metapunk

I was reading through a binder of game design notes today, and someone asked me whether what I was reading was for business or pleasure.   I told her it was a little bit of both—a hobby that I’m trying to turn into a profession.

I’ve been into games most of my life.  I got started into table-top roleplaying in high school, with a system* which I soon realized was too idiosyncratic for my liking.  So, I started building my own system and annoying my friends with constant revisions and “tests of the combat system” involving endless gun battles in darkened warehouses.

After high school, we all went off to jobs, institutions of higher learning, or just plain old institutions, depending… and while at one of these I got a job as a “general assistant” for a small and now semi-defunct video game company.  I wrote and did some design work for them, which was nice while it lasted.

But before too long I found myself again with some free time on my hands and too many ideas in my brain to contain, so I exhumed my RPG system notes, and set to work rebuilding the rotten bastard with the ambition of eventually publishing.  It’s getting close, too.  I’m hoping to have a playable alpha version by mid-summer.  Unfortunately, I’m not a terribly organized person, so it’s taken quite a while to get here.  What can you do?

And the point of all this is to open the games category.  Here you’ll find any notes or musings to do with games, game design, and RPG theory, along with links to what far more interesting people have to say on the subject.

Enjoy

*The system in question was Palladium—specifically Rifts.  Mega-damage and really awkward combat mechanics wrecked the fun for me.  But to their credit, Palladium Books has been incredibly prolific, and was never lacking for interesting ideas.  If you don’t mind their house system, Rifts makes for great power-gaming, and it was my gateway drug.  It just doesn’t appeal to my preferred style of play.