So, May. April wasn’t bad. Busy, hectic, but perhaps not all that bad. Small progress is still progress. This time was a mix of things, some of which made it online.
In Hoist the Colors, there was several items this month, most around game mechanics for the setting. The rest was for an upcoming Creature Feature, but that’s another post.
Role playing game mechanics are actually relatively simple in concept and revolve around the character, or characters. It follows right in line with what any writer thinks about with a character, such as what happened to them, what did they do in return, and so on.
But, while most think its all heavy math, that’s not really true. Sure, at some point you’ll run into that. Character A trips over a rake and takes X amount of damage and so on. That’s the details though. In broad strokes, RPGs are logic systems. For the software architects hiding out there among us, they could easily be called “Event Driven Architecture”. With the Player Character doing an action or event and making something happen, which could cause something to happen to them.
Hang on, I promise I’m getting somewhere.
So that means you need to think about how can a player understand that their character hurt themselves by tripping over a rake? What’s a good way to note this and use it as a prompt for their roleplay. Which, in turn, would be how the player is ‘writing’ their part of the collective story.
Now we get to the math. See, I told you I was getting somewhere.
Because Hoist the Colors leans on the mechanics from Forged in the Dark, I’ve some starting game mechanics to work with. But! In this set of mechanics, game designers are happily encourages to “scrape the paint all the way off”. Which means, look at and use each part of the mechanics… or throw them away!
So what’s the measuring stick?
Ah, that would be the worldbuilding. The lore. All those little stories or bits of fiction you’ve been writing about your setting already. In the end, you get this lovely mix, and you should! Because in the end, your players are telling their stories in your world just as you, the Game Master, are. So those rules, or really guidelines, must support the players telling their stories. Just like they should support you as the Game Master ( or Master Author ) are telling your part of the story.
They should support, but also know when to get out of the way.
In Hoist, this has been the month of working out how to measure and track how a character performs actions and deals with consequences. That would be Stress, Scars, Harm, and so on.
The mechanics are pretty simple. A character performs an action, they often will take at least 1 point of Stress (think fatigue). Because everyone gets tired. Take enough Stress (and not take time to rest), a character gets a Scar (which is as much a trauma condition or personality quirk as anything else). This expands the character, which deepens their story.
Harm, works much the same way but is only when the character is in a fight or a situation where they get hurt. Last comes another set of mechanics called Curse of the Dark Mark. This one is for those characters who are all too willing to cheat the powers of magic out of the price to cast spells, etc. Specifically, characters all too eager to take that short road to power.
Think the Dark Side from Star Wars, and oh a dozen other references from other settings and stories.
Are they done? Well, done-ish. They’re done enough for now until playtesting, which again for the techies out there… think “QA cycles” (yes, RPGs and writing manuscripts have so much in common with software development its absurd).
But I’m feel really good about these rules so far. They are time consuming to write and feel like you’ve gotten the right words in place that let them support people playing and still not get in their way.
Which, really, is the holy grail. Because a role playing game system and its worldbuilding is like all the prep and research to write a novel… without doing the actual writing (that would be the “playing” and “collaborative writing between players”). Just like a role playing game and its worldbuilding are just like designing and coding a software scripting framework… where the “compiler” that “runs” the code, is the players and Game Master’s imagination.
And that’s a wrap for April! More to come in May, such as much more lore and creature features. Hopefully some prose, too!
For more about Hoist the Colors or any of the other fiction I write, please consider subscribing as I would really appreciate the support, sometimes I post behind the scenes on writing, worldbuilding and more. If you’re wanting a deeper look at Hoist the Colors, take the plunge here at the link: Hoist the Colors.
-Kummer Wolfe