Doing a lot of pondering about Scales since the last playtest, and I think I've figured out the core change I need to make. Instead of my original (admittedly bland) system of adding points to stats and then comparing with a target, I'm moving to a set collection mechanic. I don't have the details worked out yet, but what I have in mind so far is that each skill from the first draft of the game is now essentially a suit in a deck of cards, and players need to first collect sets to build their individual skills, then contribute cards from completed sets to the band skills. I'll need to add meaningful ways for players to interact with each other, and I think I want there to also be an engine building aspect. And of course there's still the whole "what about dragons?" thing from my last post which I haven't figured out yet, but I hope you'll agree that it makes sense to get a better feel for my core mechanics first before I determine how different aspects of the theme can interact with that. So that's all still in progress. But it is at least still actually in progress.
And in other news, I recently started listening to a worldbuilding podcast called Mythtakes Happen, and that inspired me to start writing up my own worldbuilding tool. My goal is for a glorious, lifepathy set of random tables to give all your dice a workout and end up with a fairly well sketched out game setting. Definitely more involved than my Lazy Culture Generator, almost definitely less involved than the old Central Casting character lifepath books that are another major inspiration for this project. I know that other games already exist that include something like this, but none of them have it at the level that I want, so I might as well make my own attempt. I'm still outlining it right now and listing what tables I need to create for this in order to cover physical geography, how magic works in the system, significant history, and current nations and cultures. Filling in more specific ideas as I have them, which is very scattershot right now, just enough to help me organize, remember what I want in each section, and maybe spur ideas for what else to add. I will say that I've already had some fun just with the bit for generating factions within a nation - what I have right now is that for each faction you roll for what group they come from (e.g. ruling class, trade guild, religious sect, etc), what their main goal is, and their relationships with each other faction, and just rolling those things for three factions, with no other context established, already gave me some serious fodder for a campaign set in that otherwise undefined country. So I think I'm going in the right direction with this.
And yeah, I guess I should specify that what I'm working on right now is only for fantasy settings, and is system agnostic. Maybe if this goes well I'll write similar ones in the future for other settings, but that'll be for another time.
