This is a departure from my usual reviews -- because I created the product in question. Instead of telling you about the game (which I couldn't do without proselytizing), I'll tell you about what went into making the game. This project was a roller-coaster ride, with ups and downs. Due to the complications involved in its production, especially at the end of the project, these events may not be in chronological order; there was a lot of 'playing things by ear,' rushing on one task in order to finish another. My review does get a bit 'livejournally' at times, true; but my trying to be impartial would be at best a farce.
The Idea
It all started when I bought Buy The Numbers from RPGnow. Although a full review is forthcoming (same RPGnet time, same RPGnet channel), the gist of it would be "D&D meets HERO:" a detailed but complex and extremly math-heavy character creation system for OGL Fantasy. Although I'm not much of a fantasy player and haven't been since I was 12, I liked the basic math of the system, based on triangle numbers: The cost to buy something is X; the cost to improve it by one is X times the new level.
However, Buy The Numbers was created only for one genre: fantasy. Occasional good ideas from Roleplaying Open aside, I am not much of a fantasy gamer. However, I am a big fan of d20 Modern. So, I began to convert it to OGL Modern in my spare time (in retrospect, I still can't believe that I had such a thing); the RTF files of the Modern SRD in hand, I began to haphazardly form my conversions. One day the Tough hero, another day all the martial arts feats, another day some spellcasting notes, still other days just 'to-do' lists of ideas that sounded good at the time. I think I doubled the size of any file I touched.
It was at this point I realized, "Darn, I've got a megabyte of text here -- I should make something with it!"
Starting Out
I wasn't a virgin to PDF publishing. I have written two products for Flying Mice LLC (one of which is a notable success; one of which has not been released yet), and I had written one product on my own. (It was a flop of a PDF similar to the innumerable "one class for two dollars" games out there. As it was not a M&M license product, it was pulled within hours of release with three sales to its name.) However, this product was different from the three above; I not only had to write, I had to lay the book out and comission art. About the only thing I wasn't doing was laying brush to canvas. (This was done by Clash Bowley, a rather talented artist and better friend, who will show up again later.)
To begin, I had to start converting my modified files to Word format. At first, I went in with the opinion that this was to be a strict copy-and-paste job; how much extra work could it need? New page, add section, new page, add section, so on and so forth. And that turned out to be my first mistake.
Wizards of the Coast sure has some interesting people in word processing. Spaces in bold for no real reason whatsoever that threw off inserts. 'Interesting' formatting of lines involving needlessly expanded or with extra points of spacing below the line. Tables which look normal in RTF but have unusual formatting (top-left with 0.12 or so of blank space under and to a side). And let's not mention what adding blue Helvetica to black Times New Roman did to the page. Within a week, I deleted this file and started anew.
Consistency's A B****, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Feat List
With a new fresh file, I began to create Point Buy Numbers anew; no more batch-copying-and-pasting, but individually pasting and updating or rewriting each feat as necessary. The easy part was the rules, as much of the work was done in Buy The Numbers, showing me how things should work (albeit if not quite in the same proportions). It was the things that you could buy with the rules (FX, feats, and special qualities) where all the difficulty lay. If I were to write this process up as a Dungeons & Dragons - esque flowchart, it might look something like this:
- Find Feat/FX/Special Quality
- Alt-Tab to the original SRD to copy the original feat or quality.
- Alt-Tab to my modified SRD, and look up the Buy The Numbers conversion.
- 20% chance of having to make 1d6 obscure rule references, which involve frequent page-turning and alt-tabbing, to see how a certain feat actually works in the system, and whether or not it was already represented by one of the customizaions made to the rules.
- If not a feat, Alt-Tab to the Master XP Chart to find the cost, doing some math.
- Insert the cost and prerequisites, making sure that the prerequisites match OGL Modern's presumptions about character ability but without requiring too much.
- If the entry has a table:
- Reformat the table into something that fits in two-column format.
- 50% chance of having to re-create the table by hand because of some minor problem that Word would not fix without inserting four blank pages that cannot be removed except by deleting the table.
- 10% chance of breaking down because the table's insertion has changed the column width, thus throwing off every other f***ing page.
- There is a 25% chance of having to go back and make a modification to an earlier 'finished' section due to an unforseen exception to the rules or needless duplication. One in ten times, the section must be rewritten wholly.
- There is a 5% chance of a distraction (such as a little sister absolutely having to play on Postopia right now, or a dog deciding my feet would make a fine place to toss her cookies) taking d% minutes to resolve.
- There is a 2% chance of breaking down and playing DDR or Diablo instead, convinced that I'll 'never' get it down.
- Back to step one for feat/quality/rule/FX number 2. Repeat 250 times
Reality Checking
At this point, I started to test the rules in various places, giving a handful of people preliminary PDFs for playtesting. Sometimes I sat in as GM or observer to see it in use first-hand; sometimes I relied on their e-mail reports to tell me what happened when I wasn't there to guide players.
There were major problems at this point. For example, almost nobody liked the original rule for buying saving throws (Improving a save by 1 = new base ^ 2 * 50), because even moderate saving throws became rediculously expensive, and the rule it used for advancement was different than the one used for the rest of characer creation.
