final art project

War In The Heavens pt. 21: Reneasance

I know it has been a while since my last game design post. I hit a bit of a wall on the design and so was at a loss for a few months on what to do about it. I recently had a bit of a breakthrough, and I thought I would go over it. I hope this will be the first in a series of posts leading to some form of a complete game.

I have made a few decisions on the nature of the game, some of you may like them some may not. I have decided to limit the game to one empire for the players to be part of. Most of the game back story was focused on The Empire of Man. So I have decided to go with that feeling. The players will be playing Scions of the Sovereign of the Empire.

Because of this, a whole new area of game design opened up for me. Due to the sharp focus the number of stories that can be told become more specific. It will work like this. The players will be a cabal of Scions sent to a system to deal with an issue. That issue will be designed by the players. Basically I took bits from Diaspora and Dresden files(system design and city design respectively). The GM will ask questions about the system that the players will be sent to.

I will start with the system. How many planets, and who lives there? Then move on to the planet(s) in question. What are the threats and themes of the planet? Who are the faces? I am working on a random set of rolls to help with creativity while adding in the boundaries required to keep the setting themes going.

I really like the fractal nature of Fate, in that everything and anything can have aspects and the like. This allows the layering of aspects on a scene. The problem with doing this leads to there being an abundance of Aspects to pull from and I wonder if I should go with the scope limits from Diaspora.

This leads to my altering the proto-thought I was having about triggers. Instead of inventing a new thing that is basically an aspect, why not just use aspects to do the job. So I will be looking at adding an aspect to each stat. Each of them will need to be able to be compelled.

So those are the changes I am leaning toward at the moment. Let me know what you think.

Procedural

Here is a procedural of a whole drawing.

More pictures

Still life, still working on it




















Flowers




















Castle

I made some drawings! Check 'em out!










































This one is a Warg. From the Monster Manual.

Laughing stick

we made a new episode of TLS

War In The Heavens pt. 20: I think I can, I think I can...

Well, here I am. I have a rule set. OK, I have most of a rule set. I am foundering in two key areas. In order to explain what my issues with the game are I will go into some of the basics of the game. Then I will go into what my specific issues are and the ideas I have floating around to fix them.

So in War in the Heavens the players have four attributes, Love, Duty, Pride, and Wrath. In any given scene the players will use one of those attributes as the core roll. You have a strength which is listed at four dice and a weakness listed at zero. The other two attributes are at two dice. For each attribute you have between one and three Triggers. Triggers are the scenarios, people, and items that allow you to use the attribute in a scene. Your strength gets one trigger, your weakness gets three, and the rest gets two each.

And that right there my friends, that is wherein my problem lies. The triggers. I need them to be generic enough so that they can be used in several scenes(at least one scene a session). I also need them specific enough that they mean something. It is at this point that I am stymied.

My other issue is with the GM parts. I know what I want the game to do, I am just unsure on how to help the GM to bring that experience to the forefront. I have several game types. The adventures will start with the discovery of a new system through the jump gate. If the other stellar nations have not found it yet, then you try to bring under your nations control through missionaries, politics, or war(when necessary). If another nation is involved then it is down to the previous methods as well as espionage, and cold wars.

So how do I do that? Well that is the question, I guess. I do not have much on how to emphasize these aspects of the game. I need a way(or ways) to make this the central theme of the game. I will keep working on it, hopefully inspiration will strike.