What The Hell Happened?
Many weeks ago I ran my game for friends using my new damage system and other changes such as a bidding system to take narrative control with. Long story short: The game fell flat on its face.
A lot of design work, and some vey bad results. Oh well! That is to be expected, and that is why I play tested the system first. No race to publish anything from me. I want to create a quality game.
What I Learned:
Fudge has a breaking point that you near as complexity is introduced. I am sure some will argue that statement, but as I reflect upon all of the Fudge games that I have ever played it is obvious to me that the best games were the simplest games. Those games were also story focused and tended to have either a strong narrator or shared narrative control very well amongst the group.
I introduced too much complexity into my game while still trying to keep it “Fudgey”. It did not work, and it has never worked for me. I do not believe that it has worked for Fudge in general though, because all of the published games that I have are really just setting material for the 1995 edition of the Fudge rules. The more I think about it, the more I see how so much material for Fudge is actually either optional rules or setting material. There are no products that jump to my mind that are the total package, with the exception of FATE.
What Is Next:
I have no idea. I have been trying to create an interesting Fudge game for quite some time now, and I still have no working prototype. I ordered some books on game design to learn from while I take a step back and think about what I really want to do here. I might not be cut out to write an RPG, and perhaps I need to partner with someone else to help bring my vision to life.
A big part of the problem is time. I work a lot of hours. This is not a bad thing though, because I am very well paid for what I do. Yet it does put a crimp on my creative efforts outside of work. I enjoy my job a great deal, and it come with financial rewards far greater than what a successful RPG product would bring me. So when push comes to shove my job wins over my hobby any day of the week. Add my family to the mix and it is a no-brainer: RPGs come in dead last when work, wife, or kids also need my attention.
Switching Gears
I think what I need to do now is just complete a project for Fudge. Forget writing a whole game. It is more than I can handle right now. For right now I’m going to focus writing a four page adventure with four NPCs and one map. Why those numbers? Because. That is why. 🙂
This will be my incredibly late submission for the One Month Adventure Challenge, and I will run this adventure for this year’s Day of Fudge events.
If the adventure is done well, I’ll then focus on finishing my Creature & Monsters: A to Z series. If and when the time comes I will take up the task of writing an RPG again.
On the time front, I’m on the same front. It’s difficult to manage time, enthusiasm and inspiration to do these things that have lesser priority than work and family. I guess we’re sadists or something that we still strive to creatively produce.
While I haven’t gone yet to do playtesting (I will be “shortly” I figure…) I think I’ve gone down a different path, focusing on the “setting material”. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the “Rules” or even how I’m going to play-test the “setting” without rules.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Patrick Benson. Patrick Benson said: Long time, no blog! http://www.sinisterforces.com/?p=171 🙂 […]
Sadists we must be! 🙂 IT can be a very creative job, but rarely does it result in a artistic result. I think the desire to create artwork is what really drives me when it comes to RPG writing/design.
I failed to mention that up until recently I spent a lot of time on writing a book for the newly created Engine Publishing (http://www.enginepublishing.com/), so that has had an impact on my game design time as well.
I’ll gladly help you with play testing when you are ready to do so. “Lost Heroes” is a game that I am very much looking forward to, so it would be a real treat to play test it. 🙂
Hi Patrick, I followed you here from Gnome Stew a while ago. Kind of creepy, guys following you around the web, huh? 😉
If you’re interested in game design, I’d like to recommend Game Design Concepts:
http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/
It was a free on-line course offered by Ian Schreiber last summer. It focuses on board games, but the material is a good foundation for any type of game, including RPGs. I am no game designer myself, but I thought it was a very interesting course.
Some nice person even re-published the material into a PDF with sequential entries, cause you know how blogs are all backwards:
http://gamedesignconcepts.pbworks.com/f/Game%20Design%20Concepts%20-%20An%20experiment%20in%20game%20design%20and%20teaching.pdf
Um, yeah, nevermind how ugly that URL looks, the PDF is a good download. It looks long, but you’ll probably get the best material out of the first half of the book. Several chapters also refer to other articles around the interweb that are worth reading.
Here’s one piece of advice from the course that I took away: make rule changes in very small steps, and play test every change. If you try out too many changes at one time, then you really can’t tell which change causes problems.
Good luck figuring out where to go next.
Yeah, working with Fudge presents a real temptation to add more bits. I find that when I have long breaks between playing, I tend to start to crave more systems – as if my break is because of a flaw in the game and not my schedule. I’m trying to focus any design efforts in my spare time on cool plots and settings rather than tinkering with what already works well in Fudge. Any perceived hole in the rules tends to work itself out with a quick decision during a session for me anyway.
KevinRichey – Thanks for the link! You are right about changes, and I’m learning the art of play testing as I go along. It is more art than science, but there is still a process to it that I have not yet mastered. I do not know if I ever can. 🙂
MattyHelms – My problem with the Fudge system is that it has a very narrow scope with mechanics and an incredibly broad range with its applications. This can be elegant in some cases, but it can also result in repetitive play when mechanics are heavily used. Combat in Fudge is just not very satisfying to me when I want some good tactical play.
Now I will concede that Fudge is not my first choice for a tactical combat game. Perhaps I am asking too much of the system, but lately Fudge has just been less than fulfilling when I play it or run a game with it. This does not mean that Fudge is flawed, as it could be my own personal perception that results in my feeling less than satisfied with the game. Satisfaction with any product is always a matter of perception.
Yet I believe that Fudge needs more bits to be created for it, and that the majority of those bits are going to be failures. This is how the process of evolution works. Most mutations are harmful, but every once in a while a mutation becomes a genetic advantage and may potentially become the norm.
So I will not agree with your statement because it goes against a fundamental belief that I have: All things can be improved upon as perfection is impossible to achieve.
Whether or not I can improve upon Fudge is a question yet to be answered. 🙂
Oh, I never meant that Fudge can’t be touched. I need to add to or change Fudge for any session I run. However, I find that tactical/detail heavy bits tend to not work well with Fudge – things tend to work out when I just sit back and worry less about mechanics and more about letting the story play out. Yes, that works best with my style, but that’s the only experience I can share.
Ah! Now I understand your original comment a bit better.
Story is vital to any RPG, and Fudge mechanics compliment any story that I know of. They just work. Plain and simple.
But Fudge mechanics do not address the tactics and strategies used in game play very well at all IMO without some tinkering to adapt them to the setting that you are using. The creative story oriented part of my brain gets it fix from Fudge, but lately I have been longing for a more tactical and crunchy component in my games.
I believe that I have reached a boundary with Fudge in regards to what I desire the game to be like. So for now I have no desire for another setting, but what I am searching for is a setting with mechanics that satisfies both the creative and tactical playstyles that I enjoy.
This could be called a quest for the perfect RPG, and maybe it is! 🙂