Game Designing Blog.
So, way back in the depths of antiquity [2009] I began a small project of writing a table top war game. The original premise was a war game based in the near galaxy in about the year 3000 [from the human perspective]. It underwent a few changes initially and a bit of history was written, and few races added to the universe. Then I was getting a little bogged down in the detail, so I tamed it a little back to the basic mechanic, then wrote a partial game based on the same - developing - mechanic that was a campaign developing crew on ships, pirate ships, etc.
A little while passed and the pirate game had introduced so many little tweaks and quirks to what was meant to be a generic system, that I tied it back to the basic mechanic again. That was in 2012.
Life has a way of taking over from dreams that you play with from time to time, and this was no different. I wrote the basic mechanic, and added a bit to the universe and that was about all that happened for over 12 months. Then, in the middle of 2013, a friend of mine prompted me to continue. Not encouraged, mind you, just nudged a little. So the mechanic got its 2013 rewrite that was generic, and then that generic mechanic has now - slowly - been ported over to the science fantasy universe again. I have done a fair bit of work since then, mostly on the universe, and lot of it is still a messy jumble in my head. Mostly a time line for the galactic sector and the other races have been established, and reasons for why 'X' doesn’t get along with 'Y'. In this setting, the human race is still the newcomer to this long standing - and occasional brush fire - that is the portion of space we find our self in.
Until today, it was all on paper, or electronic document, or still tucked away in my head. Today, I actually play-tested the mechanic. Did it work? So far, so good. Does it have anything overpowered? Well, I only tested basic armour, basic cover, basic rifles, and then tested a machine gun. By my rules, the machine gun is a little overpowered. But that isn’t really wrong, because, machine guns ARE overpowered. I am going to do some more tests, to see if initial theories are correct. But I was surprised how well it ran for a very small play testing session.
It is also very satisfying to have finally got to that stage. Is it a full functioning game? Hell no! It's a long way from that, but so far my initial mechanic designs are working. And this is amazing in its own right.
More to be posted here soon as I continue to finesse the process and develop the universe. At this point 'Next Frontier' has gone from theory to practice, even if I'm the only one that gets to play it.
