metapunk

Well, years and years have gone by (over 17 in fact), and I’ve been working on this silly game as well as life would permit. I’ve read hundreds of other RPG’s, trying to find what worked best in them that I could learn from. I’ve read the Big Model theory and joined the Forge and learned a few things there. I’ve agonized over resolution methods, skill systems, martial arts, and personality mechanics. I’ve added and revamped feature after feature as I’ve come up with or encountered a better way of doing something. I live surrounded by mountains of notebooks and post-it notes and binders, all connected to one writing project or another, most of it dedicated to this game.

And finally, I feel the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d set myself a deadline of July 15 to be finished the core mechanics. Well, I missed the deadline, but the last few weeks have been incredibly fruitful. I’ve got a semi-solid core mechanic, a combat and social conflict system that I’m confident about, and lots of great ideas about character advancement, metagame currency, player motivation, and encouraging role-playing. I feel like all I really have to do now is write it all down in a coherent form, and play the shit out of the thing. Previous playtests have taught me much, but soon it’ll be time to really let the thing run, and only make the most unavoidable changes.

Bottom line, I’m going to finish this fucker. If I suddenly get a brilliant new idea, it’ll have to wait for the next game. Somewhere I have a podcast of a GenCon game design panel featuring Jared Sorensen, Luke Crane, and John Wick, where one of them said the most important thing I think I’ve ever learned about making games: “Better is the enemy of Done.“ Finish the game you’re working on. Make the next game better. Otherwise you’ll drown in the feature creep. A great deal of life outside the game is also the enemy of done, but that part I can’t do anything about—at the very least, I don’t have to compound the problem by, well, compounding the game.

So, now that I’ve declared my oath of completion before the Gods, can I tell you a little bit about the game itself?

My last game design post was almost a year ago, although I’ve been too busy with other things for most of the last eight or ten months to really get much work going on my games. What work I have been doing has been focused on my semi-universal system (the one referred to in previous blog posts with the boring codename Martian Cycles. Because it’s setting non-specific, I’ve started calling the system Metapunk: Poly, or MPP, for short. As you can guess from the name, it uses polyhedrals for primary resolution (where most of my designs use D6′s or playing cards).

There are still a couple of options on the table for how this works, but the one that seems to fit the best uses a pair of dice, the exact combination of which is determined by a “ladder” of ranks which defines character abilities. At ability rank 6 you roll 2D6, at rank 7 you roll D8+D6, rank 8 is 2D8, and so on. Your roll is compared to a competing roll (using a difficulty rating along the same scale), and whoever is showing the highest die result wins (the dice are not summed). Obviously it’s a bit more complex than this, but that’s the basic idea.

Your abilities are defined in 3 ways: a set of skills or possibly careers, “boons” which modify those skills in positive ways (including skill specializations called “knacks,” as well as more specific tricks and techniques), and a small set of “attributes” that define your general aptitude for certain types of tasks. The chief duty of the attributes will be determining initiative in different situations, but they may also control perception rolls in different arenas, starting ranks for skills governed by each attribute, and perhaps basic resistance ratings to certain types of attacks / stress (although these might be handled by an even smaller set of secondary attributes).

Characters will also have a series of karmas—backgrounds, relationships, and character quirks / flaws which are the main source of experience in the game. This way, they act as motivating factors–always driving both story and character development.

Combat is intended to be fast, furious, and flamboyant, with an emphasis on description but still following a more or less traditional RPG pattern. I want combat to be fully integrated with social conflict, so that rather than forcing scenes to be either combative or non-combative/social, you can play out a fight interspersed with conversation and manipulation. I’d like to be able to play out the final scene on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, where Luke, Vader, and the Emperor are all engaged in emotionally charged (and often manipulative) conversation between saber swings.* It’s dramatic and immersive in a way that you just don’t seem to get in D&D or Rifts or other more traditional combat oriented games; at least, not when I’ve ever played them.

Social conflict itself is intended to be dynamic—with mechanics that guide role-playing without getting in the way. As social encounters develop, tension builds until characters either defuse it, or reach a breaking point. Past the breaking point they can’t control what they’re feeling—they’ll be under the influence of a particular emotion and will have to see it through somehow. Clever players may be able to redirect their reactions, but the key here is that some sort of reaction will occur—driving the story forward.

I’ll leave it there—no need to spoil the thing before it’s finished! In any case, you can see that I’m pretty excited. It’s taken a long time, but I’m finally getting to where I want to be with MPP.

I can’t wait to get this thing done.

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*Say what you will about Lucas as a storyteller (and I’ve said plenty myself), scenes like that one in RotJ are what give the series its magic and are an example of what he really got right. Grand emotions in the midst of grand adventures… the characters work out their angst in the middle of a swordfight. That’s what makes it awesome. Sure, a quick and deadly battle with no talking can be cool too, but that’s a lot less Epic.