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Looking for feedback on trio of very rough games

Started by Lethe, September 22, 2008, 10:03:02 PM

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Lethe

I posted a request for some feedback on RPG.net, but I figured I'd post here as well since more people who are interested in game design tend to congregate at The Forge.

Just a quick note about my intentions. I don't have the time or the inclination to be a professional game designer, by that I mean get paid. I would love to eventually polish one or two of these games enough to have a good layout with some art and tighten up the writing. But my main goal is to create games that are fun and a little different with an emphasis on fairly light rules.

If you have the time to read through some or any of these games, I'd appreciate any feedback, although I do have some specific questions for each game. Here's a little history/background on each one.

Sovereign

I had the basic idea for this game floating around in my head for several years, and I'm afraid it may be a fantasy heartbreaker. I'm not really happy with the way I've presented the setting material. I know exactly what this game is about in my head, but I don't think that came through very well in my writing. Any tips for tightenting it up? And, I guess this should have been my first question, what do you think this setting does well or does bad? Does it make you want to play or not really? Do you find the main protaganists (the player characters) interesting or is there another element of the game that seems more interesting than them?

I'm actually pretty satisfied with the rules, and I had very little to do with them. A poster on RPG.net helped me with the core mechanics and my brother helped me out quite a bit with the combat system. I've ran probably about 10 sessions of this game and the rules have worked to my satisfaction. Ideally, I'd like to test them out more, but I don't get a game in very often these days.

I guess my main concern here is are the rules presented clearly? Are there any rules that seem superfluous? Any rules you find particularly interesting? Are there any rules that you think detract from the mood of the game?

Taverns & Drakes

I actually think the writing on this turned out pretty good. It's short, to the point, and I think the light-heartedness of it comes out pretty good. Of course, I could be wrong. Feel free to point out that the writing is awful, confusing, and painful to read. Really, I have a thick skin.

I've not had the opportunity to actually run this (I know, I know, don't publish anything you haven't playtested, a big no-no) and I can already see some things I'd like to change. The class abilities for instance, I think would work better if they were just automatic instead of having to roll to activate them.

Well, okay, I did run this in a play-by-post game once, but I don't really count that and it didn't last very long.

I guess my main questions on this game are 1) Does this read like a fun game to play and not take too seriously? 2) Do the rules seem to encourage light-hearted adventuring and humor, discourage it, or neither encourage nor discourage it?

Krone

This is so short that I wasn't even going to put it up on the Internet, but I had a surprising amount of running this game.

I probably put this together in half an hour or so to have a backup game to play one night and ended up running it. I know there's not much to critique with three pages or so, so just hit me with whatever you think. I know the setting is very threadbare so if I was wanting to make this into an actual game that'd definitely need more space. I actually like the fact that the rules are so simple - my group had characters ready to go in probably five minutes.


Games can be found at http://www.1km1kt.net/tag/crayon-samurai.