Newbie Designer on the Verge. Looking for Tips...

[Eero Tuovinen]

Kyle: you're not wasting my or anybody's time, because we participate here voluntarily. I'm just calling it as I see it. I know that I myself would just ignore advice that told me to back off and learn more before trying something like this, even if it was genuinely the best option. So I don't wonder if you still want to craft your own game, based on your own priorities, even if those priorities will prove fleeting. I just suggest that there are some fundamental choices about game design that you're, it seems to me, ignoring because of lack of experience. Like that distaste of ability+skill+die, which seems to be pretty spuriously motivated. The easiest way to learn oneself out of a million kinds of different boxes is to play more, and different games.

But yeah, I probably wouldn't myself take that kind of advice if I were you. Just too damn stubborn and self-confident, I am.

Anyway, my point being that FUDGE, imo, doesn't present this sort of a feeling to me when a game like D&D does. Although I will admit it's been around ALOT longer than FUDGE.

I think I know what quality you're talking about here. Technically, you're talking about how defined the player tools the game offers are, right? And do you know, I share that preference. I think that D&D is better than FUDGE, because I like how the former leaves less room for GM fiat.

But, there's more games than D&D that have that quality, and some much better. More importantly, your guess about D&D gaining that level of definition through years of play is only partly correct, so you really should look at some other games and see if they have the same quality. The one I particularly recommend for this is Shadows of Yesterday. It's free, it's good, it has many similar elements to D&D, and it's totally indie.

And here is my basis for not wanting to use the Ability + Skill + Die Roll = Target Number system. First of, it's inherently D20 and WIZARDS Copyrighted, althought I do like the way it plays very much. Second, I don't want to do something that everyone else is using, or modifying something someone else has already done. And Thirdly, I had my Star Wars RPG with me once at a game shop where they play D&D alot. This one guy hadn't seen SW RPG yet, and asked me who made it. I told him that it was a Wizards D20, and he said "Oh, it's a D&D Clone, and everything works the same (with a very smug look)." So, in essence, I don't want someone to come along and say something like, "Na, that game is a D20 Clone" about a game that I designed. But on the other hand, I like D20. Thus, my problem. I guess anything I say at this juncture, is just pointless, because I don't have the backgroud knowledge of RPG's to design something that hasn't come before. But, I really don't want to play 50 different games in order to understand those concepts. Like I said earlier, I read most of the iinfo on those games Mike presented, so I have a basic concept of them. IMO though, I think some of them lack the refinment of a D20 Game.

That's all just... weird. It's cool if you think that way, but do you also think that that's a valid basis for design? What your reasons come to is
1) Ability+skill+die is a WotC thing, despite a zillion other games using it. And game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, even.
2) You want to be absolutely original with your die mechanic.
3) You base your design decisions on opinions of random imaginary people.

Your second reason has some validity from my perspective, but even that... I myself design games to make good, useful games that fullfill a function. Originality is definitely a second-order concern, important only insofar as originality allows for a better game. Alone it has no significance. I also suggest what you should already know: art and craft are always based on work by others. We stand on the shoulders of giants, as they've come fond of saying in the blogland lately.

What's more, there's a couple of rather strong perspectives on how and why people design indie games: one idea is that artistic independence is pretty important for the indie designer, because it's both his reward and his weapon. It's his reward, because making the game you want to make, instead of trying to impress some imaginary focus group, is inherently the reason somebody wanted to design in the first place. It's his weapon, because nobody here believes he can fight D&D and WoD in their own terms; what a successfull indie designer does is writing a game that has a smaller, more original target segment, one that will like his game especially much. Make a narrow game, but better, in other words.

What this all boils down to is that I think you should think carefully on why you want to design. That should inform your design very much. What I'm seeing above is you saying that you'd like to work on D20 material, but can't, because some thus far imaginary guy might come up and diss your work for being D20. So you aren't making the game you want to, but the game this imaginary guy wants to. Why does he get a vote, anyway? He doesn't even like D20, as far as I can see!

Options: you could just design a D20 game. That's still a pretty good business if you have some design muscle in you, and much of the harder parts are already done, so you can concentrate on adding your own thing. Alternatively, you could try to find your own voice for the mechanics, but for that you need to know what you want to achieve with the mechanic. Just looking at dice pools, playing cards, roll-unders and such won't tell anything about why you should or shouldn't put in some particular mechanic.

