DIYRPG Game Design

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The Community for creating rules, mechanics, and systems, and everything else related to making RPGs that doesn't fit in any of the other DIYRPG Communities.

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So what are you working on? (diyrpg.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Personally, I've been bouncing between several projects like a mink on methamphetamine:

A sword-and-sandal setting for Cepheus Engine, since that ruleset gets lots of Science Fiction love and a lot less for fantasy RPGs.
A pulp SF setting based on ideas from Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air" (which I discovered some time ago was in the public domain due to the peculiarities of American copyright law when it was published in 1951).
An "open source" take on a Third Imperium-like setting as a way of giving back to--yet again--the Cepheus Engine community.

This is also besides thinking hard about trying to break out of my comfort zone and write a novel. Two possibilities there....

Needless to say, I'm not actually making much progress on finishing anything.

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[–] DataKnotsDesks 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not working on anything, I'm playing with a theory. The core of the idea is that people to their best, most free-flowing, most imaginative GMing when they don't really know what they're doing. When they've first taken up the hobby, when they are running a new game that they don't really know well, or when the player characters go so far off the prepared plot that the GM has to improvise wildly.

This is outside a lot of people's comfort zone—but I think there's an element of truth to it. What if, the more you study how to GM, the more you work at it, the harder it gets?

Were this to be the case, it might explain why many GMs are in an endless quest to discover that cool new system/background/adventure that'll REALLY create an immersive experience.

Again, were it to be the case, what would be the best rules system to get back to the improvisatory state of gaming naivety that makes the magic happen?

I'm toying with the idea of running a campaign with no game system at all—to force me, as the GM, to improvise on the spot!