DDM Development Thread

[Crackerjacker]

This is the official thread of further development for my Iron Chef game, Dawn of the Day of the Monsters.

more to come.

[Green]

Hi.

What would really help people who could be interested in your game is if you put the following in your initial post:

1.  A link to where we can find your game,
2.  The basic concept of your game, and
3.  Your design goals for this game

This way, we can give feedback that is especially relevant to your game.

[Crackerjacker]

The game can be found via the Iron Chef Index

and Im sorry for not posting more but mainly I created this thread for any expansion on the existing game I created for the contest. Right now I created the thread as a holding space.

[Eero Tuovinen]

<The stoopid caveman>
No do holding space here! Is my space! You just took my space, and I have no place to design games at all! Blood and damnation! Now I have to come and design my game in your thread. I now design Brotherhood and you just step aside.
</The stoopid caveman>

The Forge is a virtual forum, with space for some quinzillion threads, especially if they are short. If Clinton really runs out of server space, he'll start complaining and we pay for some more. You don't need a space holder thread here. The threads are not running out.

That said, you can only make good your sin by starting some design. First, please do tell us more about your approach to rules design. I've hardly ever seen anything even slightly like your game in rules approach. Have you played much like this, and how much GM judgement it takes? The usual problem of rules-free play is that the GM must constantly make spot judgements that get heavier as the game progresses. Your weapon rules are clearly meant to alleviate this without resort to any normative rulings about anything. Are you envisioning the GM as making all actual play decisions, or is there some degree of player judgement in there? More details, please! I'd like to try this approach myself; if it could be made to work, that'd be something new: a non-normative rules system that doesn't leave everything for the players to try to negotiate.

[Crackerjacker]

I dont see it as marking limited territory... I see it as setting up a peacefull zen garden for my efforts, which are at this moment occuring inside the deepest inner forges of my mind.

er.Ok. Anyway. To answer some questions:

Yes, I have played this way before. In fact, most of my gaming experience has been freeform, and it can work. The GM has a harder job, as before the game they have to define things so you dont end up with "crazy shit" (unless thats the genre your going for!) and they have to be descriptive and specific enough to create a feel of things actually happening, to make combat realistic and having chances of deadliness just like in a "normal" rules/mechanics game, and yet can't be so constrictive that they are dictating the PC's actions or just changing everything to react to what the PC's do. Bassically you have to create a reality in your mind, and stick to that reality while dictating the logical progression of what is happening in response to the actions of the PC's. In many ways you are really playing god for the universe.

And as for players...rule systems can be abused, and so can freeform. However, if you can get the player to create a fitting and on relative power level character freeform, chances are they wont go beyond the constraints of the level of realism/ability fo their character during the game.

My weapons rules were mainly because DDM is meant to be a bit of a survival game, so of course ammo isnt limitless and you should have some idea of how guns work, as they are probably gonna be a big part of the setting, yet the tone is also pretty lethal and at realistic, in the sense of some grittier scifi quazi-survival horror movies (tremors for example). So I just spent a little time to put some guidelines for weapons. In fact, guidlines for doing things can go a long way, and a little structure is good. Freeform can benefit from having some definitives, but the idea is that you dont need an engine...some things, like maybe even, if you wanted to be more specific than I got for this fun little game, like even weapon ranges and rates of fire could be used. That would just be to make gunplay more realistic. And having a little bit of a set of guidelines based either on how wounds work in movies or how they work medically could help combat feel more realistic. But the computation of when this stuff goes into effect would still be in the capable hands of the players and gamemaster. My idea of freeform is operating without mechanical rule engines coming up with results. You can have rates, definitions, and guidelines but they have to be computed by the people in the game. Thats my approach.

[Crackerjacker]

In wake of the much anticipated results of the competition (kudos for Mr.Holmes doing all of that on his own time) I will edit DDM into a more cohesive document so maybe, just maybe, somebody on this board might get some use out of it. Also, as I'm gaining a website soon it looks like I might just be able to have a nice web-publish type home for my free little freeform game.

[Mike Holmes]

Please do let us know when you post the new doc. I think that with a clearer, more organized presentation, that it might really help to shed some light on where you're design is supposed to go.

Mike