Shiruba´s Personal Design Notes

AKA: Shiruba´s way to start thinking on how to make a new RPG system.

NOTE: WHEN I SAY ANYTHING IN THIS BOOK, THERE IS A 99% CHANCE THAT I AM JUST ILLUSTRATING AN EXAMPLE. THIS GUIDELINES AND THOUGHTS CAN BE USED TO BRAINSTORM ANY SYSTEM, HOWEVER, DO REMEMBER THERE IS NO "ONE TRUE WAY" OF DESIGNING RPGS, RULES ARE ABSTRACT, NOT CONCRETE.

If you are a N00b, or a Pro, it doenst hurt to go thru all the basics again! :P this book -wants- to help you, i swear. :P

So I decided to make a new RPG system...

Chapter 1 - Motivations.

Look, I really like GURPS, I really do. And I started to love it more and more since 4th Ed came. but, as any other RPG system it has flaws, oh yeah baby, it pains me to say this: "GURPS has flaws!", I don’t know how the RPG community in other countries is, but in Brazil nobody likes/plays GURPS, we are a few brave gamers that could understand what Jackson was talking about after 200 pages of mistranslation... for instance, the skill "poison" was translated to something like "poisounously" (and GURPS fantasy uses about 4 words for describing the Banestorm.)

And there are lots of D&D purists here that think that RPG should never get beyond the medieval era :P look, I don’t have any bias against RPG, I play d&d, vampire and GURPS in the same fashion, I just make sure I grasp what exactly is each game about. D&D -tends- to be about competition and dice juggling, vampire about big-brother-ish vampire struggle and GURPS about remembering rules and annoying the gm :D

However, back on track, there are lots of things that REALLY piss me off in GURPS, like having detailed rules for digging a hole, detailed rules to "spacebatics", and confusing rules about trying to fire a gun at a moving target. Hell, you might say that me, as a gm, can change and ignore what I want, but hey! What’s the point in buying the book if you are going to change 90% of it?

And that’s the part that I really hate in GURPS... I don’t know if I should hate the book, Steve or the players since it’s a very awkward problem! The complete lack of creativity in character generation.

I am tired of seeing people whine about "I want to make my character mad, but I don’t own the GURPS Maniac Homicidal" or "I always wanted to play in Rome, but I don’t have GURPS Rome", man... this. Is. BULLSHIT! GURPS isn’t going to be a generic system if you have to buy GURPS Grocery and GURPS Urban Planning and GURPS Farting.

I can even think of another few titles for GURPS, like "GURPS Farts on fire" or "GURPS Wednesday Nights Farts".

I think you are getting the point, some subjects in GURPS are OVER explicated, and we still have shitty combat rules, and superfluous damage types!!!

Then I say: "Screw It, I am going to do it my way"

Lesson Learned: Only try to make a new system, if no system suits you and/or makes you feel comfortable enough to mess with it’s rules.

Chapter 2 - Research.

Being an Industrial Designer myself, I have learned how to project products, products may be physical (ex: a chair) or they can be a service (ex: transportation services, etc.).

However, we don’t start creating our product from nothing, that’s where research kicks in. while academic research is a pain in the ass; I will make it easy and fun here. Let’s see:

Remembering chapter 1:

1. Why create a new system?
2. If I’m going to create one, then I will see how others did it.

That’s the basics; we can get a more pro approach this way:

(Example)

1 - I like Medieval RPGs.
2 - However, I dislike the system or I don’t feel comfortable with it or it doesn’t allow me to GM the campaign I want.
3 - Which other Medieval RPGs are there?
4 - What do they have in common?
5 - Why the other pos-d&d authors made their medieval systems?
6 - Where the medieval RPG came from? Where are they headed?

I bet that will save you a lot of trouble; if you cant get focused enough to start a project.

Lesson Learned: you -don’t- have to reinvent the wheel. However, if you want to do a system for kicks, go for it!

Useful Links:

Design Patterns of Successful Roleplaying Games

why should you think about game design

Chris homebrew RPGs (Good research material)

John Kim’s Site (Good stuff here)

Chapter 3 - Community.

Even if you are a one man company, a terribly bad tempered loner or a sadistic lunatic RPG designer you should seek the community.

If you are alone, another person will already be some kind of community, down here in Brazil its hard to find designers while we have players in tons, getting as many designer friends together is already a sucess.

Sounds unbelievable, but try to get Annoying friends :P getting errors spoted is a major sucess, get MMORPG friends, getting exploits revealed is good too. if got the catch, nearly all people that are anyhow connected to RPG or GAMES can help you.

Then you have the internet, you have the Lab, you have a ton of forums, The Forge, whatever. But its important to get your project to as many people possible.

if you have motivation, research and a good community backup, you are ready to begin! :P