How to write a Free RPG - P1 Inspiration - Feedback please!

[Rob Lang]

Rather cheekily, I would like to call upon the 1KM1KT hivemind for their opinions on the chapters of my up-and-coming blog series How to write a free RPG. I've split it into parts - because it's too big - and will post them up in the forum here. Any thoughts or help you can offer would be gladly accepted.

17 Aug 2010 - Updated with feedback so far, thanks everyone!

How to write a free RPG
In this series of posts, I will be outlining techniques for the creation of a free pencil and a paper RPG from scratch. It covers Inspiration, Research, Writing, System, Setting, Organisation, Testing, Publication and Support. This guide might be useful for commercial games but it is really intended for the hobbyist who has an idea in their heads and want to flush it out. The guide is arranged in steps, each step split into instructions and example. In the example, I will be building an RPG as I go. Each step has work for you to join in to.

Please do not be upset by the authoritarian language I use. At no point in the future will masked FRPGB Police smash down your door with a printed copy of the monolithic Fear RPG if you fail to comply. I use curt language so that skim-readers can get benefit too.

What you need
To design a free roleplaying game, you will need the following tools.

• Pencil
• Paper
• Computer
• An install of a free document creator with PDF output such as Scribus
• An idea

Prologue
Have you ever played a roleplaying game? Then you possess ample qualifications for writing one. There is a roleplaying game in each and every person who has played one. If you have the will and an idea then this guide will show you how.

Creating an RPG demands perspiration and perseverance. It is daunting to think about the end result: a book packed full of rules and ideas that can be used by a group of roleplayers to entertain themselves for many sessions of play. Being terrified is normal. Instead of worrying about the end result, expect the anxiety feed of the fear. You're not the first to feel this way, you won't be the last.

Do not give up. When you feel yourself flagging, go to your favourite community and post up your entry. If you're not in a community, get into one. Try <a href="http://www.1km1kt.net/forum">1000 Monkeys, 1000 Typewriters</a> (1KM1KT), it is a community for writers of free RPGs, just like you.

Do not plan to wait for the finished game but release often and in small increments. It is much easier to keep up motivation if others are following your progress.


Using a notebook
The common tool for all writers is a notebook. Keep one with you at all times. Although I have a powerful smartphone/laptop/desktop/digital device, it is much easier to scribble down an idea, perhaps with a picture on paper. Moleskines are globally recognised as a defacto global standard.

Inspiration
The goal of this chapter is to create a concept from which you will be able to write the rest of the game. The concept is:

• A brief overview
• Description of boundaries
• Target audience
• How it is different from other games?

Do not try and write a roleplaying game without a strong concept. You may produce something but you will find that it will be indistinguishable from other games.

The Idea
Before you write anything down, you need an idea. From this seed, you will construct a concept and that will guide everything you write. The idea need only be a single word or short phrase. We will flesh it out later. If you have an idea, write it down in pencil in the middle of a piece of paper. We will use this phrase as the name of the game for now.

If you do not have an idea
If you do not have an idea but know you want to make an RPG about <em>something</em>, here is how you come up with that seed.

• Take two things you like and mash them together. For example, The A-Team meets 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• Take a thing you like and invert something important about it. For example, The Terminator universe where an archaelogical dig turns up proof that it was the Terminators that made the humans.
• Open a dictionary at a random page and take the first word. Do this five times and write a roleplaying game about that.
• Check out the list of insanity on the 1km1kt forum
• Ask for ideas on a forum
• Read outside of RPG blogs, such as Boing Boing, Mysterious Maps or your favourite news broadcaster.
• Open a text editor. Start writing. Write whatever comes into your head and don't stop for 5 minutes. It can be anything at all. Do not think while you are writing, just let it straight from the brain. Don't worry about proper sentances either.
• Write a 500 word story set in a very specific time and place. Make sure you have a beginning, middle and end. Then build your game to represent that world.
• Create a new game by fixing things you do not like about other games.

Expanding your idea
Write down at least four major themes associated with your idea. These should be broad genre ideas, such as: magic, space travel, evil empire, gods walking about, corporations, psyonics, zombies, non-human races. Write each of these themes around your central idea and draw lines from the central idea to each theme. Avoid using broad genres (Fantasy, Sci Fi etc).

For each of these themes, write down at least four components of them. Two should support the theme, two should be detrimental to it. For example, if your theme is magic, your supporting components might be 'easy to do', 'powerful' and the detrimental components might be 'illegal', 'dangerous'. Put a + sign in a circle by the supporting components and - sign in a circle by the detrimental components. By having both supporting and detrimental components, this will create conflict and provide you with the seeds of a balanced setting.

