How much do you hate yourself?

 On one hand, maybe I need to get this game design ADHD under control.  On the other hand, I went from spontaneous terrible idea to almost complete first draft over the course of this afternoon and evening.

The game is Office Coffee (and the title of this post is the tagline).  It's a light-medium filler game about office workers racing to get the last cup of caffeinated swill that will help them survive that afternoon's meeting.  It's divided into two phases.  In phase 1, players go to different areas of the office to collect dice that they'll need for phase 2.  You get different dice from the copy room, the HR office, etc.  In phase 2, everyone rolls their dice to collect points or activate other abilities.  Whoever has the fewest points gets eliminated, then everyone else rolls again, and so on until only one player is left.

And that's pretty much it.  I still need to decide what goes on the dice for each room, but as far as basic rules go I thinkI have everything I need.  We'll see where this one goes...

Neon Knights update - equipment

 Spent some time today fleshing out rules or equipment, as well as some basic descriptions for default gear ("default" here meaning what it looks like if your group doesn't decide to change it during session 0).  I'm trying to find a balance between keeping it simple but still having equipment matter for more than just flavor text and narrative permissions.  What I've settled on is that weapons add damage on a successful attack, armor subtracts damage, and other gear can give bonuses for relevant actions.  You can purchase enhancements which increase the item bonus or give it other properties, to a limit (there will also be rules for what might be considered "magic items" in other games, though I'm going with a more magitech flavor here, but that's going to be another time).  Pretty straightforward.  Two sticking points though:

1) Shields - I'm not sure where they fit into this rule framework.  If they subtract damage like armor then they're basically just flavor text for your armor, which could work but also feels a little less satisfying.  Extra damage negation that stacks with your other armor also doesn't quite feel right.  Bonus to your defense roll means that it's effectively extra damage negation and increases the odds of negating the attack altogether, or even reversing it if you succeed with style on the defense, so that makes it even more powerful than regular armor and that definitely doesn't feel right (even if it otherwise makes sense mechanically, in isolation).  So I still need to figure out what I'm doing there.

2) Blasters - Neon Knights might be a mostly medieval-ish setting, but it also has laser guns.  And the lasers are slow, so that's why you can see the red beam shooting from your gun and hitting your enemy.  But if there are laser guns, then why is anyone wasting time with swords?  Well, two reasons.  One, which is still in, is that blasters are relatively rare weapons and are reserved for elite warriors (which definitely includes Knights and maybe others too).  The other reason I originally came up with was that the energy beam starts off weak and then gathers power as it flies, so it's not much use against a target that's in or near melee range.  I still like this idea just for the entertainment value, but the mechanical implications of it clash with the simplicity I was going for.  I guess it could be something like "+0 damage against targets in the same zone, additional +1 for each zone it crosses to reach the target," but I don't know if that becomes too much of a pain in the ass to keep track of compared to all other weapons being a straight "+X damage."  Maybe I'll just have to test it out and see how it feels at the table.

TGE update 5/6/22

 I haven't been doing much design work per se in the last couple of weeks, for this game or any of my others.  What I have been doing lately is researching other games that might overlap with mine in any way that matters.  A little while back I put together a list of about 30 games that seemed like they might be similar, based on skimming their descriptions on BGG, and now I'm looking them up in more detail when I can find a little time to focus on that (which hasn't been much).  Of the ones I've examined so far, similarities have mostly been pretty superficial, e.g. there's also a hex map involved but the actual focus of the game is completely different.  I still have a dozen or so more to look into.  If you know of anything specific that might be close, drop me a line and let me know.

Next step after that - putting together the sell sheet.

SoiP update 4/20/22

In the post where I introduced The Sum of its Parts, I mentioned that I don't really know what I want the rule system to look like.  I think I'm getting closer to the answer, although I'm still debating whether I want to adapt the system from Don't Rest Your Head or make my own from scratch.

