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In Indie Game Design

12/4/2002 JSDiamond: Orbit cover art
The book cover art is finished. There will eventually be a starry background and shiny chrome text, but I'll do those in Adobe paint and illustrator. I set a black…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: JSDiamond, Valamir, Paul Czege, James V. West.

12/3/2002 Matt Wilson: Peregrine: Can I sell you this game?
Here's a game I've been working on for a bit now. The setting and rules are fairly well along, but I want to be able to "sell it" without you…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Matt Wilson, Paul Czege, James V. West.

12/2/2002 Gwen: Long Goodbye (with cards)
I think the idea of using cards is an excellent idea and would help greatly with the organization and execution of the game. Traditionally, I am opposed to card/dice games…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Gwen, Ron Edwards, M. J. Young.

12/1/2002 Shreyas Sampat: Shared Control of Characters?
In a game I'm working on, players are dissociated from the characters. The players are to represent temptations that pull the characters away from their goals, and ultimately hinder them…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Shreyas Sampat, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards.

11/30/2002 James V. West: Black Wing: idea in the rough (long)
[i][b]Black Wing[/i][/b] is the rpg companion to my series of comic stories set in the land of Hof. These stories begin with issue #1 of [url=http://www.randomordercreations.com/rocg.html]Random Order Comics and Games[/url]…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: James V. West, Ron Edwards.

11/27/2002 Steve Dustin: CREATURE FEATURE: Powers of play in a shared-GM game
Creature Feature is a shared-GM monster movie RPG I talked about in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4138 Some conversations got me thinking about "defining" the metagame capabilities of players in terms of…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Steve Dustin, RobMuadib, Mike Holmes.

11/27/2002 scobie: Casefile ZODIAC - Soundtracks (Long)
Hi all Given some of the discussion on the forum, I'm thinking of chucking out the 'xp' model of character development based on learning new skills, instead going for thematic…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: scobie, JSDiamond.

11/27/2002 Emily Care: Rise Up: narrative allocation mechanics
Hello, I'm working on a game that takes place in a slave holding society on the brink of revolution. The mechanics will guide the players to create a framework of…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Emily Care, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, bluegargantua, Jonathan Walton.

11/27/2002 Mageant: Persistent RPG World
Hi Everyone, I would value your opinions on the following idea: I am complemplating creating a copy of the Mysticora game world (www.mysticora.com) database for a persistent pen & paper…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Mageant, Mike Holmes, RobMuadib, Emily Care, contracycle, damion, Balbinus.

11/27/2002 Brian Leybourne: Die Mechanics
I've been mulling around some ideas in my head about die systems recently. (Not that I have an actual game in mind to use them for at the moment, and…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Brian Leybourne, Mike Holmes, szilard, Henry Fitch.

11/26/2002 zaal: Alternative Combat Rounds
Hi all, I posted this on RPG.net and was told to check out this forum. So here I am :) . Bear with me as I learn some of the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: zaal, Andrew Martin, Gwen, Brian Leybourne, Wormwood, b_bankhead, simon_hibbs, Mike Holmes, Le Joueur, cruciel, Blake Hutchins, thoth, szilard, M. J. Young, Valamir, damion, Walt Freitag.

11/26/2002 Wormwood: Drift: Spending XP during play
Resources are fun, and advancement resources tend to be put to many different uses. In Drift however, advancement resources seem to need a little modification. While the idea of spending…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Wormwood, Ron Edwards.

11/26/2002 Wormwood: Clandestine: Sore wa himitsu desu
I'm trying to work out a mechanic to generate secrets, or at least guide their generations. By secrets, I mean in particular specific actions that produce specific effects, based on…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Wormwood, Mike Holmes.

11/26/2002 Gwen: Long Goodbye
This is another idea for a game I've had. I just recently came up with the idea, so there's much fleshing out necessary, but I figured I would explain my…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Gwen, Le Joueur, Paul Czege, Brian Leybourne, Mike Holmes, M. J. Young, thoth, Price Check, Ziriel, Psycho42, damion, Jonathan Walton.

