems like there might be a “gist” aimed at. I’m not sure how to put it any better.

Last, I feel a big “lite” and “crunchy” tension. But I guess many of the games we love the most engage in this fight… both the ability to pick it up and make all sort of stuff work in it, and yet be mechanically engaging.

I am very interested to see how this progresses, I’ll try to pitch in with an idea or comment when possible.

I haven’t discussed much how marketing would work here (in ways different from Nine Worlds or Serial Homicide) and how the community could help.

The marketing’s more important in terms of success here than the particular game system itself. It requires some critical early successes — for example, getting designers involved who bring with them some level of recognition among hobbyists. Or, getting publishers on board early with the same effect.

From there, actually building and hosting the tools to foster a community is the next step. At least one “hub” site with community activity is key. With that, direct marketing in the form of registered users and consistent, regular email newsletters is important, too.

That community must also allow members to post and share their own hacks, games, components, etc., thus contributing to the usefulness an broader application of the game.

All of this is different from you or me publishing our particular games for a couple key reasons. First, it distributes the effort among participants, rather than requiring individuals like you and me to do the work. Second, it allows interested gamers to do the same — they’re given platform for creation, evangelizing, and so on. And, it does it all in a framework that still allows creators to own, create and sell their work. (Rather than, for one example, me starting a company and getting a bunch of people to either freelance for me or license material.)

I’m not saying this is a simple matter. It can, of course, fail miserably. But, I don’t agree this is the same thing, expecting a different result. My take was that I was tired of not having good options outside of what you describe, so give it a shot anyway.

As I understand it, your plan is saying that “Step 1: Design a new game system” is going to lead to “Step X: Have passionate, supportive community of players on the scale of FATE/BW/Lumpley” just because the game system is different.

However, there are tons of games that started with “Step 1: Design a new game system” that actually lead to “Step X: Have limited exposure and few sales on the scale of Nine Worlds / Serial Homicide Unit”.

I don’t understand how modular design is supposed to shift the odds in a favorable direction. Maybe I’m just being dense, but it looks like doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And that way lies madness.

When I read your PART 1, I figured you would be centering your plans on community development and how to get players to talk to one another about your game and their experience of your game. Mr. Hicks had laid out his thoughts on the matter in this blog post. It seems to me that the communities you’re trying to emulate (at least FATE and BW) excel at communication BETWEEN players, with communication FROM creators TO players being a less-important component of community membership.

In the “good ol’ days” of The Forge, was it all great and energized because Ron was telling us what to do, or because we were excited about exploring one another’s ideas and contributing our own?

You raise excellent questions. The community of enthusiasts for particular games or sets of games is the goal, yes.

Therefore, I don’t rule out starting either with an existing community, or with an existing game with an existing following. But, given the way I want to do this, I’m not sure what that existing group or game is. In the indie scene, I can think of three possible groups.

First, the FATE community. This one is actually among the most plausible to me. FATE’s already open source and has a following. I have my own personal biases against it, but there’s a good deal there that’s interesting.

Second, the Burning Wheel community. Here, the game is not open. I have no idea whether Luke would open it. He might be more inclined to license. The following’s pretty good.

Third, I think Vincent has a comparable (if not quite as big as the first two options) following. But, his games are highly unique and well designed. People dig his games precisely because they’re so brilliant, and because they’re by him. He’s got his own brand! Bottling Vincent up and selling him’s impossible, to say nothing of getting his permission to hack his games to pieces.

Now, there may also be some community outside the creator-owned scene. I’m open to suggestions on that front.

Regardless, to accomplish what I’ve described requires a bit more hacking. Rather than just creating a game system, I’m suggesting we create a system for game systems. A framework. I’m not sure how that happens with, say, FATE. But, it’s plausible.

So, when I reviewed all those options and my goals, I decided a new design is the best fit.

It’s a massive uphill climb from there. So far, that’s evident that interest in designing the core isn’t happening yet! I’ve still got to make some inquiries, maybe convince a couple designers this is worth doing.

I bring this up because my own impulse is always to start with design, and my own marketing has not been very successful.

Foundational modules would include resolution, yes. I envision character creation as several possible modules — could be done with paths, with clever questions like Best Friends, or just “point buys”, etc. But, all would feed into some basic concepts.

I actually have penned out a rough concept that I’ll be posting later on. It identifies all the pieces of characters, suggesting how each component could be completed in different, modular ways.

For example, one of items on the diagram I’ve got is “Aspects/Traits.” And, what it means is a character quality that not all characters share. So, rather than an “Attribute” like Strength in D&D that all characters have, it more like an Aspect of Heart of Gold from FATE, which only some characters (or one!) would have.

But, each individual “trait” works the same way. So, Heart of Gold gives a bonus die (or whatever thing) pretty much the same way that Strong does, just in a different fictional context.

Something else about the persona: he wants to be able to play the same system with his regular group and also his kids.

I’m trying to imagine the modularity. Without details how anything works, what are the foundational modules? Resolution is central, yeah? Setting seems easy to point to. Is character creation a module? Or several? Or part of setting? Etc.

The issue isn’t whether the audience actually gets distinct games. The issue is whether a) there’s an audience at all(!) and b) whether the new game is sufficiently recognizable to them such that they are more willing to purchase and/or play it.

For example, Mutants & Masterminds is by every measure a very different game from D&D 3.0. It’s reward systems are different, it’s damage systems are different, and so on. But, there are sufficiently recognizable items that it had a wide rate of adoption among D20 fans.

This isn’t about the intricacies of design as much as it is about the vagaries of hobbyist preferences.

If I am at a point in that module where the system won’t go where I need it to, I have the choice of writing a set of rules which can be bolted onto the system, or if the system isn’t doing what I need it to, then writing a new game to cover the situations I am trying to play.

For too long we have tried to write new games for every instance of play. I have been guilty of this as well. At the same time we see a lot of borrowing of mechanisms between games to do this. We have a good understanding of “best practices” and it shows in the similarities of recent systems.

I think that we are capable of crafting a strong extensible system and backing that system with a community providing a variety of ways of creating new materials. If all of this is backed with an understanding that there is a reason to market this system outside of the “Community” then the possibilities as they say are endless.

I feel that by supporting the system we provide a better path to mastery of the craft. Learning to write good modules is a step we have eliminated from our tool kit of being good creators of games. Many of us write game after game to learn our craft trying to master all parts at the same time. This has led to an ash heap of abandoned games which isn’t helping any of us. By not re-inventing the wheel at every turn we can focus on specific aspects of the process and become masters of that which we are good at. I may be better than you at world building and you might be tremendous at crafting tightly bound character settings. We can do those things which we love and are good at better if we share a common system.

Lastly, I think that the marketplace is a great tool for helping to strengthen our games. By having to think about the market you create something which is more robust than many of the things we creat for the community. That robustness will be tested and improved upon and what emerges will be a stronger product than the hot house flowers we are currently producing.