I might be getting ambitious, but I’m trying for two entries.
April’s Entry is going to be (no real spoilers) a high fantasy crossover with two other genres. I’m going a little stir crazy on this one because I really didn’t want to do high fantasy as I have mentioned before. I feel like there are so many other games on the market, especially in 2024-2025, that are fantasy or fantasy adjacent that adding to the heap is pointless.
Pointless unless it spins in a way that appeals to other audiences as well. After much debating since the BRP Design Challenge was announced, I’ve decided to do the one fantasy plus game and one game that I just wanted to do for fun. It’s a lot of work. The pitches are a lot of work if I want this thing to sound as good to everyone else as they do in my head.
Timing is going to be crucial. If I want to meet the May 31 deadline, I’m going to have to budget my time carefully. The For-Profit entry comes first with the fun one’s time budget being shortened by the amount of time it takes to finish enough details. If I thought a twelve page magic item supplement for Shadowdark RPG was a lot of work, editing this gives me nightmares. At some point, I just have to stop and let it loose in the world.
Why am I fussing about Dwarves and Elves?
If I’m being honest it’s because I’m feeling a bit burnt out on Dwarves, Elves, Dragons, and magic spells. It’s kinda everyone’s bread and butter game. It’s the one most of us learned on. It’s the 50th anniversary year of that one particular game that introduced us all to the elf and stick game. The company that has produced that particular game since 2000 has left a bad taste in my mouth.
I’ve been heavily immersed in Shadowdark RPG for several months between my solo game and writing efforts. It’s not that I hate fantasy games or grimdark fantasy. At some point I just want to get back into Power Rangers or Monster of the Week. As an aside, I recently ran across a bunch of cool ideas for the Des Moines Remote Viewing Society. I’m also dying to run supers in ICONS again, probably solo.
Different flavors of fantasy.
What if there were no Elves or Dwarves? No one has ever heard of a fairy or a dragon. Does that still count as fantasy? You better believe it does.
I often put myself in the shoes of an anime/manga creator. What if there was no Western Fantasy? We just throw Tolkien and others like him out the window completely. What do we have then?
That takes us way back to 1974 when TTRPGs were new and coming out of the wargaming scene. Thanks to our friends at Chaosium, I don’t have to design a system from scratch. I do have to come up with things such as professions, skills, spells, and possibly unique weapons. If we’re throwing out most of the “classical” Western fantasy tropes and avoiding any sort of cultural appropriation, I’m going to have to concoct a lot of things from the ground up.
Fighting “men,” magic users, and sneaky people.
At pretty much the core of every fantasy game, movie, comic, etc we have people who can swing a weapon, possibly cast some spells, or employ stealth to get their various jobs done. For sake of argument, I’m lumping “those who pray” in with the rest of the spell casters for now. I think it’s fair that we can have different fighting styles and different versions of spell casting. My fantasy world has some degree of technology, so I can add the professions tied to that as well.
I’m rebuilding spellcasting from the ground up. Right now everything has clever names such as “Heal 1” and “Speed Boost 2” for examples. Later we’ll add some catchier names to the spells that divide up who can cast what. There will also be a keen mix of magic and technology, so there will be spells tied to some types of equipment.
There will be no Elfpocalypse.
Everyone starts out as a human in this world. There are still going to be cultures and later certain new non-human races that no one has heard of before will pop up. We’re not quite talking about another Skyrealms of Jorune here, but darn close. I want to make it clear that no one has heard of “elves”
or “dwarves.” Not even in folklore, not anywhere, ever. What people call “aliens” are very real, though.
I figure if everyone is human starting out there won’t be any arguing over whose character has more benefits due to their ancestry. It also does away with all of the big and small ancestries before anyone can protest. Just good old homegrown [Redacted] humans. There will still be plenty of fantastic elements, just not presented in the same old (less appealing) traditional fantasy way.
Fear not, there will still be plenty of racial and ethnic tension in game, just not the enmity we’re all used to seeing in Tolkien. A lot of things are going to have to run off of sketches and descriptions, much the same way they did back in 1974 when artists were first commissioned to figure out what everything looked like. I already pity whatever artists get stuck with me.
The smackity crunchy people.
No TTRPG with combat would be complete without a bunch of damage dealers swinging sticks and wearing armor. There might be some shooty things with strings and sticks, too. I haven’t ruled out firearms yet, but I haven’t included them directly, either. The smackity attackity has been around since the dawn of hominids on Earth, so I figure any TTRPG worth its salt is likely to have such a thing.
Much like magic, there’s “Fighting Style 1” and “Martial Arts Maneuver A.” Eventually I’ll come up with ways for characters to train and schools of thought on combat. Some will be modeled after things in the real world, others will be completely fabricated by me.
The sneaky folx are pretty much universal. Practically every game, movie, etc has the stealthy burglar, the smooth talking con artist, and the stabby-from-behind person. It won’t be anything complicated, and the world I’m building will most definitely need spies and scouts. Subterfuge and double dealings are a thing even in the new world.
And the rest…
I’ll talk more about my philosophy on designing religion for the new game in another article. I’m not really keen on the traditional Gygaxian methods I’ve read about. I don’t really want a monotheistic or even pantheistic culture in my game. There’s also a concern about mixing my own spiritual (non-religious) beliefs into a fictional work. (*We’re not reinventing Scientology or anything here.) I just want to toss the traditional “Cleric” out the window and start over. There are no traditional undead to worry about, at least that will be recognizable.
If I’m being totally honest, I’d love to make this whole game non-fantasy all around such as Cyberpunk. Unfortunately, the second I do that someone will inevitably come and ask me about magic or want to play an elf. The whole thing becomes frustrating at conventions and elsewhere trying to explain a game.
“But it’s in the book!” they cry.
Hey, it’s in the BRP: The Universal Engine book and the BRP SRD, sure. It’s not in my book necessarily. There’s magic, though. I think that will help calm people down a little bit. My magic system may not even look like the Sorcery, Powers, or Psionics in the BRP book. The characters are going to be exploring completely uncharted wilderness for the first time. They may never run into elves or dwarves unless their own GM decides to introduce them.
Oops. Gave away a secret there. My high fantasy plus game is going to be completely open world. I have some suggested encounters and plans for a more in-depth world guide, but my intention is to leave it open world sandbox hexcrawl to begin with. I’m putting together the basics and some of what the old world might have been like, but it’s on the GM to figure out the where’s and what’s of where the characters are going.
In some ways, I envy people doing simple post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk style games. This thing I’m working on is starting to feel like Traveller or Torg. I have enough intersecting genre and character perspective lines already without adding a bunch of complicated cartography and having to develop more that one planet. I’m delegating a bit to GMs and their groups.
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 