Game Design "levels" and other game philosphy discourse

[Leitz]

While re-reading my AD&D DMG this morning a comment struck me. The explanation for minute long combat rounds and no critical hit charts was that the game is "heroic fantasy". Further reading reinforced the "keep it general so the game flows well" goal. While character levels and dozens of hit points may not be everyone's cup of tea, it makes sense in that context.

Very different than BRP or Traveller. Those two make it very easy to die. In Traveller you can die in chargen, which is a record, I think. AD&D isn't as dramatic as the R&K system of "7th Sea", which refers to itself as "Cinematic". In 7th Sea the player and DM decide how the PC will die before the game starts. "Old and in bed with someone a third of their age" is an option.

As I sketch out some ideas for a simple 2d6 based game it strikes me that there are at least three "levels" of game. Mentally I'm referring to them as "Realistic" (BRP, Traveller), "Heroic" (D&D), and "Cinematic" (7th Sea). My current goal is to write a Heroic level game that is not easy to over-power.



Acronymicon:

• AD&D Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, published 1978
• BRP Basic Role-Playing, a d100 system that is the basis for RuneQuest, Call of Cuthulu, Pendragon, etc.
• chargen Character Generation, what occurs before you actually start the game.
• DM Usually "Dungeon Master", as a nod to "Dungeons and Dragons". Sometimes "Die Modifier" when talking about game mechanics. Of course, "Die Modifier" refers to some Dungeon Masters.
• DMG Dungeon Master's Guide for AD&D.
• PC Player Character, that part of the story the player directs.
• R&K Roll and Keep; the basis for the original 7th Sea game. Roll X number of d10, only Keep Y.

[AsenRG]

1. It's not a record! It's just that nobody has managed to make characters die before chargen...but dying after you roll attributes is an option!

2. I can add a few more levels upwards, with Ars Magica, Exalted/Amber and Nobility. ..but that wouldn't serve any goal in the discussion.

3. OK, what problems do you perceive in writing it?
And what do you want to accomplish that Barbarians of Lemuria isn't doing? Or something that you want to do differently from BoL?

[Leitz]

Ah, true, I hadn't considered the "very high level" sorts of things where characters are immortals, powers, and such. Haven't played many of those so I can't represent them well. Hadn't looked at BoL. I was mostly lost in nostalgia in the DMG. The one I was looking at is about forty years old.

As I went over my rule notes I felt "morale" was the key to winning combat. Traveller and the other 2d6 games don't seem to account for morale as much, except for Striker. I am not going to take anyone's intellectual property so needed to come up with basics for myself. This also follows some of the programming I've posted on CoTI's "Software Solutions", making up NPCs for a ship crew. Again, I need to come up with skill tables and such that do not intrude on IP since the code is human readable. Part of my grand plan is to make the data files for careers, skills, etc open so that someone else can use the program, create their own data sets, and make crews that fit their needs.

Once the Crew generator work is done I'm going to see about mixing Zozer's "Solo" and the new "Triplanetary" as a structure for game based fiction. We'll see how it works.