I think the two main aspects of the design I need help with though are the mechanic, and developing the story into a design that works for an RPG. And I am basing the "story" concept of gameplay from the SW RPG. They way the characters interact within that universe per say.

Did somebody already suggest the transcript method? Some new designers find that it's useful to write an imaginary transcript about how you'd like the game to work. Just write a short dialogue, like the ones you see in game books now and then. Don't concentrate on the imaginary events, but on the players: how many they are, what roles they have in the game, what kind of stuff they say to one another. For mechanics, just write in indicators like <Tim the GM resolves conflict with dice at this point>. This kind of transcript may help you, and others, to see a general picture about what you're looking for in your game. If nothing else, it can reaffirm preliminary thinking.

Anyway, I think you misunderstood the design for the XP Skill System thing, I inteded for the characters to develop their skills by doing ANYTHING that utilizes a skill, asking people questions to develop, say their Influence Skill, or Fighting to develop their Melee Skill. Yes, it is a reward system, but in my mind it doesn't hinder any one from doing whatever they want to develop their skills. Again, in my mind, players would be rewarded for gettting into adventures, because thats where they would use their skills. So, either I don't understand you, or you misunderstood me. If you care to, please elaborate on what you were trying to say.

Yeah, I understand what you mean by the mechanic you describe. However, you didn't apparently understand me. Take this imaginary transcript here:

GM: So, the city is full of adventure, and you have a letter of introduction for the count. Where you wanna go first?
Player: Why, the library, I think.
GM: Huh?
Player: I'm starting an intense study arc right here. My curriculum will include swordplay, athletics and sumerian language.
GM: ...
Player: According to the rules, I get three xp raises per week of study. Sounds good to me!

OK, the above is somewhat extreme, but illustrates the danger in using the kind of xp system you propose. If raising skills is a major reward of play (which I imagine it will, if your design's based on computer games), then the most clearly thinking player should just do his best to secure good study conditions in preparation of optimizing his character. Of course in practice these systems have not worked that way, but that's been because of other mechanics and priorities coming in the way: in Call of Cthulhu, for example, there is a very strong assumption about the GM driving adventure, and the players really do not have the option of just studying. The GM will just force the characters into adventure, or more likely, the players. So it's not impossible to get that kind of thing to work, but it does require either separating player reward from skill raises, or separating skill raises from "realistic" considerations like repeating use and such.

Interestingly, this works the same way in computer games that utilize this kind of system. There the effect is rather pure, because computer games do not have a social contract that says you can't spend your time just studying. Consequently, a great number of computer adventure games are about finding good practice conditions and raising skill levels. Examples include Quest for Glory, Diablo, Morrowind, Final Fantasy series, to mention a few games I remember playing in this mode. In those games the player will frequently set aside the storyline and instead raise level, if suitable conditions appear. In some games this is just an amusing sidetrack, like in Quest for Glory, but in others it becomes a morbid pustule that breaks the enjoyment of the game. I personally got caught in 40 hours of character improvement in Final Fantasy VIII before realizing that the game doesn't really have anything to offer me.

But anyway, let's not get stuck on that. As I said, this kind of experience model can work for some kinds of games, as long as you know what you're doing. That's really just a minor sideline in the conversation.

[Adam Dray]

I have a copy of Dogs in the Vineyard but haven't played it yet, so I'd rather talk about My Life with Master, which I've played twice.

In MLwM, you play the pathetic minions of an evil master, whose orders you can subvert only with a successful die roll. Every "turn," the GM (as Master) gives your minion an order. You probably try to resist it. If you fail the die roll, you proceed to carry out the order, which might be something like "Go steal the new baby from the orphanage so I can harvest its spleen" or "Find [the other minion] Robert's friend Elizabeth and kill her because she knows too much about our operation." Then you go off and commit various villany and violence against the townspeople and once you make a single die roll to carry out your Master's orders, you're free till the next turn. If you managed to resist your Master's orders, you probably go off to strengthen your connections with the townspeople (gain Love) via another die roll. If you succeed, you gain a point of Love and that makes you stronger and more human. If you fail, you still gain the Love, but you also gain a point of Self-Loathing for the way your failed attempt at connection made you feel. This makes you weaker in a way.

