Writing your own game

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Jenx

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I'm sure many people on here have written their own game rules or house ruled something so much it takes on its own identity. My first was 'Dragonsword' aged 10 when I sold my D&D Moldvay book to a friend intent on buying another only to find the local shop had sold out and had no idea when it was getting more in. In order to play (and get others to play) I needed rules and figured I'd write one. How hard could it be? My game was basically a numbers filed off version of D&D with as many Classes (race as Class) as I could squeeze in from wherever I could find them including Lycanthropes, Hawkmen, Cloudmen (like genies) and undead. It was garbage but I convinced my group to try it and they played it for a while (months) until the Mentzer basic game came along.

Other games popped up, mostly based on cartoon tv shows like Thundercats except with all manner of different animals, a Knights in armour game where I tried to make a gore splattered critical table (I'd watched the film 'Excalibur') and Barbarian, where the players hack and slayed their way across the dark ages. Most of the games revolved around carnage, death, destruction, loot and basically were fantasy wild west/space/supers/whatever where the players ruled the roost.

I regret that most of them didn't survive various house moves (and are all 35+ years old anyway, and for the most part are hand scribbled crap) but wondered who else had not only written their own games but managed to get them played. My group didn't have a choice - I'd run a published game one session then insist they try some hand scribbled garbage. Most of the time they were happy to do so but these days I wouldn't dare press gang my group of players into service as guinea pigs!

So, what stories do you have of games you've written or house rules so removed they mor eor less became their own game?
 
I. The first RPG I ever created with a friend of mine, was based on the comicbook Groo.

There wasn't much in the way of "system design" behind it, I think it was largely taken from the system in Dicing with Dragons, it was more we came up with our own statistics and skills based on pouring through issues of the comic and cataloguing things that happened, and we figured out a kinda elaborate Kopin-based economy.
 
I've written tabletop wargames from scratch, but never an RPG. The closest I have come are two games that had great settings but tediously complex combat systems. I substituted my own combat systems and ran them at the table. Nobody disagreed with the changes, but even so I don't think they got much play before we moved on to something else.
 
II. After Groo, me and some other friends worked on an RPG based on the film Clue based on the boardgame Cluedo. It actually was more of like an add-on to the boardgame that gave your character stats and sorta converted the boardgame into a limited RPG, expanding the way mysteries are solved. Each character had their own reason for wanting to kill Mr. Body, and their own secrets to hide, and you could kill off other people who got too close to discovering your secret, so there might be multiple murderers - or everyone might be.
 
I once was working on my own generic game system, and even ran a couple short campaigns with it (the first, in the early stages was just a couple sessions, the second lasted a bit longer). The premise I worked on was I took the experience system Paul Gazis used for his Eight Worlds Traveller campaign and jiggered things so a starting character got skill points commensurate with using that experience system (or my take on it at least) based on their age. Then I layered GURPS/Hero like advantages and disadvantages, a simplification of Cold Iron magic, and some favorite combat system bits. And now it sits on my hard drive...

I suppose to some extent you could consider my implementation of Cold Iron "writing a game" because I have wrapped the combat and magic system in a general skill system and am working on procedures for exploration and such that were never part of the original game.

Oh, and back before I was exposed to D&D, I wrote a board game for the skirmishes of April 19, 1775 in Massachusetts. The board was literally a plank of wood :-) It never really went anywhere but it was fun. I had also previously made my own alternate board for Tactics II and later I played with alternate starting positions for Gettysburg.
 
I wrote so many games over the years (most of which never even reached the playtesting phase) I lost count. My most successful homebrewed system was a skill and effect-based system I made in the late 90s. The system was inspired by Marvel Super Heroes RPG (FASERIP; I didn't even know about HERO/Champions back then, and 3e/Mutants & Masterminds didn't even exist yet), using a d20+Mod vs Target Number (TN) task resolution mechanic inspired by Cyberpunk 2020, but using a d20 instead of a d10 (cuz higher variable range, plus D&D flavoring), and I used a 12-level scale for effects instead of ranks like FASERIP.

