Orklord’s Haven

Happy New Year.

I have been playtesting Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies in January and while doing so, I thought about the mechanics for my game.  I am pondering how this game would work if I used an existing system.  I’m jump not wowed by my own dice mechanic thoughts, but I really dig the Solar System (from The Shadow of Yesterday) and the PDQ system (from Atomic Sock Monkey).

I could pretty easily hack either system to have a devolving mechanic and I could tap into an existing player base.  I am concerned that a short-run game like D-com could be a barrier to players to pick up and learn.  But if it is a flavor of a system they already like, it would be more appealing.

 Honestly, I’ve considered buying a couple of the PDQ spinoffs because I know and like the system.

This week I had a lengthy conversation with Ryan Macklin (host of the podcast Master Plan) about D-Com.  I pitched him my ideas for mechanics, and he promptly poked holes in them wide enough for a truck to drive through.  It was a good kind of bubble-bursting as he pointed out how I was creating mechanics that had little relation  to what I wanted players to do in the game.

He gave me a suggestion that I want to explore: to reverse engineer the game a bit.  The idea is to mock up some Actual Play where I envision what player(s) and the GM do in the game, but I don’t try to assign mechanics to what I imagine them doing.  Once I see how I want the game played, I should have a better idea on how to create mechanics to allow players to do that.

The first Mock AP I will do will be for Battlebot CBPS-Gamma-1411, aka Haven.

I’m writing this here so I can refer back to it as I sus out my mechanics.

1. I want my mechanics to start with very high stats for Player Ccharacters that reduce over time. Player Characters will easily succeed at nearly every task at the begnning chapters of the game.  As the PC degrades, success becomes more difficult. 

2. I also want to introduce a separate mechanic that increases over time and can replace the mechanics that are breaking.  This is the Sacred mechanic or something related.

3. I have no idea how I want the mechanics to do that.