AprilTTRPGMaker Day 9: Describe your process

in tabletop-rpg •  7 years ago 

Don't have routine but process I got... mostly.

So, I'm kind of "lightning" designer. Either the whole game comes to me all at once or... nothing. I got games that are just a title and idea and have been that way for years.

One thing I tend to do is steep myself in source material. I didn't feel right working on Necropolis for The Sprawl having only read Neuromancer. So I re-read Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive and the four Sprawl relevant short stories in Burning Chrome.

I'm glad I did because that lead directly to the creation of the The Sourcerer playbook because for all his lofty academic credentials +Hamish Cameron is apparently a literary monster who can't recognize that the thematic glue that holds those books together is the spiritual role of the A.I.s and completely left it out of his game! So, I was happy to fix that for him.

See what I did there? That's my process. I look for the emotional heart across multiple source works and design around that. It's why I often go to older books. Older literature is less concerned with structure and less concerned with genre tropes. I find it a much more suitable source for inspiration because RPGs are a chaotic medium built in the moment.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!