Damage was 1d6/per level for instant damage (like explosions), 1d6/2 levels +2 at odd levels for weapon attacks, Damage Resistance was 3/Level, Conditions had a TN based on their level (something like 10+Level) to be resisted, Modifier effects were +1/Level for specific stuff (like resistances) or +1/2 Levels for general stuff (like attributes), etc. The system was created as a universal system as a base, but I used an improvised Cyberpunk + X-Men style mutants setting to play test it, cuz that's what we were into at the time, and having superpowers allowed us to test the effects and power creation components. Gear was basically created using effects + level as well. The system had it's kinks that needed fixing, but mostly managed pretty well.

I also heavily modified a bunch of games, specially AD&D 2e, which eventually became unrecognizable. I basically translated every character ability or characteristic (such as HD type or THAC0 progression) into blocks of XP you could add up to figure your XP progression when building a custom class based on your selected abilities. I had many notebooks full of notes I lost over the years with numerous variations that evolved over time depending on what supplements I had available, like Player's Options and such.
 
A few years back I decided to roll my own skill based RPG. Since Fudge is designed to be a DiY RPG toolkit so I used Fudge with a little Fate but based on my ideas. It floundered on the problems with 4DF and progression but otherwise worked out OK.

If I revisit it, I would be using 3d6 and taking some ideas from the AGE system.
 
I would say that I have a couple of dozen written or part written games in my computer and I have run successful campaigns with several of them.

I think that for good games design it helps to come from a logic driven background such as IT or engineering where managing the combination of multiple moving parts into a coherent system is paramount. Part of that is to know when to stop adding weight to a system and to start adding playability.

There are comparatively few published RPGs where I have a strongly favourable view of their core rules across multiple combat and non-combat situations. I think a good proportion of RPG designs are created by a highly creative mind rather than a logical/crafter mind and so have inherent weaknesses running through them. I see similar in some campaign worlds which completely fail to stand up to any logical basis even when I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, I know my weaknesses and I would say that very few of my story line/scenario designs are paragons of the art and I would be unlikely to compare them favourably with some of the better commercial offerings.
 
III. My friends and I eventually abandoned Clue to work on a game based on Duck Tales & Darkwing Duck. We adapted the system from WEG Star Wars first edition, and I don't think we made any significant changes, we mainly focused on statting out the characters and technology from the shows. But we were all 11-12 years old, so we didn't think much about system design in those days. It was a novelty just drawing the characters and making profiles on my Apple IIGS computer.
 
...

but wondered who else had not only written their own games but managed to get them played. My group didn't have a choice - ...

So, what stories do you have of games you've written or house rules so removed they more or less became their own game?
I started with house rulings from the start ~1978, pretty much had to...think I am now on game #4.

Game #1 was just a collection of all the D&D house-rules but still 80% D&D at it's core...though much heresy in that 20%....which was pretty much what everyone else had in 1979 :smile:

Game #2 was more the departure, adding in skills, using d100 but still using classes and skills increased with level. Think BRP + D&D + some FGU and Traveler influences but started handling attributes in my own way ...played that for maybe 8 years total with a couple different groups. This game went way too far down a crunch road on paper, but really ignored much in practice. I was not immune to the zeitgeist of the '80's either with respect to crunch. :smile: I call this a game as I completely did all the creatures and spells and magic items up in this new system. In total played probably ~80 sessions of this game.

Game #3 learned a lot from #2, especially on the balance between abstract and crunch, and although a mechanic may be "abstract" in practice it can provide much greater verisimilitude than a crunchier and even well research simulation mechanic. This one was actually designed and compared to what I always felt really worked with D&D and other games (TFT and Traveller) but have the most experience with D&D in sheer play time so a comparison point for effect even with completely different mechanics. Also worked out all the statistics before introducing to the group. Actually transitioned to this from Game #2 with the group had at the time, very well received. This game #3 was 2d10 added together as a base mechanic. This was the game played for about 10 years, with two different groups. In total played well over 100 sessions of this game.

