Tales from the Rocket House

Like a lot of people, I guess, I have a tendency to start things and not finish them, or do only a minimal job. Though I've written lots of playable systems and setting overviews, (including a few over at the 24 hour RPG project), I've never published anything, for free or profit, despite the ridiculously low “entry costs” of doing so these days. Why? I don't persevere to the end and actually FINISH them to “publishable” level, with art, layout, and introductions for those who'll be reading it without me there.

This is a big problem in other areas of my life, and I've got to do something about it. So one of my New Year's Resolutions is to FINISH the things I start, and not get distracted by something else while I'm in the middle of a project.

So, in the gaming vein, I'm going to start with something manageable: Dirk Stanley's 15-page d6 only RPG contest. I'll be using the GM-less game I talked about in columns 10 and 11. At some point, I'll need to give it a name, but I'm still mulling over that.

The Game

The game has gone through several renditions. As it stood originally, there were five Traits: Social, Stealth, Physical, Intellectual, and Technological. Then I added Mechanical, but I found character creation just didn't work as well with six Attributes (it felt “right” with five, and worked well, in my experience). Also, Intellectual felt like a “dump stat.”

So I tried cutting Intellectual and Mechanical and introducing a new set of “Influences,” which were essentially Attributes not everybody had. But I could never work out an elegant way for the Attributes and Influences to intertwine, to the point that the design process felt mired in about six feet of metaphorical mud. So I did the only logical thing: I went back to five traits. I did switch out Intellectual for Mechanical. It seemed that things like driving, traps, demolitions, and so on would come up more often in an RPG than who had the greatest academic credentials.

However, this process was not fruitless. It did generate a couple of new ideas that “made the cut.”

Influences were stripped down to basically become bonus Traits that apply to any test that concerns them. “Academic Expert in the field of Developmental Psychology” or “Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences” could cover some of the ground previously covered by Intellectual. “Friends on the (police) Force” could help out in legal troubles or in manhunts. This could even cover specific areas, giving the character a “home court advantage” in her own home, nightclub, or inner sanctum (or even the city sewers).

Flashbacks are a way to link characters' histories. They give the character a bonus Trait to any contest or conflict with the (other) character named in the Flashback. For example, “Jack Rogan killed my father” would give the character a bonus Trait in any contest of conflict with Jack Rogan. While the other player's character has final say as to whether the flashback is correct (Jack Rogan's player would have final say as to whether Jack actually killed the other PC's father), they don't have veto power over the Flashback (the PC could BELIEVE that Jack Rogan killed her father, and thus gain the bonus Trait from the Flashback), and they can't stop the character with the Flashback from telling everybody her side of the story. Nothing like a little “he said, she said” to make things more interesting (with no GM, any conflict or tension must be generated by the player characters).

Back to Halfway

I don't think I'm alone in this problem. It actually seems to be a major trait in my generation, at least among the creative types. Laid end-to-end, the half-finished novels, scripts, and games could probably reach to Jupiter and back. I'm not pointing fingers, here: I admit that I'm the worst of us all.

So I think I'll issue this challenge: This year, preferably by the summer, let's all finish something. Get that script or novel submittable, get that RPG publishable (even if you have to use Istockphotos or public-domain medieval woodcuts), and (for the RPG, at least) put it up for download somewhere. Share it, or sell it, whichever you prefer, but get it out there, where the world can see it and benefit from it. I'm making a promise, now, to get my gm-less game named and ready to roll by the April 1 contest deadline. You can use any “deadline” you want, so long as it ends in “2009.” Let's do this!

Who's with me?