[Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves] First-ever RPG design

[foucalt]

Ok, here's my first-ever RPG, done as a 24-hour RPG yesterday. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and help from a couple of buddies last night playtesting it. I guess its as much a storytelling card game as an RPG, but there are characters, you are one, you progress, you roleplay. It takes as its premise almost any one-on-one type conflict (jousting match, prison fight, courtroom battle, gladiators, even a football game I guess) and gives a quick playing card narration mechanic to it (much of which was inspired by Clinton's Sept. Ronnie entry Black Widows - thanx). My goal here was just to give design a try and see 1) if it's fun for me - it is; and 2) if I'm any good at it - remains to be determined. I would gladly take advice, feedback, criticism, etc. from this forum and incorporate it back into the game if there's any interest. For this project, I'm not looking to do anything beyond a free, publicly released .pdf.  Version 1.0 of the game is here:

http://www.gheron.net/TwoMenEnter.pdf

Hope you enjoy it!

David

[Graham W]

David,

All right. As a quick bit of feedback, I'd say:

1. Any game that's played with a pack of cards is a good thing. I like packs of cards.
2. Having said that, I'm worried that this game is more like a card game, with narration tagged on, than an RPG. It reminds me of the "Parlour Narration" category of the Ronnies. You play a card, then narrate what happened; but the narration doesn't affect the card game.
3. I'm not sure about the broad focus. Taking in courtrooms and prisons and gladitorial arenas is a huge sweep. I'd prefer the focus was narrower. (I liked the prison thing).

How did the playtest go?

Graham

[foucalt]

Thanks for taking the time, Graham. Glad you like the cards.

As for the parlour narration - I think you're absolutely right.  One thing that came out brutally in the original playtest was that the diversity of the hand you drew was more important than the card values - I changed a couple of rules to try to account for it a little bit, but I'm not sure I'm there yet. Any suggestions on making it less a game of chance witha touch of strategy and more one of strategic roleplaying?

Sorry if the broad focus is diverting - its my natural inclination to look at mapping a system onto a bunch of settings. Maybe a better thing to do while writing the rules is to just pick one (I would probably initially choose Post-Apocalyptic Deathdome given that the games name comes from a "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" quote) and write completely with that in mind, then continue to include (as an appendix) a table for alternate settings. In the playtest, we did a jousting tournament, which worked fairly well since it readily provides a simple reason for the pairings (although we still did motivations from the opening card). The playtest was fun, but since each battle was pretty quick and only provided so many advancement points, we ended up just doing tons of these jousting matches (with a few knight v. knight barfights thrown in) and sadly, it got a bit old after a couple of hours. Because the game is basically about (only) paired combat, it ceases to be compelling after you've won or lost a few matches. There's just not much there at present to keep someone coming back week after week, and I'm not sure how to change that without giving up the premise of the game itself. Ideas?

[Josh Roby]

sadly, it got a bit old after a couple of hours. ... There's just not much there at present to keep someone coming back week after week, and I'm not sure how to change that without giving up the premise of the game itself. Ideas?

Who says it needs to be fun for weeks on end?  If you can reliably entertain a group of people for a couple hours, that's a good game.