Game #4 is my current iteration, a dice pool count success type system. Those in my group who where with me when played Game #2 joke about the rule changes, but Game #4 was even better received, and again transitioned from #3 to #4. Even more streamlined, easier maths, much easier tactical choice, incredibly faster combat encounters. Faster in terms of real world time, but plenty of combat rounds in game so can try things, have and ebb and flow, it seems more a struggle...and improved in many other areas we like. Like Game #3 worked out the statistics. I tend to be encyclopedic, so all the monsters, magic items, spells, etc. are redone in Game #4 system. Call this a full game as these things are fulsome.
This game we played for about 3 years regularly (again with two groups, well three but in one a majority moved away so that was only like 5 or 6 sessions) until some really bad personal life stuff happened, briefly restarted after and then the pandemic hit. This one, have only played about 36 sessions, not counting my dozens of play tests.

On Games #3 and #4 wrote up actual rule books and gave them to the players, character sheets too of course. :smile: Realized that my home rules are often far more complete, and error free than many a commercial game have seen...I just have no art in mine. Also every module I have always gets re-stated to work with the game de jour, but not often not much is necessary because it was designed to work with the modules I love.

On Game #4 have it written up (and all the gear etc.) for several genres, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi and fantasy. Mostly we play fantasy and have been using the same setting for that since 1984, the year I actually drew/redrew the map :smile:, before then the setting was the "same," just fairly nebulous.

I also wrote my own starship design rules (with an excel design spreadsheet of course) and an accompanying space fleet level battles "board game" (with board and counters) which played about a dozen times. That game also started long ago and had a could iterations...only the final one ever played though.



On getting others to play one's game....
I also wonder how to get a brand new group together to play my game. People I know have no problem playing whatever I come up with, and people who have never played an RPG before love it and have no issue. But those with RPG "experience," if it isn't D&D they seem completely unable to grok that mechanics can be a different way....mention of any other game systems way of doing it seems completely lost on most of them, as in they have little to no knowledge of other RPGs not even name recognition.

That may have changed though, all the 20 something's talk to about RPGs who are really into wanting to get started know of D&D, and want to do a "D&D" game, but talk to them about how they see play and how they get the verisimilitude...and D&D is going to let them down or has let them down. They tend to talk to me after they find out I've played "D&D" for "a while"...after the novelty of having played for near twice the time they have been alive wears off...we can talk turkey. It is perhaps not surprising (it is to them as all in their orbit find these to be obvious problems and wonder why they still exist) that the issues and disconnects they are having with D&D are often the same ones as those raised as far back as I can recall, and re-reading The Dragon even in print as long ago as 1977.

Still love playing with my "core" group but alas over the last 20 years or so those who were once near are now far, some now an hour drive away. I guess it goes to show how much we play well together as even that didn't stop us for years. Would be good though to get a group going that is more local and/or get the VTT thing really going.
 
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I do this a fair bit, as my sig file demonstrates. They are all one way or another Fudge-derived hacks, but I feel there is enough fresh content in them to consider them as their own thing, hence the whole Polar Blues Press gag.

The game one writes for themsevles isn't going to be the best game ever written, but it will have the virtue of focusing on all the things one is interest and glossing over the things one doesn't care for. Amazing coincidence, I am sure!

When I am particularly pleased with the results, I sometimes go the extra mile, write it all up properly, have a stab at illustrating it and put it online as a free download for anyone that might be interested. That "extra mile" actually entiles a stupid amount of work even for a pretty basic product; you would not beileve how much work. But then I guess it's no worse than painting an entire miniature army to a high standard and I can then get properly printed into a book by Lulu to use when I run it and I'd like to think that some people out there will get some enjoyment out of these games too.
 
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The first game I wrote was called G.I.Joe Challenge in 1987. I’m pretty sure I got the name off of an advertising campaign. I based the game off of the Lone Wolf gamebooks. Every Joe had a write up like this:

Name
Pay Grade
Strength (rated 1-6, bonus to endurance and hand-to hand combat if a 5 or 6)
Combat Skill (rated up to 15)
Endurance (rated up to 20)
Experience and Level (usually up to 100 XP and level 5)
Weapons and Martial Arts proficiencies

I wrote two booklets. One was the main rulebook which unfortunately fell apart many moons ago and the other was the Game Masters Handbook, which I actually still have with my 14 year old handwriting inside. It’s about 10 pages. I’m actually kind of disappointed I didn’t draw any pictures inside.