Note that I haven't talked about picking locks or swinging swords or complicated chains of die rolls to figure out if you can find Elizabeth and so on. Conflict resolution takes the scope of die rolls up a level to determine "what is at stake here?" In each scene, there's a single overarching conflict like, "Can I gain the Love of my friend Elizabeth?" or "Can I find and kill Elizabeth and please Master?" or "Can I resist Master and avoid killing Robert's friend?" Each one of those questions refers to something that is important to the player (not just the character who is, after all, a fictional character without real motivations). The die roll answers the question without asking the player how he is going to gain love or kill Elizabeth or resist Master, though the player may very well explain his methods before or after rolling. That's conflict resolution: answering the "what is at stake?" question at a high level as something important to the player's end goal, not individual tasks on the way to the player's end goal.

It works very well in play and I'd recommend playing a game like My Life with Master before judging the merits of conflict resolution vs. task resolution.

And before you think otherwise, let me say that you can still have a detailed skill system and use conflict resolution instead of task resolution.

Also, there are "in between" methods that use bits of both conflict res and task res in creative ways. I do think you'd love Burning Wheel: Revised.

[Kyle Carter]

Euro, Thanks for being understanding!!! :O)

Well, to starters. You say that a game mechanic can't be copyrighted. Well then does Wizards just have the copyright to the D20 System Logo, and the words "D20 System" used together? Because, I looked this up at the Copyright Office online, and found a copyrignt for the D20 System, now as far as what that copyright pretains to I am not sure. That's why I was asking.

If it is just the part of the D20 system that fleshes out the rest of the book, thats AWESOME, but if it's all of it, I obviously can't use the D20 System, or the D20 Mechanic either.

Because I spend the better part of aprox. 3 weeks, day and night, pounding my head trying to develop something dfferent from D20 because I thought it was copyrighted. But if it's not, I am more than happy to use that system. Altough, I will admit it would be cool to develop something new, but again, if I can use the D20 System, I will go with that, and put the "new" mechanic on the back burner, until I have enough experience with other game systems. It's like that old saying when people speak of History (MY FAVORITE SUBJECT, besides Art of course. lol) "We have to know where we've been, before we can know where we're going.

I will check out your reccomendation about Shadows of Yesterday, and see how it grabs me though. But for records sake, I have read enough about FUDGE to know that I don't like it, even with an inventive dice system. lmao.

Additonaly, in my design education, I was always taught that you have to target a specific audience, and disavow and ideas that would target other groups. Unless of course, you are shooting for a general audience, which is sort of what I was trying to shoot for. Or is that too ambitious for someone as fresh as I am? Anyway, that was my motivation, but after thinking about it, I would much rather shoot for a specific audience that the whole group. Much easier to develop and build.

And another question about the copyright aspects of the "D20 System", if I design another logo with "D20" in it, and not "D20 System", is that legal? Also, what if I add something else in the name, but keep "D20" and "System" seperate from each other? "Like say "D20 Advance System" Or, could you get away with "Advance D20 System" I've been around and around with people about what is copyrighted and what isn't copyrighted, and for one I would really like to know. Because it would be nice to make a little money from my work. lol. But there's no way I would charge $40 a book! Maybe $10, or $15 for a core book, and maybe $5 or $8 for an expansion.

And thats another question, wizards seems to have made me believe that you can't include things like "Core Rulebook" in the title of your book which serves the same function? Is this true. Also, things like Dexterity, and Strength seemed to be included in what they call "definitions" I know this can't be true, because I have seen many games which use the latter two for sure. I dunno, random thoughts I suppose.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, and keep it coming. I'm currently working in a website that would showcase the company I am founding and also the website for this game. Maybe when I get it up and running, I will give everyone a link.

Anyway, Cheers! :O)

[Remko]

Kyle,

You can produce D20 supplements legal. They call this the 'Open Gaming License': you must put in one page which is available on the website of WotC, which says all of the stuff you've introduced is your copyright and the D20-system is of WotC. Then, you're fully free to produce commercial D20 Products. There are numbers of companies already doing this (of which Mongoose Publishings and Necromancer's Games are well-known).

[Kyle Carter]

Yes, I know of the Open Gaming License. But in order to use the System Legally, you cannot have a character creation system, or any system which enalbes character advancement (ie. leveling up).

[Adam Dray]

Without getting into the details, you can create a new game based on the System Reference Document, which is essentially D&D. You're free to do anything you like with it, as long as you follow a handful of rules involving (among other things) putting the Open Game License in it and not calling it D&D.  

If you want to say it's compatible with D&D or use the D20 trademark, you must abide by an additional license which adds a couple more restrictions to what you can do with your rules.

