So this is my first blog entry on the site. First time using the site as well. I'm actually typing this from my phone.
I'm sitting here alone on a warm friday night. Wife has left to help some friends babysit. I've got the house to myself and our internet has gone out for the 5th time today. I decided to kick back on the couch and throw open my sketch book and notebook. Theres already a lot of content developed so far, but I have a long way to go.
The game I'm creating completely from scratch is an idea I got from the love of nostalgic 8 bit console RPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Legend of Zelda and so on. I wondered early on if you could make such a complicated style of gaming and turn it into an easy to play / easy to understand board game. After some talking with a friend about game mechanics and translating the feel of playing a traditional oldschool RPG, it just seemed too complicated. These games use computers to quickly judge encounters and attacks and keeping track of party members and a huge inventory of items and weapons. This just seemed to me that it couldn't be done. So I started backwards.
I decided to start out making the game incredibly complicated and chip away all the unnecessary mechanics, dumb down some other mechanics, and finally try to get to a game that looks and plays exactly like a traditional oldschool RPG. After months of designing and redesigning I have finally jumped alll the hurdles that stood in my way.
There were several aspects to an RPG I did not know how to implement. Battling, party system, inventory system, exploration, equipping items, stats, job classes and tiers, money, co-op gameplay or multiplayer? There were so many design problems and mechanics that just didn't work in my mind. Until I wrote everything down on paper and started concepting new fresh looks at these systems to implement into a RPG board game.
Ill discuss later in detail all the struggles I've overcome so far. This game is still heavily in development but I really hope to have a working prototype soon. Making all these ideas up and playing them out in real life are two completely different things.
So stay tuned for next time when ill be sharing my ideas on how I'm working on the players mat/inventory/equipment/magic/class/character/stats/status effects/etc!
Thanks for reading! :D
Comments
Welcome to the forum,
You've come to the right place. There are plenty of experts here to help you on your way to finalizing your board game. Good luck. Nice meeting ya.
my advice to simplifying a
my advice to simplifying a system is finding a focus. the moment you find the focus of the experience you are trying to deliver, you will know what to simplify.
as an example, Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) is an activity where people dress up as their desired avatars, go to an actual locale where travel, dialogue, a sense of adventure and whimsy is the focus of the expereince. however, solving hard encounters like combat instead is reduced to Rock Paper Scissors.
do not think of every component as necessary, think of the core experience/aim/goal you are trying to deliver and expand from there
Thanks for the warm welcome.
Thanks for the warm welcome. I plan on sticking around.