F01C8D62-2CD7-45F1-BB2E-B5D14E1DC519.jpeg
 
The first game I wrote was called G.I.Joe Challenge in 1987. I’m pretty sure I got the name off of an advertising campaign. I based the game off of the Lone Wolf gamebooks. Every Joe had a write up like this:

Name
Pay Grade
Strength (rated 1-6, bonus to endurance and hand-to hand combat if a 5 or 6)
Combat Skill (rated up to 15)
Endurance (rated up to 20)
Experience and Level (usually up to 100 XP and level 5)
Weapons and Martial Arts proficiencies

I wrote two booklets. One was the main rulebook which unfortunately fell apart many moons ago and the other was the Game Masters Handbook, which I actually still have with my 14 year old handwriting inside. It’s about 10 pages. I’m actually kind of disappointed I didn’t draw any pictures inside.

View attachment 30469

OK, you need to scan those in right now...


(plus what is the videogame single console on the shelf out of focus in the top middle right bottom shelf?)
 
OK, you need to scan those in right now...


(plus what is the videogame single console on the shelf out of focus in the top middle right bottom shelf?)

Oh that’s a small Pac-Man game on my bookshelf! My wife got it for me for a present for my birthday a couple years ago, I believe.

78059EF7-740A-4AD2-8C3C-34ABD1B1024C.jpeg
 
I do it again and again, sometimes I don't even know why. I just have ideas I want to mess with. There's a couple of the more finished ones on my website. Galaxies In Shadow is pushing close to 300 pages and is pretty comprehensive though I haven't put in chapters for music, acting, and sports oriented games yet.
 
OK, you need to scan those in right now...

This book I have is actually very thin on content. What I don’t really understand is why I didn’t use my typewriter instead of writing it all out by hand. I had a pretty good one with correction tape. It would have looked good.
 
IV. The next time I really threw my hat into game design is when I decided to run a game of Shadowrun that took place in the cyberpunk future of the Ravenloft setting. This was '95, so I would've been 15 years old. What started as a simple conversion became a huge huge project that would sorta lay the groundworks for my approach to GMing. I essentially rewrote the entire Shadowrun 2nd edition rulebook, hyper-focused on this futuristic society that had developed in the Domains of Dread, with Strahd Industries, Azaralich Inc., SothCo. Undead Street Samurais and Dracolich Senators. I put a lot of thought into how immortal "evil" beings would adapt to advancing technology. This led to the creation of a new primary form of currency - Soulchips - playing on the common cyberpunk trope of downloadable memories. The idea was essentially that those undead who retained or gained enough awareness to be tormented by their loss of humanity appeased this by devouring the memories of others - vicariously living pieces of another person's life, like taking a drug. They would even synthesize entire lifetimes by combining various memories to create the experience of living through various mortal lives for theselves.

This would also be the first time I really took a hacksaw to a system and made it my own. I completely rewrote the Shadowrun hacking rules (which didn't make a lick of sense to me), and turned the main rules into a strange hybrid with the D6 system and aspects of DC Heroes/Underground.

Moreover, this formed the basis for my first long-running campaign, lasting over a year.
 
This book I have is actually very thin on content. What I don’t really understand is why I didn’t use my typewriter instead of writing it all out by hand. I had a pretty good one with correction tape. It would have looked good.

I wish I still had any of the old games from my teens which filled numerous school notebooks.
 
The most fun I had with someone elses home made game was when a school mate created a D&D heartbreaker set in our school - Schools and Scholars. Our weapons were improvised sharpened pencils and rulers and the like, the monsters were caricatures of our teachers.

I did alot of work on a rolemaster/Runequest hybrid that it's definitely best that it fell into obscurity...

I do love exploring game systems though, so definitely interested in what others have to show.
 
If we are throwing up links to homemade games then this is a badly formatted version of one of my games but is at least complete in terms of the core rules with some powers, equipment and adventure notes. The original doc was in .rtf format.
Somewhere I have a whole load of paper notes that never made it into the electronic document.

