Due to numerous comments on the art showing that it was giving an impression I had not intended and was getting in the way of people looking at the game, I’ve cropped the image to focus on the computer player.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153922/Just-a-Game–Playtest-Packet
The other image might still eventually get used as a piece of internal art…but it was distracting from my purpose for now.
Good call.
I agree.
thanks, I mostly hadn’t thought of the issue because female artist and passing it through several female friends.
I just wasn’t thinking that said female artist loves sexualizing things and my friends are a bit less concerned with any of that as well.
Very very solid move, I personally appreciate it!
I may have to borrow this for a project I’m working on! The initial concept used some OSR solo player stuff, but PbtA would be very, very, very cool…
I am of the belief that setting and system should not be indelibly tied.
Most systems can be adapted to any setting and I think it is silly to assume that players won’t have a favorite system the way they have a favorite genre.
Being able to mix and match them would broaden audiences.
Unfortunately, a lot of that requires various companies cooperating.
I am suddenly way less interested in that game with that information. Why should I get your game then and not use, let’s say DnD?
The systems are set up to model MMO situations and trapped in the game situations. But that’s after I’ve tweaked the game systems a bit. I was tempted to actually use the OGL to do a d20 version however, I decided not.
Using OGL to take d20 base rules is problematic on several issues.
The first is that creating classes and races has a lot more pitfalls as to what is or is not balanced. 3.X is not transparent on such issues and 5e I am uncertain of the licensing options of, nor do I have access to the DMG yet.
Also, creating new classes to simulate various types of characters is a lot more complex in d20 than using an already generic system.
I could try to approximate it with M&M, but again, I am not certain of licensing options for M&M.
You could simply run a D&D game and allow the players to metagame, essentially doing Order of the Stick, which I use as an example in the book, but the systems there are tweaked primarily to simulate adventurers in a fantasy world rather than players of a game sucked into the world. You could alter that a little bit by say, adding a knowledge: game rules skill or the like, but it would be a bit more effort to try to work out a mechanic for allowing the players to cheat within the game world, pull off exploits and the like without simply allowing them to take on combinations that make the game difficult to run.
The existing classes do not quite fit. MMO characters tend to be on the whole far more flashy and powerful than their tabletop equivalents. You’d have to invent a method of dealing with aggro control. You’d also get into situations where a character’s alignment did not match his actual moral stance. So a person with an “Evil” alignment is only “Evil” because he chose that for his character…in truth he’s a really nice guy. And D&D doesn’t have a system for handling that dichotomy. In 5e you can just drop alignment altogether however, so that is less of an issue.
There’s a large number of minor differences that would require tweaking. And all that tweaking adds up to a great deal of work. The generally rigid nature of the mechanics of D&D would only add to that.
In any of my books there is at least one section where I discuss other systems that could be used to handle the same setting or circumstances. The downside there being that you will have to do all the work of adapting the systems to fit the desired mold yourself.
The upside of purchasing any system or setting is that someone else has already done the meat of the work in checking for problems or issues in the rules. I’m sharing out a little of the work in this circumstance, but I’m still going to be collecting the feedback, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work on the games. Running one-shots myself, collecting feedback. Tweaking here and there. The actual book (or books if it is one per system) will actually come out probably late next year or early the year after. This will be after playtesting, tweaking and more playtesting. After coming up with sample scenarios and campaigns. After editing and checking for possible cases where there could be a misunderstanding.
I chose the three systems I did to make rules for because I have quite a bit of experience and comfort with Fate and I have found PbtA very fluid and easy to pick up and tweak. I added GUMSHOE because the system interests me, but that is new territory for me and will likely require the most amount of work.
I also considered: Savage Worlds (but I’m not comfortable with the system), HERO (I’m uncertain of their licensing procedures), BESM (but since the creating company went out of business ownership fell to White Wolf and, again, licensing issues) and some of the other ones already mentioned above.
I would dearly love to do this concept, and some of my other games, using the system FFG uses for Star Wars, but they responded to my inquiries that they are not licensing that system at this time. So that is not an option.
If you wish to do this using D&D, by all means do so. I hope that the fact that I gathered several concepts on this genre of one place would still be useful. I still find 2nd Edition D&D game master supplements to be some of the best ever published for pure game master advice and utility, but I do not play 2nd edition and probably never will again. I also purchase Palladium books for character and setting concept ideas, but I don’t use that system.
It sounds more like you’re writing a setting you want to see run in multiple game systems and provide notes on how the settings fares in each. That’s interesting and does indeed require a fair amount of effort. It does bely your belief that settings and rules are separate though.
Re: art
Chiming in to say: yes, good work on cropping it. The cropped image is positive, and shows someone having fun in a believable moment.
I also think you should scrap using the rest of that image entirely.
The image doesn’t hold any real reference to video gaming or MMOs to me – and it seems – to others posting here/elsewhere. The majority of the character images in question are almost completely of a bare figure, nearly barren of reference to their environment, and lend little to no relation as to their purpose.
I understand your rationalization around “that’s what MMOs do!”, but it’s a) not what all MMOs/video games do and b) doesn’t matter. What’s displayed on the cover of a game/book/setting/whatever should be defined by what you want to convey to the reader.
Do you want to show potential players they’re entering a world where characters are sexualized in some games? If so, is there a purpose to that sexualization such as a commentary on why it’s bad? If not, then…what?
Also, damn it, don’t even dare blame the artist for this. You keep mentioning in your posts the artist “has a tendency to make things sexier than I usually prefer”. If that’s the case: find another artist. Don’t talk about them without their input like that. It’s rude and unfair.
I realized that…yeah, no, this is my fault.
Basically, I treated this as a for fun thing rather than a for work thing. That’s my fault…Did not mean to sound like blaming the artist.
http://thrythlind.blogspot.jp/2015/07/on-dangers-of-laziness.html
I don’t have a specific setting in mind here. The discussions within range from doing a sci-fi game to a fantasy game. Or cases where the world they’re stuck is either a computer program or a full alternate world.