Orklord’s Haven

Things are starting to come together on this project. It is scaring the crap out of me!

1. I now have a layout person who is anxiously awaiting my text.  He is skilled with photoshop and took one of my front cover concept photos and made it look really awesome (I’ll link this in later).  He also has a copy of InDesign and some other layout program he mentioned that I don’t know.  He is already working with me on getting a feel for the setting and communicating it through the book.  Getting a handle on the “yesteryear” will be a critical part of the book for me, its what draws me to this project.
2. I have secured a quote from an artist I know on some of the art I hope to have on the character sheets and I look forward to continuing work on that front.  The quotes will help me define my art budget, which will be incredibly small.
3. I pored over the Library of Congress images recently and pulled out several good photographs of baseball from the 30s and 40s.  I want the majority of the book to contain photographs, but I want to keep them consistent to the theme of yesteryear.  I will also be looking through istockphoto (thanks to Fred Hicks for his excellent work on Don’t Rest Your Head and how he used images from that site).
4. I’ve been digesting quite a bit of baseball media, from a book about baseball in the 1930s titles The Good Old Days as well as a biography by a St. Louis pitcher in 1956 (can’t recall the name off the top of my head) to watching the MLB network and keeping up on spring training info to renting a documentary called Player to be Named Later; this is giving me good inspiration on the game and the talk.  Oh and I go to a Yankees vs. Team USA spring training game next Tuesday.  woot.
5. Game System Updates

• After a failed playtest of the At Bat conflict resolution using Solar System, I’m developing a system using the elements found on a baseball card.  I am keying on numbers that are important in baseball 3s and 9s.  I want to end up with 9 possible stats: 3 from Team, 3 from Position and 3 from Personal.
• An idea someone suggested when I was using Solar System was that stats refresh during off the field scenes.  I’m hooked on this idea and will be implemented in this new system.
• The aforementioned Personal stats must tie to my off the field conflicts and I will be shoring up this aspect of the game soon.  Without the texture of off-the-field life, I’m just making a card game.  This is a role-playing game!  It has to allow players to make living breathing characters and the struggle of the characters to Make the Bigs must be reflected in the game.

Lots of movement on many fronts.  Now I must tackle the daunting tasks ahead

1. Develop enough of the mechanics to alpha playtest it.
2. Develop the resulting text into a beta playtestable draft, one that I can share with the play group so they can read through it and make characters (I’ll still run this version, of course)
3. Take the results of the playtest and revise the mechanics intoa stronger, better, faster system
4. Devise a style guide for art to be used in the book
5. Write the fluff, the setting information into a draft so we can begin working through layout ideas

That’s just phase one!  I need to sit down and set deadlines for myself to keep this momentum going…

I typed this up over the weekend.  It is an incomplete re-evaluation of Making the Bigs as a game to be played with a character sheet of a baseball card as the character sheet.  I’m putting it here for a log of activity and for any feedback.

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Making the Bigs character sheets should look like a baseball card.
A regular baseball card is 3.5″ x 2.5″.

Making the Bigs is a game I want in the hands of non-gamers. To make it easier for them to play, I will use six sided dice (the kind with pips that you’d find in a box of Sorry or Monopoly). What elements of the character sheet do I have? Position, Team and Bio will work in threes – two Advantages and one Hindrance. Name is an extra flash. Name – the character nickname is a colorful phrase that can act like a FATE aspect, giving a bonus to any conflict where the player can apply it as well as giving the GM something to key on for story lines). Position – the position gives one Advantage and one hindrance to the PC. The second bonus is the player’s choice

• C will have NO SPEED, but will have GLOVE
• 1B will have NO ARM, but will have POWER
• 3B will have NO AVERAGE, but will have POWER
• 2B will have NO POWER, but will have CONTACT
• SS will have NO POWER, but will have GLOVE
• LF will have NO GLOVE, but will have POWER
• CF will have NO ARM, but will have SPEED
• RF will have NO AVERAGE, but will have ARM

Team – the team will have two Advantages and one Hindrance for each PC, all the same for each member of the team. These Aspects of the Team can be changed by the playgroup during play, but can only change occasionally.