Conspiracy 2015 RPG
 
I wish I still had any of the old games from my teens which filled numerous school notebooks.
Nah, mine were pretty bad. I had thirty or so, all on loose leaf and two or three pages. One of my more serious ones was "Caveman" which I wrote after reading a book called Fire Hunter, it's key feature was invention points like those in Villains and Vigilantes so you could invent things like fire hardened spears and stone knapping. I wanted to do a sequel called Bronze Age but I tried to work on it with my friends and that's how I leaned I wasn't a team player :grin:
 
I really wish I still had the school RPG we invented as kids. It was kinda like Alma Mater (which I'd never read until last year), but was filtered through Grange Hill, the Jennings series and Molesworth rather than American high school tropes.

The classes were things like nerds and bullies.

And the "dealer" who was blatantly Gonch from Grange Hill. I remember that class had a random table to decide what your main business was.

A roll of 01-05 was "sweets" and a roll of 100 was "heroin". I can't help feeling we may have taken the wrong lesson from the "Just Say No!" campaign.
 
The second game I created was around 1989. This was a fantasy game. I cannot for the life of me remember the mechanics but I have a nostalgic feeling that I really liked them. I had a notebook filled with stuff. I also made maps of the campaign area which looked like the maps from the (surprise, surprise) Lone Wolf books.
 
IV. The next time I really threw my hat into game design is when I decided to run a game of Shadowrun that took place in the cyberpunk future of the Ravenloft setting. This was '95, so I would've been 15 years old. What started as a simple conversion became a huge huge project that would sorta lay the groundworks for my approach to GMing. I essentially rewrote the entire Shadowrun 2nd edition rulebook, hyper-focused on this futuristic society that had developed in the Domains of Dread, with Strahd Industries, Azaralich Inc., SothCo. Undead Street Samurais and Dracolich Senators. I put a lot of thought into how immortal "evil" beings would adapt to advancing technology. This led to the creation of a new primary form of currency - Soulchips - playing on the common cyberpunk trope of downloadable memories. The idea was essentially that those undead who retained or gained enough awareness to be tormented by their loss of humanity appeased this by devouring the memories of others - vicariously living pieces of another person's life, like taking a drug. They would even synthesize entire lifetimes by combining various memories to create the experience of living through various mortal lives for theselves.

This would also be the first time I really took a hacksaw to a system and made it my own. I completely rewrote the Shadowrun hacking rules (which didn't make a lick of sense to me), and turned the main rules into a strange hybrid with the D6 system and aspects of DC Heroes/Underground.

Moreover, this formed the basis for my first long-running campaign, lasting over a year.

The idea of a Ravenloft version of Shadowrun actually sounds like a cool concept. Love the idea of "Soulchips" in a cyberpunk-gothic horror context. Also "Strahd Industries" sounds pretty awesome. :shade:
 
IV. The next time I really threw my hat into game design is when I decided to run a game of Shadowrun that took place in the cyberpunk future of the Ravenloft setting. This was '95, so I would've been 15 years old. What started as a simple conversion became a huge huge project that would sorta lay the groundworks for my approach to GMing. I essentially rewrote the entire Shadowrun 2nd edition rulebook, hyper-focused on this futuristic society that had developed in the Domains of Dread, with Strahd Industries, Azaralich Inc., SothCo. Undead Street Samurais and Dracolich Senators. I put a lot of thought into how immortal "evil" beings would adapt to advancing technology. This led to the creation of a new primary form of currency - Soulchips - playing on the common cyberpunk trope of downloadable memories. The idea was essentially that those undead who retained or gained enough awareness to be tormented by their loss of humanity appeased this by devouring the memories of others - vicariously living pieces of another person's life, like taking a drug. They would even synthesize entire lifetimes by combining various memories to create the experience of living through various mortal lives for theselves.

This would also be the first time I really took a hacksaw to a system and made it my own. I completely rewrote the Shadowrun hacking rules (which didn't make a lick of sense to me), and turned the main rules into a strange hybrid with the D6 system and aspects of DC Heroes/Underground.

Moreover, this formed the basis for my first long-running campaign, lasting over a year.
Man, Tristram, I thought you were older than me..

I remember spending a long weekend with a friend of mine around the same time doing a LOT of work on Middle Earth: The Sixth World, which was pretty much Shadowrun in Gondor. Sadly none of that survived in my possession.

