[Warriors from the Mystic Mountain] Deeply Struggling With My Game

[Willow]

Almost a year ago, I had the same doubts I am now experiencing.  In the past year, my system has crawled along.  I've worked on it, but it doesn't feel like it's any closer to being finished than it was a year ago.

The question that eats away at me, that ate away at me then, was Is My Game Worth Writing?  See, Warriors is a reaction to my play of Exalted and Weapons of the Gods (and to a lesser extent Qin), which left me disatisfied with the kung fu action.  I wanted a tactical game that really felt crisp and fun to play.  I still want this.  I am not sure if I have the tools to write it.

Here were my design goals a year ago:

*Have lots of cool special powers.

*Have tactical and engaging combats.

*Compel the players to action.

*Result in dramatic play.

*Be easy on the GM, as far as prep time is concerned.

*Feel like awesome Kung Fu wuxia action.

None of these has changed.  There are some unspoken goals- "focus on the players," for example- but there was also a big big one that I didn't write down.  I wanted to make one of the best (perhaps definitive) gamist games out there.  There wasn't a lot available at the time that really hummed along.  (There was John Harper's Agon, but it was a very different experience.)  I wanted to use indie-techniques to design a gamist game.

Now 4th Edition D&D is out.

It's not Wuxia, and the mechanics are pretty different than what I had in mind, but it's providing the same core gaming experience I was trying to create.  It nails pretty much all my design goals except the genre one.

So, here's my questions-

Those of you who are at least passingly familiar with the work I'm doing on my game- am I writing a Wuxia heartbreaker?  Or is this just self-doubt?  Is the game as is worth writing?

The game, as currently envisioned, is supposed to feature lists of talents and kung fu techniques, which are essentially feats and powers.  When I try to write these, I am paralyzed with dread and fear.  I can brainstorm them all day at work, jot down ideas in my pad, but when I sit down at the computer, I can't make the ideas go.  Everything seems redundant and pointless.  How do I cope with that?  How do I write the massive game that I want?

And here's just a blanket question:  What can I do to get out of this slump?

[jag]

I haven't been following your process, so i can't comment on things specific to your process, but I'll give you my reactions to the generic points laid out.

Now 4th Edition D&D is out.

It's not Wuxia, and the mechanics are pretty different than what I had in mind, but it's providing the same core gaming experience I was trying to create.  It nails pretty much all my design goals except the genre one.

Would making a Wuxia D&D4 supplement be interesting to you?  Or heavily adopting it in some d20/OGL-friendly fashion?  Some of the mechanics of D&D4 seem well-suited to wuxia -- eg, No Shadow Kick could be a once-per-encounter ability, while Sparrow Falling From Heaven could be a once-per-day ability, etc.

The game, as currently envisioned, is supposed to feature lists of talents and kung fu techniques, which are essentially feats and powers.  When I try to write these, I am paralyzed with dread and fear.  I can brainstorm them all day at work, jot down ideas in my pad, but when I sit down at the computer, I can't make the ideas go.  Everything seems redundant and pointless.  How do I cope with that?  How do I write the massive game that I want?

And here's just a blanket question:  What can I do to get out of this slump?

The "lots of cool powerz" problem is a hard one.  Some approaches i've seen have been:

1. Make a huge list, and playtest it to death to make sure it's balanced.  The problem with this one is that WotC attempts it with a significant dedicated staff, and then playtests it with an army of eager gamers continuously for a year, and within a week of it coming out people complain that it's broken.  One designer with a couple dozen indie-playtesters will probably have less success.

2. Make a huge list, and let the people sort it out.  This is incompatible with some publishing goals (ie, making a pretty $35 paperback), but one could imagine that the core rules come in some PDF/book, and the list of feats/powers are on a wiki that's continually getting modified (or some other flexible repository).  Although this has other problems, it's better than having a relatively permanent list of broken powers.

3. Make a small core/example list, and let the people expand as desired.  Again, this requires some flexible method of publishing powers, or structures that make it relatively easy for any given group to develop their unique power tree.  Although i have drifted towards this method, it places a lot of gamist-balancing burden on the shoulders of the group, which will reduce the number of people for whom the game is a good fit.

Lastly, on a more general note:  IMO, if there's some part of the game that you really dread making/working on, it's probably a sign that that approach isn't the right one.  At the very least, if you really don't want to make a huge list of powers, then even if you force yourself to do it, they won't be as inspiring as those powers made by someone who really loves doing that.  Maybe you could playtest it with approach #3 from above, and use the powers developed by the players as the list?  Someone with a cool (and totally different than yours) vision of their character can make some pretty interesting feats...

james

[greyorm]

And here's just a blanket question:  What can I do to get out of this slump?

I'm dealing with many of the same feelings/blocks with eXpendable. So after sitting and typing, erasing, typing, erasing, then rearranging text blocks pointlessly and finally staring emptily, I got away from it for a good long while and did something else creative but completely unrelated to game design. I also worked on something else game related that was really calling strongly to me and that I had solid ideas about, but which I am not pushing myself to develop. And even though I didn't touch the game for months, I feel much better about it and continuing development on it now. I'm also less attached to all its pieces, so I can cut things that aren't working that I didn't want to cut before, and see problems or potential issues I wasn't considering before.

