November 25, 2024

So, setting out to write my second ‘proper’ RPG, after my first game (You’ll Meet the Devil at a Crossroads - YMTD) is a bit daunting, especially since I’ve decided to narrate the whole process as I go through these devlogs.

I really enjoyed the process of developing YMTD and I learnt a lot about a lot of things – writing of course, but also game design theory, layout, design, Affinity tools, publishing, print on demand, illustrating, fonts, colour choices, licenses, marketing, and much more.

Now for the first time I’m going to try and apply all of that new knowledge into a project consciously from the outset rather than ‘feeling as I go’ during the development of YMTD.

So, here it is. A whole game from a rookie game developer, start to finish. I’ll try to add videos and images and stuff when I can.

Write to your interests.

The first thing I did on my journey was decide on WHAT it was that I was making. I thought about this a lot, landing on ‘something something Roman’ as a broad concept. Why? Because the bookshelves in our house are covered in ancient history books from my wife’s university days. Rome is interesting, and can easily be brought into the RPG space, but it’s also really boring if it’s a typical RPG – maybe fighting monsters or something with a ‘Roman’ overlay? Dull.

I sought around in my experience for the sort of stuff I’ve been missing, and politics came to mind – combining that with all the ancient history books I’d been reading, it was a natural fit – Rome is after all the template for modern democracy. I rolled this concept around for a long while, going so far as to start writing a game (using first Fate, then PbtA as the underlying ruleset). But it still wasn’t thrilled and kept putting it down. It was flat – an RPG about Roman senators politicking and backstabbing each other sounds pretty interesting at first, until you get deeper into it and (oddly, after going deeper) you find that it’s a bit shallow and doesn’t hold the interest. I eventually realised that there was no ultimate threat to the senators, noting that really made them unite or struggle – these were a bunch of ruling class men with all the power.

Then, I finally got around to reading Goddesses, Whores, Wives, & Slaves by Sarah B. Pomeroy.

Wow. I won’t spoil it but to say that I had a feminist awakening? :D

So from then on it was obvious what my ‘Roman Politics’ game was about – women.

Set Constraints

As much as I love universal games like Fate and GURPS, I abhor games which have too many rules and too much thrown in – usually as an attempt to cover edge cases and specific scenarios. Falling, grappling, and drowning rules are noted RPG bugbears.

I set myself a few design constraints to help focus the game, as if I’ve learnt anything through my professional career it’s that constraints focus innovation.

1. Simple but deep and suited for long term play (system mastery not required)
2. No 'combat' or in fact direct action in a PVP sense. (yet, strong PVP in the game).
3. No ‘adventuring party’. No ‘Adventures’.
4. Only the rules it absolutely NEEDS – cull anything that doesn’t do the job perfectly (steal liberally from SRDs).

Don’t reinvent the wheel

For my first game YMTD, I created a system that did what I wanted it to do. That was a lot of thought and work and playtesting, and at the end I got a lot of people say “oh, your game sounds like you borrowed the rules from ‘For the Queen’”. No I didn’t, but it made me realise – for almost anything you want to make, there is a great system out there already. So I have become a scholar of game mechanics.

I have a deep love for Fate and PbtA games, between those and Free Leagues ‘Year Zero Engine’ (YZE) they account for about 90% of what I play. So those were my first port of call looking for systems.

So there you have it, the basics of what I want to set out and make – an interesting political game that suits long-form play, explicitly about the experiences of women in ancient Rome, and relies on social / political manoeuvring to achieve character goals.