I think my earliest actual creation was a Blade Runner rpg sometime around 7th grade.. call it 1991? All I remember at this point was that the Pulse Gun did something like 2d20 damage and was a lot better at penetrating the hide on a Nexus 6 Combat Model than the SMG, which was why my brother settled on actually using that after I wrecked his first character. I had been at ComiCon a couple years prior and it had changed my life, so I really had the bug by then, but still hadn't found my first group of players. By the time I did I was firmly into playing for a long time, and the next time I remember really working on my own system after that was when I decided to merge the concepts of Living Steel and d20 sometime in 2004.
 
I've always done designwork in other people's garden. D&D obviously. I did a lot of feature writing for Dragon and writing/design for Goodman games until finally I gave up the ghost on D&D altogether both in terms of design interest, as well as at my table (about two-years into 5e).

Outside of D&D, I'm always doing stuff for the systems that I love for various reasons. Professionally I've done a lot of writing for the latest edition for Talislanta (an extremely under-rated system on its own that I think outperforms D&D on every level). Tons of homebrew stuff. I'm currently working on my first Savage Worlds setting for SWAG, and once I get a few of those under my belt, I may try to go for the Ace program...

which will lead to my own full blown house-system. Which as everyone knows is a crazy undertaking.
 
Hm... The first ever game I wrote was with a few friends. It was basically a chronically bad oriental adventures D&D type game. I think we were about 14 at the time. Second game I wrote was a weird post apocalyptic mash up. Where one super state was like the US and the rest of the world were just scavenging around for tech. But there were demons and all sorts of other rubbish (Very cheesy looking back at it).

The two games I'm writing now (that may very well never see the light of day) are a Vampire one. Where vampires are utter bastards and control the world from the shadows. On the surface it might sound like a love letter to VtM but it pays homage to other sources like Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot and even the 80s horror (and very weird) Life force. But I'm stuck on the mechanics (as always as I've not head for math).

The second, is a cyber horror RPG. It's very dark with an oppressive atmosphere, but at the same time the players are pretty bad ass (and they'll need to be). Lots of influences here. Sla Industries 1e, Kult, Lovecraft, Running man, OSR.

Who knows if they will ever materialize however. :smile:
 
So, as an adult, my first serious effort was a game called Bare Bones (no not that one) which was a simple 3d6 fantasy game with a core mechanic that that didn't work. I was dissatisfied with Warhammer's failure to provide "Mass Combat Roleplay" and Warhammer Quest was a big disappointment from where I sat. The idea that you had to pay $20 each to get more characters offended me and the game was too limited and focused in scope. So I started working on a game called Bare Bones that I've done about six versions of. The last one's not too bad though there's stuff that could be better. It was the first game I made a .pdf of using Word Perfect. I also got some really nasty feedback for using Papyrus as the font. I keep meaning to rework it a bit and get the mass combat aspect working better.

After that I worked on an idea I called Fields Beyond that used a 1d10, 1d20, 1d30 difficulty scale. Somewhere after my Amiga died I got a PC and started working on Galactic Adventures which eventually evolved into Galaxies In Shadow. I also started writing a d% version of D&D which slowly morphed into The Arcane Confabulation as I went through discovering and loving Rolemaster and learning to hate ICE. In there somewhere I wrote the Incandescent 1d10 sfrpg to play with my kids. I've got a whole game that descended from it on my hard drive that nobody's ever seen in a d6 +5 and roll over on 6 and a 1d10 version. I also wrote the first version of Dark Passages D&D neo-clone around then which spawned the more widely available second version and half a dozen false starts on a third version and a 1 page D&D as a business card concept I did on a lark. I still can't bring myself to like D&D.

I wrote c21+ more recently, I think after I was disappointed with Mutant Chronicles Resurrection's 2d20 system, mine's a hybrid of Twilight 2000 2e and MC. It's more like T2k2 in character creation and more like MC in combat and has some suspiciously familiar monsters. I love Karnophages. Do you love Karnophages?