Bio – The Bio will be two to four sentences about the character. It will define the PCs strongest Tool, their Key Trait and their Issue The strongest Tool can be a Tool from the position and it will have double strength. The Key Trait is a personality aspect that the player wants to role-play. The Issue is the problem that the PC must overcome in order to Make it to the Bigs (what the heck does that statement mean?)

How do conflicts work?

There will be off-the-field conflicts of character choice. These conflicts will be handled quickly and will be driven by the Players in order to recharge a Tool (Tools can only be recharged off the field in scenes with more than one Player Character) or by the GM to spotlight an Issue or as an interstitial to illustrate the PC’s Key Trait. There are also conflicts on the field, which happen during a baseball match. These conflicts are either Plays or At Bats.

Plays are moments where the PCs are not At Bat, meaning they are either On Base or On the Field. Plays can be Defensive Challenges, meaning the opposing team is trying to score a run and the PCs must stop them. Plays can also be Offensive Challenges, which are conflicts where the PC is not At Bat, but the PC’s Team is. So, the PC could be On Base and trying to score or break up a double play or trying to steal third or anything else that would contribute to the PC team scoring a run but isn’t At Bat.

At Bats are conflicts between a Player Character and a Pitcher (and subsequently the opposing team) where the Player Character tries to score a run. The At Bat can be resolved one of two ways, either through one roll to resolve the entire At Bat called Last Pitch, or by resolving every single pitch in the At Bat, which is called simply – Pitch By Pitch.

Last Pitch mode is a simple roll by the Batting Player Character against a roll by The Ump portraying the opposing pitcher. whoever rolls highest wins the conflict and describes the result within the parameters of the difference between the roll results.

Pitch By Pitch mode is a complex series of rolls to simulate each pitch during a conflict between the batter and the pitcher. The At Bat is resolved when either the Batter gets a hit or is out.

I recently interviewed Jason Morningstar about his game in development Fiasco.  During a lull (and off mic), I mentioned my game in development “Making the Bigs” and how I’m using the Shadow of Yesterday by his friend and gaming buddy Clinton R Nixon.  As I described the overall concept to Jason, he mentioned there were aspects of tSoY that did map well to my game idea (the idea of Keys, Bringing Down the Pain and using Transcendance as the trigger for a PC to be promoted), but he also said that the game may not give me what I wanted from MtB.

Weeks before that I was having an IM conversation with Remi Treuer (another friend and gaming buddy of Clinton) about MtB and talking about tSoY and he also expressed concern, but I was too excited to hear what he meant by it.

After two people mentioning this to me, I started to worry.  The part that concerned me is that I’ve read through tSoY several times but I’ve never gotten to play it.  What about tSoY looked fine on paper but didn’t work through play?

Here’s how I’ve tried to answer that question.  I spent a couple weeks creating PCs, mocked up a whole baseball team and a pitcher.  Then I sat down with a made-up batter and a made-up pitcher and rolled an at bat.  This at bat was an application of the task resolution system in tSoY called Bringing Down the Pain.

The idea behind using tSoY, a “story first” type of RPG, is that the at bats could be more interpretive, allowing for the playgroup to take roll results and weave them into interesting stories.  I also didn’t want to dictate too much baseball results and take away the fun.  In my head, I know I’m either writing this game for RPGers who don’t know much baseball and would get confused by a bunch of table results as well as baseball fans who don’t know RPGs but do know baseball stats and could fill in the blanks if I give a good framework.

I got through one at bat in my simulation before I came to realize that mapping the tSoY concept of “Harm” (which is a hit points type of thing for tSoY) to balls and strikes is problematic.  Its too much math around the actual baseball results, the two don’t overlap well.  What is a Bruised Level?  A strike?  What is a Bloodied level?  A strikeout?  The two aren’t integrated, they feel glommed together.

Now I’m wondering if I should create my own at bat mini-game, scrap the idea of using tSoY and go back to formula, or push through and drift tSoY slightly…