1KM1KT Free RPG Community

You're making a game for free. No-one is going to pay for it and you'll probably upload it here for some freebie donwload-i-ness. There will be a point where you say "That's enough, I'm going to leave it alone and upload it."

For some, that's an easy thing to do. You write a load of stuff and when you get to the end, you're done or perhaps you're doing it as some sort of competition and have a time limit. For philanthropists like us, we have even more freedom. People aren't paying for it, so we can upload often and do not need to do quality checks quite as stringently. You also don't need to keep a product line alive with regular updates and new products.

There are lots of us here that just doing because it's good fun to make stuff to play. I'm getting through the next version of at the moment, redoing all the graphics (so it looks better printed) and improving some of the more dodgy rulings. But where do I stop? When do I say "That's enough, time to upload it."

When do you know it's enough? when you're sick of it?

My opinion would be when you feel that adding anymore to it would detract from the game's spirit.

If I knew the answer to the question, I'd be a much better writer. Several of my games have spiraled out of control and wound up in development hell precisely because I don't know when to say when.

For example, back in 2001 I stared writing a Science Fiction game, which as of late, has been deemed "Xeno-eXodous" in my notes. It is all about the problems that crop up when Humanity is faced with the impossible task of evacuating the entire population of Earth within a 100 years due to an alien weapon slowly reforming the planet. Thus much of the conflict is various factions competing for the limited number of ship spaces, and once those vessels leave the solar system - the small number of planets and orbital habitats. I have the Catholic Church competing against the genetically engineered "Human Purity Project" (Militant Trans-humanists/social Darwinists) who are watched by Kriig (KGB - in space!) who is also keeping tabs on the "war bunnies" (angry miners living in underground warrens) who are fighting the capitalist oppressors who...

And the far reaching storyline isn't enough. I have also detailed the style of clothes, the appearance of coins, differing control schemes for powered exoskeletons... The game has reached information overload and its become difficult to answer "where do the players fit in all this mess?"

Dead... And Back is facing a similar problem as I outline more and more ideas I want to establish about the city states and the time before. Its kind of zombies introduced into a post-cyberpunk/partially trans-human world, but first i need to describe what that world was like, even though it ceased to exist due to the aliens five years ago. (You know, when summed up that way, it sounds like a b-movie version of Blade Runner...)

I guess the advice I have on the subject is to work on the game in discrete parts. Make the rules one, setting another, and other important information a document in itself. Therefore, even if you feel the work on a whole is incomplete, you can still release something, Hence while construction may continue, there is some proof you're alive, feed back is possible, and the readers don't need to download the entire document every time and then hunt down the few little changes between each edition.

Some great points there. To add a couple more perspectives:

on theRPGSite suggested to write as much as you can and see how readable it is. Then reduce it down. Then see how readable it remains. Then go again. And again and keep going. Stop when it doesn't make sense anymore.

has been making an RPG (not free) bit by bit on theRPGSite. Instant feedback is great here and allows problems to roll out. He has been going for a while, though.

I think release small and release often as you can.

Chainsaw, I would love to read Xeno-eXodous, is it any sort of form at all? That sounds like a bonkers but brilliant game.