One of the things that I wanted to do with Genship Exiles is create a demonstration of how the Hammercalled core system can be expanded upon and modified.

The core philosophy of Hammercalled is "gamist", if one wants to consider games on the "narrativist, gamist, simulationist" triad.

This isn't to say that the goal of Hammercalled isn't to facilitate a narrative through that game setup, it's just that the whole system is intended to be simplified into win/lose judgments.

From a philosophical standpoint, Hammercalled approaches all of the elements of storytelling as a series of challenges.

Sometimes these challenges are obvious, so we don't need rules for them. A semi-truck hitting a makeshift plywood barrier doesn't need to roll to break it, unless there's some concern about whether or not it hits.

However, once a challenge is identified that is ambiguous with regards to outcome, Hammercalled is about finding a win/loss result.

Think of it like a coin-toss. You essentially have a series of coin-tosses, and the idea is that each character has some coin-tosses that are rigged in their favor.

We're not full-on gamist in some senses, because we don't really concern ourselves with balance. Balance comes as a result of each character being able to rise to the occasion against the challenges they want to overcome.

In that sense there's a little bit of narrativism there, but the system itself (barring the ill-fated Destiny mechanic) doesn't generally care about how your character does things.

Essentially, you've got an infinite field of potential coin-tosses, and you're narrowing it down to finite options as you put a narrative over it.

It's not particularly simulationist (it doesn't have a set genre, or a set tone, because a lot of how that would be handled comes from on-the-fly judgments). Yes, the core rules are "cinematic" in nature, but they're cinematic because players generally succeed at what they're good at.

Decrease the numbers, or increase the difficulty, and you can have really pathetic characters, especially if you put hard challenges in front of them. I found out the hard way how hardboiled the system gets when you lower attribute ratings and don't compensate by making challenges easier.

It's also not narrativist because there's precisely zero input with regards to how characters develop and their motivations. The world is generally a neutral state, or at worst it is the physical elements of the world getting involved with how things work.

The idea that goes into this is pretty basic: I want players to have absolute freedom.

Where it Breaks Down

The problem with Hammercalled right now is that it's very much a blank slate. With Segira: 1985, we're aiming for that sort of feel. It's inspired by sandbox-oriented games like Traveller and Twilight: 2000, but without quite so much crunch and more of a game-play approach.

However, if I look at many of my favorite systems, they do things Hammercalled doesn't. Degenesis and 13th Age really draw in characters with notions of factions and ideals in the setting. Even something less noteworthy like Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun tries to invoke some element of narrativist storytelling by putting the player in charge of resources that relate to NPCs or factions.

I've tried efforts at games that do this, and it doesn't always work well. velotha's flock, for instance, is fun, but it's definitely not going to win any awards based on its more serious game design elements.

In short, the current Hammercalled rules feel like a microcosm. I was noticing this when I was reading through the Star Wars 30th Anniversary Edition of the WEG Star Wars game, which is a lot lighter than one would expect of a modern Star Wars roleplaying game.

While it's fantastic in its own right, it's also really sparse in terms of building characters. It encourages GMs and players to work toward a sort of shared "Star Wars" experience.

Hammercalled, by nature of what it is, can't do that.

The Destiny and Theme systems were supposed to do that in Hammercalled, but what I found is that it wasn't really working well to have them in the game. They tried pulling strings, but they didn't do enough and they didn't feel right.

It was a sort of "Israel Asks for a King" moment, where you do something because everyone else is doing it but not necessarily because it's a good idea.

Moving Toward Narrative

Genship Exiles is a game about stories, and unlike Hammercalled's core ruleset it aims to tell a particular kind of story. It's about generations, exiles, and finding a place in the universe.

That requires me to work on new mechanics. The focus on gameplay is going to be on working with values and motivations more than raw mechanical bonuses, and players will play a large role in building the world that they will inhabit.

It's still going to be a light touch to storytelling. If there's one thing I've learned it's that when you force people to play a certain way, you're going to have certain results. However, there's a second element to this where you can wind up having quite good effects when you play your styling off right.

Genship Exiles is about soft-guidance, not hard-control of actions. The idea is this: players define their world, the factions in it, the reason for their exile. This is Session 0 stuff. Then they make their characters based off of that. They start with heavy ties to their society, drawing their resources from what they had at home.

Then, as they wander, they discover the universe. They inflect upon their previous choices, moving beyond rote repetition and memory, and also add to their repertoire based on what they've discovered. They may add new Talents to the game as they continue (whether players or GMs do this is not yet set in stone).

Unlike Hammercalled, the focus is on how things tie into the story. Things get passed on, not made up. I think that will make an interesting and novel experience.