If you're just writing a game for you and your friends to play, I wouldn't sweat this in any case. If you plan to publish something, however -- even on the web as a free thing -- I recommend you learn more about the two licenses. If you want to make money on your product, I recommend you consult a lawyer.

[Adam Dray]

Sorry. I crossposted. Thought I refreshed my browser, but I guess not.

Kyle, you can't have character creation and leveling rules under the D20 Trademark License. You can have such things under the Open Game License. Check out any of the various OGL releases from Mongoose Publishing for examples of what you can get away with.

[Erick Wujcik]

...then does Wizards just have the copyright to the D20 System Logo, and the words "D20 System" used together? Because, I looked this up at the Copyright Office online, and found a copyrignt for the D20 System, now as far as what that copyright pretains to I am not sure.

For information on copyright, trademark and patent (three very different things), you should look up the following thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14554&highlight=copyright+trademark+patent

Erick

[Kyle Carter]

I understand the difference between the three. My specific question is the Usage of the words "D20" and "System" in one grouping? Is it legal for me to do that?

[Eero Tuovinen]

I understand the difference between the three. My specific question is the Usage of the words "D20" and "System" in one grouping? Is it legal for me to do that?

Only if you use the d20 licence. That's the one that limits your use of foul language, and doesn't allow chargen and some other stuff. You also have to use the OGL licence to use the d20 licence, so you'll have to know both their limitations. As a reward, you get to use the trademarked logo and call your book a "d20 System" book.

As for the specific idea of calling your system "d20 thisorthatsystem", that's basicly ok, but it's a matter of normal trademark law, not of the licences. There are companies that take this route; for example, there's a "True d20" or something like that (I forget), which is a OGL system. This is a question of not reproducing a trademark, which is pretty simple with a trademark this simple. Just don't use a name that's exactly "d20 System", because that's the trademarked name. All other examples, like "d20 Advance System", are fine in this regard, because they're not trademarked (assuming they aren't of course). However, even if you don't run afoul of trademark, you could still get litigated because you run too close to the trademarked item and cause IP damage, or confusion among the customers, or something like that. It's illegal to damage brand reputation, you see. This isn't a practical risk, unless you set out to specifically steal the trademark by calling your system "d20 Systematic" or something stupid like that, that's obviously just meant to ride the trademark.

If, however, you just use the OGL licence, then the limitations are also less. In that case you have to tell your audience that you're using a d20 compatible system through some other means. A typical one is saying that "my game is compatible with the third edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game" or some such thing. Or, some folks just use OGL in the name of the game or some other such place. Although the licence itself doesn't mean that your game is d20 compatible (other systems use the licence as well), in practice that's what the audience expects; for example, I don't think that anybody would fail to understand that Conan OGL is something other than redressed d20.

So, final word: if you think that d20 is perfect for your goals, use OGL. Only use d20 if you're writing a setting or other material for D&D, keeping it compatible. Note that you don't yet seem to know whether that's exactly what you're doing, so keep your options open.

--

To answer some of your other stuff:

About target audience: more than for any other venue, there is no such thing as a general audience. If you follow the work of the brightest lights of rpg industry, you'll soon see that they more than anybody focus their work to very specific needs. The whys of there not being a general audience in roleplaying is a matter for another thread.

More about copyrights and stuff: you throw around some pretty heavy misconceptions about d20, ability names, core rulebooks and so on. I suggest that you throw away those, design your game, and worry about making it legally compliant afterwards. You can't do too many mistakes, as long as you're not directly copying text from some other book (and even that is legal with the OGL licence). You seem to suffer from a little bit of juriditis, you see; that's the one where you start seeing shadows of litigation everywhere, and then invent all kinds of rules of thumb about what's legal and what's not, without ever studying the basic laws the stuff revolves around.

Book pricing: You don't seem to have a solid grasp for the finances of book publishing. I suggest making your game first, and then looking at that. For now, let me just say that you probably shouldn't plan on a printed, hard-cover publication, and especially not for $15. Read up on POD and PDF publishing, which are more realistic and financially reasonable for most of us.

--

Overall, the most important thing in game design is to design the game. The most important thing for designing the game is to know games. All this other stuff is fine if you want to just speculate about designing, and dream about publishing, but they're hardly relevant for design. When you realize that 90% of these "I'm going to design a game" folks never get anything done, you'll also realise that it's pretty foolish to worry about something like trademarks. They won't produce a good game.