Over the years I've taken a number of stabs at a near GURPS redesign which recently got reignited, though I honestly think GURPS is too many things to too many people to ever really be replaced. Last year I designed Blood Red Future which is basically a W40KFRP based game with a different setting that just happens to contain versions of all the same stuff. I did a ton of artwork for it and fizzled out when I decided I wanted a more interesting psychic rules system. I really should finish putting it together. I could move some of the Hollywood movie spells from c21+ to flesh it out. Sometimes I think about converting it to Galaxies In Shadow. I also started on a fantasy version of c21+ and a skirmish game that was going to tie into it except I had a crazy idea for an rpg/solitaire dungeon hybrid game for it that I'm going to do instead. There was also a Spacemaster alternative I put a fair bit of work into including Javascripts to generate attack and critical tables.

Oh well, there's probably more than that and I didn't get into settings at all here. Okay, I may have a problem :grin:
 
I've always done designwork in other people's garden. D&D obviously. I did a lot of feature writing for Dragon and writing/design for Goodman games until finally I gave up the ghost on D&D altogether both in terms of design interest, as well as at my table (about two-years into 5e).

Outside of D&D, I'm always doing stuff for the systems that I love for various reasons. Professionally I've done a lot of writing for the latest edition for Talislanta (an extremely under-rated system on its own that I think outperforms D&D on every level). Tons of homebrew stuff. I'm currently working on my first Savage Worlds setting for SWAG, and once I get a few of those under my belt, I may try to go for the Ace program...

which will lead to my own full blown house-system. Which as everyone knows is a crazy undertaking.
I look forward to checking out your Savage Worlds material. Keep us updated on that. :grin:
 
When I was in 9th grade I started working on a game based on JOE, a comic I was drawing at the time that was a sort of parody version of G.I. Joe that also ended up incorporating a lot of Douglas Adams and 2000 A.D. and personal in-jokes about people in my school and such. The system, dubiously enough, was based around Traveller - I remember a chart with career types and rolls to enlist, get promoted, survive, etc. I lost the notebook that I was writing it in (I'd done maybe 10 pages of work), and never bothered to pick it back up.

Around the time I graduated high school I tried to do a sort of mashup of Cyberpunk 2020 and Amber Diceless (the genre of the former with the rules of the latter). It didn't go much past a couple pages of notes.

Around the turn of the century I tried again with a sort of rules lite dark fairytale game that was based mostly on the system from Prince Valiant (but using even/odd d6 rolls instead of coin-flips). That never really went anywhere either, and I'm not sure what happened to the notes for it, whether I still have them somewhere or they got eaten up in some long-defunct message board.

Nothing since then.
 
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OK, you need to scan those in right now...


(plus what is the videogame single console on the shelf out of focus in the top middle right bottom shelf?)
I think we a Pub PbP of that game, stat.
 
I've dabbled, and have lots of notes and scribbles but never took anything to completion. The first that I can recall was probably 10th grade (83-84), I was working on a post apocalypse game. Then we found Aftermath and it is a lot easier to play a game than to write one so... Mostly I house ruled stuff. In more recent years (the past 20 or so) I've spent more time looking at existing games that just didn't quite do it for me and played around combining different parts from games I like. I lack follow through, again a lot easier to play an existing game and tweak, than writing one from scratch. Maybe one of these days, I expect I've got another 50 years assuming I can avoid getting hit by a bus or impaled by a wild turkey. Good genes in my family, I have lots of relatives on both sides that made it to their 80s to low 100s, so my goal is to pass the century mark with some margin to spare.

Oh, and back before I was exposed to D&D, I wrote a board game for the skirmishes of April 19, 1775 in Massachusetts. The board was literally a plank of wood :-) It never really went anywhere but it was fun. I had also previously made my own alternate board for Tactics II and later I played with alternate starting positions for Gettysburg.

Wow, Tactics II brings back some memories.

Tactics II (AH 1958), Civil War (AH 1961), Blockade (1941), Dogfight (MB 1962) and Broadside (MB 1962) were my introduction to wargames by my Dad. The two Milton Bradley games when I was quite young maybe 5 or 6, Tactics II, Civil War and Blockade in my tween years.

Those Milton Bradley Games have much in common with some of the figure based lightweight wargames like Whizkids HeroClix and Pirates of the Spanish Main, using cards and plastic minis (biplanes or sailing ships).

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