[JohnG]

Slumps are weird, they can be the most frustrating thing in the world or they can be surprisingly positive.  When I'm in a slump I sometimes take a break for a while til I feel like I want to write again because I've come up with something cool, a break can sometimes give perspective and as you re-read your stuff you might come up with a better way to do something or at least a solution for a problem or two.  Another thing I do sometimes is I basically 24 hour RPG myself and start powering through some other idea I think is cool to keep me from overfocusing, I did this a couple times with Ember and it not only allowed me to give my mind a break it also sometimes lead to me adding some new ideas to my game that I hadn't thought of previously.  Slumps are personal things unfortunately, we could give you lots of advice and it might work but sometimes it's just a matter of learning what works for you or just recovering from burnout.

[dindenver]

Hey Willow,
  Necessity is the mother of invention. Can you play the game you want to right now? Without crazy house rules?
  If not, it sounds like this game needs to be made.
  As to your design issue, I suggest you get the mechanics to work without the  wuxia glitz, then the need for special moves will make itself apparent, no?
  Good luck man, hang in there.

[Jason Morningstar]

And here's just a blanket question:  What can I do to get out of this slump?

My suggestion is to take a break.  It sounds like you are in your head about this.  Work on some other projects more intensively and let this one sit for a while.  If you have serious doubts about the game's feasibility, six months will tell you - you'll review your notes and either see some new and interesting possibilities informed by your subsequent experience, or you'll be utterly unmoved, and then it is back in the drawer for another six months, or forever.  I do this all the time.

[visioNationstudios]

My group has always found that when any of us are in a slump, watching movies, playing video games, and reading books specifically from that genre almost always reignites the creative fires.  Sometimes all you need is that one thing that makes you go "that's what I was missing!"

Sometimes trudging through a project translates to the project itself, and makes your content appear plodding.  Which is exactly not what you want in a dynamic gamist game.  If you're at that point, take a step back and reevaluate, while trying to find that creative spark again.

[SpoDaddy]

Is D&D4e the closest a game has ever come to satisfying your needs for wuxia-style play?  If so, use the OGL and don't go crazy on the powers (a couple dozen well designed and balanced powers > a hundred crazy powers that render your game a broken mess). 

[Eero Tuovinen]

Hey, I know exactly what's going on here. I went through a rather extreme version of this with The Shadow of Yesterday in 20004, as that game happened to be pretty much in the exact creative space wherein a game I was working on at the time resided. This was a pretty big hit on me, as I'd already developed my game 3-4 years and written literally hundreds of pages of various material for it.

Thing is, at least in my case it wasn't a "slump" I needed to get out of - it was just that somebody else already made the game I wanted to make. My reaction was to abandon my own, unfinished project and start to work on new stuff. Then, later on, I started working on TSoY as well, and now I'm publishing for it - so in a sense, I took the game that stole my thunder and made it my own. Meanwhile I'm mining my own, abandoned project for all sorts of material for new things; it's a constantly fruitful mulch for new work.

So my suggestion, which you'll have to consider for yourself, is to abandon a project you no longer have the confidence for. Rather, write for 4th edition if it seems to you that it does what you want. Also listen to Jason, he knows what he's talking about: if the project has something worthwhile in it, it'll remain so when you come upon it later on. Then you can either return to the project with new courage, or recycle the ideas in it into new stuff.

[chance.thirteen]

A side note about martial action, Wuxia or not. To me, the keen moves and powers offer one of three things:

1) A specific and sometimes necessary answer to martial challange, like fighting against a spear, or fighting against many, and of course counter moves/techniques

2) the means to offer a specific martial challange like attackign from above, challanging balance, movement, chi control

3) something specific to the genre, such as attacks that are actually linked to the morality of the fighters, or the wat Weapons of the Gods linked various techniques to certain stories the players and their characters might know

Notes
Movement is a key element, and it is really hard to use in an evocative way.

Many of the moves seem unstoppable when used against the run of the mill warriors, yet the right technique renders them one more step on the ascending ladder of tensions, techniques and power used.

[Greg 1]

I'm going to agree with those suggesting you use D&D as your base.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel and using D&D as your base will make your system a lot more accessible and a lot more likely to be of interest to people.

[Ron Edwards]

Vincent put it quite well a while ago, when he and I led a seminar together, with two questions.

1. Why a wuxia game? (meaning, what would be fun about it in play? Quite a few kewl things are fun to watch in a movie but not necessarily fun to play)

2. Why a new wuxia game? (meaning, what about your design offers a distinctive kind of fun that isn't already available?)

I also think that social goals, like writing a definitive type of game according to the theory terms here, are not really reachable. That's not a design goal, it's a reaction goal and perhaps a status one. Furthermore, in design terms, by definition a Gamist design may be met by any number of combinations of techniques, so there literally cannot be a One True Awesome Gamist game.

For instance, I know of one game that was written with the Step On Up essay right there in hand: Beast Hunters. It does a great job of taking what that author wanted for Gamist play in this case, and considering all levels of the Big Model in the rules and text. But in now way can it occupy some kind of pinnacle - someone else can come along and do exactly the same thing and produce a very different game.

Best, Ron