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Other Games, Development, & Campaigns => Design, Development, and Gameplay => Topic started by: slunchery on July 23, 2020, 06:04:44 AM

Title: Early Prototype Feedback
Post by: slunchery on July 23, 2020, 06:04:44 AM
Hello! An update (is it preferable to keep feedback requests for this particular development to this thread or to post new threads for each request?).

Source version 0.2 turned out to be a too sparse to interpret, so I spent some time illustrating concepts a little further and presenting examples. The objective before moving on to 0.2.2 will be to accurately present the system in all its half-baked glory, while also minimizing text. If you find some concept is drilled to excess, please let me know! Likewise if some mechanic doesn't seem expounded to the point where you would know how to apply it.

Comments have been enabled for those with the google doc link provided, if you prefer to annotate as you read.

In the future, source 0.3 will focus on updating the dice system to something event-based that integrates the betting phase into result generation. The revision is fairly open at the moment. My goal in getting 0.2 to as concise a verbiage as possible (while still being recognizable) will hopefully constrain a few of the uncertainties in this revision.

Link to source document: Source 0.2.1 pub (google doc) (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kqoGOYsawDx2nhQWzsTtWxQ8oHyqWSSLYLQTR33mr64/edit?usp=sharing)

Some questions to consider while you read:

    1. Does the idea of an aspect seem sufficiently clear? How would you describe it?
    2. Would you prefer that prototype character creation be presented with limitations intended for players, or is it enough to convey something general that can make anything the design will allow?
    3. How does the pace of action resolution seem?
    4. After reading/scanning the document, how confident are you that you could explain each/any/all of the mechanics? how confident that you could make a character? how about resolving an action?
    5. After reading a mechanic (that isn't dictated as optional) how necessary does the mechanic feel to character creation and action resolution?

Any general comments are welcome as well. As a post-script, I'm open to setting aside the non-critical mechanics so that in the final 0.2.1.x, just the basics are evident.

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First post, thanks for checking it out!

After  becoming interested in designing a tabletop RPG, I started fielding mechanics to my pals to figure out what seemed appealing. Months later,  the idea is now to create the overall rules for NPC/PC format and  breathe some life into the main task resolution mechanics. What I'm not so sure about is whether I'm communicating any of these rules well. Bear in mind this is in early pre-alpha. I'm hoping to get this manuscript to a place where testing can take place. If readers can't understand core rules, then I'm at odds with this goal.

So, after a couple of versions, I decided to reach out and get some feedback from the internet.
Source document, currently 6 pages (it's a link to a google doc): Outward Source 0.2 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q-Bysm2EzK3kemWm5hmSJBHYe6EotcorN3bqa2JlpYU/edit?usp=sharing)
Below are some direct questions. Answer any or none of them; any insight or commentary is welcome.

   1. Does anyone find that an author that leans toward terse descriptions helps reading, or do you prefer examples, thoughts, and full (cf. exhaustive) exposition?
2. Are there any sections or cases for rules you expected to be present, but weren't? Not new rules, necessarily, but corollaries to things present.
3. As a player, would you rather be left to suss out edge cases to fit intuition, or that a document handle as much of these as possible? What about as a GM?
4. Are there any points where things are just plain confusing? Does it seem like format/presentation of ideas, or the ideas themselves? If the confusion was ideological, to what do you attribute the confusion?

Again, thank you for reading,
Slunchery