One thing I came up with that's a definite is slipping (though it's always possible that I'll come up with a better name later).  As the game currently exists in my head, for any action that matters there is one Fragment who takes the lead at that moment, though the others can still choose to contribute to the effort (or not).  A slip represents a shift in the balance between Fragments at that moment, and has negative consequences.  Maybe loss of Integration, maybe different penalties that are unique to each Fragment, or maybe some combination.  But definitely something bad.  The reason is that, without some sort of penalty like this, there is much less reason for any Fragment to not contribute to a die roll.  Roleplaying reasons maybe, but I want something stronger than that.  One of the reasons I initially thought to take the DRYH rule system was that I really like the dilemma it creates on die rolls - you have multiple pools you can draw from when rolling against a challenge, but only one of them is "safe;" if you add dice from the other pools you have a better chance of succeeding on the challenge in front of you, but you also risk negative side effects.  I love the tension that creates, and I wanted something similar here.

So here are the two options I'm considering for how the dice will work in SoiP:

• dice pools - the lead player has the most dice, each other player can choose to add 1 (or maybe 2) to the pool, and the GM rolls based on difficulty (and adjusting for the number of players).  Dice are counted the same way as in DRYH, with different numbers contributing to success or dominance.  Slip if one of the non-lead Fragments dominated the roll.
• single die + modifiers, or maybe two dice together to give it more of a normal distribution (and maybe two dice of different sizes, like d8+d10, to keep things uncomfortable), against a static difficulty number.  The lead player contributes the largest modifier to the roll, and other players can choose to throw in an extra +1.  Slip if the roll only succeeds due to extra players contributing (for example, if the target number is 15, and the roll would have been 13 with the lead player alone but three additional players pushed it up to 16).  This one feels like it would be easier to estimate and adjust probabilities, as compared to the dice pool option, but it also seems a little less fun to that Fragment of my own self that just likes to play with dice.
  

Neon Knights update - NPCs

Been busy the past week or so, expecting to be just as busy for the next 1-2 weeks, but I managed to squeeze in a little writing time after work today.  What I got done was the rules section of my NPCs chapter.  Long story short, NPCs have simplified stats compared to PCs - instead of specific skills or approaches, they're just “Mindless Attack Drone +1” or “Benevolent Ruler +3” or whatever (kind of like cliches in Risus).  Normal FAE rules about aspects and damage capacity, more or less.

I didn't get to it today, but the rest of the chapter is going to be sample NPCs - mostly bad guys, but no reason I can't throw in some good guys too.  And of course they're going to be music references as much as possible (primarily metal, given the source material and desired tone, but it's not mandatory) - for example, the Sentinels are robotic birds of prey that scream for vengeance as they attack, and the Giant of the Black Sky is, well, a particularly threatening giant.  I'm still working on it.  If anyone is reading this, feel free to suggest more in the comments.

Ooh, new shiny!

 Some idle joking with a friend last week led me to a whole new idea for a light card game, and then toying with that one spun off into another idea for a different light game, so a lot of my free brainpower lately has been going toward those rather than any of the three games I'm already working on.  Neither of them is ready for me to start talking details, but I have put enough into them that I will want to see them through eventually.  Watch this space, I suppose...

Progress report 4/3/22

Today was one of those days where I agonize over every sentence, trying to get it at least close to right, while I still work to solidify some of my more vague ideas for Neon Knights (and, honestly, that's the bulk of what I have - but maybe "impressionistic" would be a more charitable term to use).  But the end result is that I wrote what I think will be the entire outline for the "baseline" setting, i.e. what the common starting points are before the players go through the list of questions to define the details.  A little bit about the blend of pseudo-medieval and futuristic trappings, a little bit about the ruler(s) to whom the PCs answer (generically called the Lord, though players might choose a different title for their specific one), and a little bit about the cosmology (there's a good guy deity and a bad guy deity, they both interact with the world indirectly).  Also I reorganized the list of setting questions so it hopefully flows better now.  Overall I'm fairly satisfied with the day's work.

Still feels like it's going to be forever until the game is playable though...