11/25/2002 Daredevil: Samurai Surfin'
No, that's not the actual title of what I'm working on, but it sure sounds catchy. I've currently been working on this game design and I'm fairly stuck between a…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Daredevil, Mark D. Eddy, Bob McNamee, talysman.

11/25/2002 Sidhain: Back to the...ahem..Heart..of the matter.
I've been working on my Hearts and Souls superhero game on and off, last night one of my players said they didn't feel like playing because it was too hard.…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Sidhain, M. J. Young, Jared A. Sorensen.

11/25/2002 Clinton R. Nixon: Riptide: anatomy of a design, part 1 (long)
The current round of threads here has been really inspiring to me. I'm talking specifically about threads like Chris Kubasik's Accessible? To whom?, Jon's What would make a non-roleplayer buy…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Clinton R. Nixon, Mike Holmes, thoth, Valamir, Jack Spencer Jr, szilard, Tim Denee, Matt Wilson, Mark D. Eddy, Jared A. Sorensen, talysman, scobie, Ron Edwards.

11/25/2002 Shreyas Sampat: Torchbearer: Mythology or Setting?
Reading over Ron's essay and reflecting on my own experience, I realized that Torchbearer threatens to suffer from the conflict between detailed Character and Setting that creates difficulties for Narrativist…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Shreyas Sampat, Mike Holmes, GreatWolf, Jonathan Walton.

11/25/2002 talysman: Court of 9 Chambers: new description mechanics
I've been working on the next version of "The Court of 9 Chambers", something a little more robust while still maintaining that flexible minimalist feel of the first version. the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Emily Care, Valamir.

11/25/2002 Demonspahn: Need help with Aware "narrative" mechanic.
Hi everyone. Just thought I'd post this, looking for some fresh new ideas. I'm talking about my game Aware, where you play intelligent animals. I'm looking for what I can…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Demonspahn, M. J. Young, Mike Holmes, Christoffer Lernö, Nathan.

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Subsequent Topics
In Indie Game Design

12/5/2002 Gwen: A Political Space Roleplaying Game
This is an idea I had earlier this year. (I know I have a lot of ideas, but I have RPG ADD.) I really liked the idea, but I got…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Gwen, Emily Care, Mike Holmes, bluegargantua, damion, Bogie_71, Kuma.

12/5/2002 xiombarg: Unsung: Pick Me Apart! Fnord! And, oh, a bit about cops.
Okay, I'm waiting on some research materials so I can do some serious playtesting of Unsung with the idea of adding a couple of settings to it and turning it…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: xiombarg, Mike Holmes, Tony Irwin.

12/6/2002 Eddy Fate: Mechanic: Craps
I've been bouncing around a modern day mobster RPG for a few weeks now. I was trying for some sort of resolution mechanic that is quick, relatively balanced, and evokes…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Eddy Fate, Walt Freitag.

12/8/2002 Shreyas Sampat: Refreshing Rain: Wuxia Pathos and Astrology
[i]The water barely shimmered as Li Mu Bai ran across its surface. Jen followed, marring the lake with expanding rings.[/i] Wuxia is not about the kung fu. It's about the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Shreyas Sampat, Tim Denee, Jonathan Walton, Emily Care, Thor Olavsrud.

12/9/2002 Jonathan Walton: Pre-Game Fortune = Fortuneless Gaming?
I think I just stumbled across something really cool. I was working on a set of diceless rules for Continuum, while still trying to reflect the original mechanics and allowing…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Jonathan Walton, xiombarg, Le Joueur, damion, Mike Holmes, talysman, Paul Czege, Wormwood.

12/10/2002 Shreyas Sampat: Refreshing Rain: The Relationship Sky
[url=http://www.geocities.com/torchbearer_rpg/rain.html]Refreshing Rain[/url] uses a board as a representation of the relationships of various characters in-game. Very simply, a single piece in the board represents one entity. That entity is antagonistic…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Shreyas Sampat, Jonathan Walton, Kuma.