Then, there were the omissions. Due to the nature of Point Buy Numbers, some feats and talents had to be removed or modified. When an ability such as Savant provides a 'competence bonus' to Skills X, Y, and Z equal to your Foobar level, that talent had to be excluded, because in Point Buy Numbers, you represent competence with an increased skill level, not by buying a feat. However, more than once the later abilities still listed the earlier abilites; how to represent the needs without overcomplicating the issue was a problem. And then, there were the plain oversights, like totally leaving out rules for hit points and Defense...
Magic also had a few notable changes in testing. Modifications to your ability (such as arcane spell failure, or expanded spell lists) originally worked similarly to GURPS, in that they added a percentile modifier to the base of 100 XP times the new level; for example, if you had a total of +40% of modifiers (say, two spell lists, may only prepare spells if studying in a sanctified church, and requires a copy of the Bible to prepare spells), improving your casting level would cost 140 XP times the new level. This chafed horribly on my playtesters... but when I changed it so that modifiers added directly to the base (i.e., +50%, -5%, and -5% became +50 / level, -5 / level, and -5 / level), they took to it quickly. Even a seemingly trivial change can leave a strong impression.
The Final Rush; Or, If Only I Could Take 20
Finally, I had most pages laid out, the rules reviewed and commented upon by others, and the formatting and spelling hand checked. (One of my quirks is that I almost never use spellcheck, preferring to go over a document by hand.) I was ready for the art and for one final readthrough, before making the file a PDF
At this point, I realized I had a problem. My brother had sat upon my Acrobat CD a year ago, with predictable results; the backups were nowhere to be found. I tried various freeware PDF program, but every program I tried misformatted the tables: some had borders of randomly changing thickness; some were tinted in colors I had not used anywhere in the document; some simply omited tables period. Carefully laid out text, with white space in all the appropriate places, is for naught if the text doesn't show up! However, a friend with PDF creation software came to my rescue, and he was forunately able to convert the file in time.
(I found my Acrobat backup three days later.)
At first, I tried to submit my file as I submitted F20; a plain sample page, showing typical formatting of the document. Of the five pieces of art that I had asked Clash for, none had come through; this was worrying, but the deadline was approaching, and I had to do something. Although the RPGnow Standards guidlines said that all-text thumbnails and covers were allowed, I heard differently from the owner of RPGnow when it was rejected. So, I was about ready for some art.
This is when I received from my friend this ominous e-mail: his mother had passed away. Even though I needed that art, I tried to be a good friend for him. What would you have done?
When we finally got back to work, Clash and I had to stay up until quite literally the eleventh hour, finishing a piece and making it into a properly formatted cover, then converting a 20 MB bitmap into a file whose resolution balanced filesize (always a problem with PDFs) and viewing quality. However, we finally had a cover, a formatted interior with every table, and a thumbnail and description for the other than 'pure text.' I submitted that evening before bed, and feel asleep, exhausted.
The Future
One of the advantages of RPGnow is the use of is the ability to update your product without charging your customers a dime extra. With this in mind, I have two updates planned. In about six to eight weeks, I will be updating the file to include the inevitable errata, and hopefully the art. (This errata includes a major omission -- I did not indicate that I retained the rights to the name "Point Buy Numbers" in the OGL section!) In the spring, I will also be updating the file to include the Past and Apocalypse SRDs, as well as perhaps adding extra house rules and new rules for attributes and experience. Including more examples and some sample characters is also a probablility for the spring update, because a recent game I read (Power Grrrl) really impressed me with how it used sample characters. Besides... It's only 56 pages. I want to get it up to at least the 64 page mark.
After that, the future's wide open. I would love to create a licensed adaptation of PBN for Spycraft sometime, as well as some of the other good games (such as Darwin's World or Dragonstar); however, it is not probable that I will ever get these rights. Anime SRD support is also a possibility, but much less likely. (Let's face it; if people want point-build anime, they go to BESM or Random Anime.) And, naturally, I'll still be writing for Flying Mice LLC.
The Final Verdict (heh)
Hopefully, you've been entertained by the trouble I've had making Point Buy Numbers a reality. However, since this is a review, I'll try to predict what I'd give it if I were reviewing it impartially.
In Style, Point Buy Numbers is a definate 'meh': only one piece of art gracing dry rules text, with little emotion or style to reccomend it. When the art comes in, it'll be worth a Style of 3... but until that time, it's a Style of 2, and that's being generous.
However, it's packed with converted SRD content and optional rules, plus a few new things if you know where to look. This took a long time to convert, and that should be worth the admissions fee -- do you have six weeks handy? In addition, people who purchase PBN receive my private e-mail address with their order, so I should be able to address any problems a customer is having within a few days. Substance: 4.
In the end, I am happy this product, and think that it will be valuable to OGL Modern players looking to replace what little of its wargaming roots remains. I'll stand by it proudly, and declare to all and sundry that I made this, and I am proud of my work. And even if you don't buy it, or buy it only to feel it's pig doots, do me one favor: never, never say that us PDF publishers have it easy.