12/10/2002 Clinton R. Nixon: Riptide and odd questions
I'm designing the 'curriculum' system for my new game, Riptide, right now. To answer these questions, all you need to know is that it's set in high school. Ok. Question…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Clinton R. Nixon, Matt Wilson, Wormwood, Jared A. Sorensen, quozl, damion, Walt Freitag, cruciel, kamikaze, Ziriel, Shreyas Sampat, Jack Spencer Jr, Mark Johnson, contracycle.

12/12/2002 Green: been a long time...here it is, the drama system
Not too long ago, I posted here about an RPG setting that was centered around fairy tales. After much thought and tweaking, I decided to expand the game to more…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Green.

12/12/2002 Skadedyr: Do part-OGC games count as indie?
I'm currently designing a game based on the d20 SRD, wich will be 100% Open Game Content. However, all the parts I don't write myself will be copyright WotC. Does…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Skadedyr, Andrew Martin, Clinton R. Nixon, Valamir.

12/13/2002 Bankuei: Main Void Main
Hey all, Here's a fun little game I came up with over the course of the last two weeks or so. It's what I call a Stealth Narrativist game, filled…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Bankuei, Shreyas Sampat, Emily Care.

12/13/2002 Andrew Martin: Mecha
I happened to suddenly design this mecha game over on RPG.net for a Anime Manga Mecha parody setting. The author of the setting doesn't like it so far, preferring instead…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Andrew Martin.

12/13/2002 Jonathan Walton: The Wars of the Roses
This is another Ma Jiang-based system, but in a completely different style than Shreyas' Refreshing Rain. While I really like Shreyas' design, I wanted a system that was more closely…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Jonathan Walton, Emily Care, Shreyas Sampat.

12/14/2002 Clinton R. Nixon: Topic for dissection: How do you design a game?
Up-front, I want to state this is a different type of thread. Anyone is free to contribute, of course, but I'm going to ask that only people who have actually…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Clinton R. Nixon, DaR, Jack Spencer Jr, M. J. Young, Nathan, ethan_greer, Shreyas Sampat, gentrification, Wormwood, kamikaze, Michael S. Miller, GreatWolf, Peregrine, Andrew Martin, Eddy Fate, Mike Holmes.

12/15/2002 Shreyas Sampat: The Calligrapher's Sword
Today, I present you with a fresh plate of sacred steak - internal consistency. The Calligrapher's Sword is a game about people in a dreamworld, something like a combination of…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Shreyas Sampat, Wormwood, Henry Fitch, Jonathan Walton, Peregrine, Ted E. Childers, kaworuiskool.

12/15/2002 Nathan: a WILD topic : the WILD rpg
Hallo, An unexpected surprise! I was working on my home network today, and I plugged in an old hard drive into an old Powermac 7200 to setup as a internet…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Nathan, Shreyas Sampat.

12/15/2002 Michael S. Miller: Incarnadine: Shakespearean RPG: 1st look (long)
Okay, I’m working on a new game (who isn’t) and I’d love some feedback. The game is called Incarnadine: Role-Playing in a Shakespearean Style and, as you might gather, is…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Michael S. Miller, Mark Johnson, Paul Czege, Shreyas Sampat, Andrew Martin.

12/16/2002 Green: Neverending Story RPG
It may be a silly move, but I've been inspired by a book I finished reading recently called The Neverending Story byMichael Ende. The themes, plot, and setting call to…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Green, Shreyas Sampat, Clinton R. Nixon.

12/17/2002 Mark Johnson: Tarot Card Based Game
Hello all, I just typed "tarot" into the search here at the Forge and it shot out over 50 threads with the occurance of the word. Obviously, the idea of…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Mark Johnson, Jack Spencer Jr, Paul Czege, Michael S. Miller, Bob McNamee, Shreyas Sampat, clehrich, Unsane.

12/18/2002 Matt Wilson: Peregrine character story arc
I've been batting around this idea for a while now, and it's starting to make some sense to me. The motivation for it is a desire to formalize what I…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Matt Wilson, Henry Fitch, Peregrine, Emily Care.

12/19/2002 Green: kathanaksaya (a story-based rpg)
Since my last attempt at posting the initial steps of designing my own rpg was in violation of the rules for this forum, I went back to the drawing board…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Green, Jonathan Walton, Shreyas Sampat, Tony Irwin.

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