Trial by Questioning
Answer each of the following questions. Do not proceed until you know all the answers.

• What will the players do?
• What is fun about it?
• Why am I designing it?
• Who will play it?
• What do I want to do with it?
• Are you going to publish it in print on demand?
• Is it suitable for Campaigns or One-Shots?
• What's its closest rival and how is it different?

What style of game will it be?
It is not important to tie down exactly the style of play the game will engender but it will help you decide whether or not to include something later one. On each of the graphs below, put a spot where you would like your game to be.

Co-operation
Players co-operate / Players compete
Shared resources / Individual resources

Mechanics
Rules for everything / general rules
No dice / Lots of dice
Easy to die / Hard to kill

Character creation
Random (quick) / Point buy (slower)
Choose from a list / Players make it up
Rapidly changing characters / Static characters (no advancement)

Tactical
Grids + miniatures / Scrawled piece of paper
Precision measurements / purely descriptive

Style
Personal quest / World changing consequences
Humour / Serious
Realistic / Cinematic

Pitch it
In the future, a GM is going to pitch the game to a group of players. The act of pitching will force you to more tightly define what it is you are trying to achieve. If you find that you are repeating yourself a lot, then this is a good thing, it means that you have a tightly defined idea of what the game is about.

Do all of these pitching activities:

• Describe your game in 5 words.
• Elevator pitch, describe your game verbally in 12 seconds. Keep trying until you can.
• Create a marketing that you might read on a post. No more than 25 words, no less than 12.
• Draw an advert for your game on a bit of paper.

Create the Concept
You should now have a good idea of what your game is about and so it is time to write your Concept. Your Concept is a statement about what the game is going to achieve and how it might achieve it. Write down in no less than 200 words what your game is about, incorporating all the elements in this chapter.

[Chris Johnstone]

So far so good: interesting and useful.

I like the succinct style. It didn't come off as imperious or authoritarian to me, merely brevitous. However, I did wonder if you might want one wordier and less succinct 'inspirational' paragraph near the beginning. A sort of, 'yes you can' paragraph. Sometimes the thing that stands in people's way isn't lack of skill or ideas, but a psychological block--questions about whether I can really pull this off?

I wondered if somewhere early on, maybe in the prologue, you might also want to include some brief notes on your views re: playtesting. It's an important part of the process and even if you don't discuss it in detail, sign-posting it early on might be good.

Otherwise I don't have any major comments except that I enjoyed reading this and it reminded me to focus on some elements of design that I'd let slip away from the front of my headspace lately.

Thanks!

Chris

[Rob Lang]

Chris, thanks for the feedback. Testing is actually a chapter, for some reason it wasn't listed in the top. I agree it is something that is very important.

I shall add an inspirational paragraph at the top. A very good idea.

As a guide, I am trying to make it into something useful - steps that can be followed. Do you think it is task-based enough? I am avoiding wishy-washy essays and may even harden the language in places.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

So far this is looking quite good. I am surprised by a few omissions, however.

You might want to discuss brainstorming in greater detail. Concepts like thought web, outlining, or free writing might need a mention.

I'm rather shocked that you don't have a suggestion to start by writing a story or otherwise begin with the setting and then develop mechanics from there as you normally espouse.

Under inspiration, you don't mention other games, as a source. I use this route a lot - learning what elements do or don't work for the game I have envisioned. As I've brought up elsewhere, and SheikhJahbooty has elegantly summarized:

1) I like ____ RPG but the part about _____ annoys me so I'm going to write a game that fixes that.

Example: I like GURPS but all the arbitrary price values on perks and flaws annoys me so I'm going to write a game that gives away perks and flaws for free but charges or gives experience points during play whenever they come up, so nobody can get a flaw that gives points but never penalizes the character or buy and perk that frustratingly never helps.

2) I wish there was a game that encouraged _______ type of behavior.

Example: I wish there was a game that encouraged players to make deals behind each other's backs, some way to reward players for leaving one of them to hang out to dry, so I could make a Reservoir Dogs RPG.

3) I wish there was a game that used ______.

Example: I wish there was a game that used fortune cookies for resolution, or if you can't buy a whole sack of fortune cookies, because you don't know where to get one, there should be some way to find out what fortunes they put in their cookies and create a randomizer that will pick one at random.

Another good starting point for a setting would involve visualizing a place you'd like to live or its antithesis.

Should the part about styles come later in the process? I think you might want to pin the setting down a little firmer, or look at other games before deciding. Also, a few more dichotomies come to mind:

• Easy to die vs Hard to kill
• Personal Quest vs World or Galaxy spanning consequences
• Humor vs seriousness
• Static vs Dynamic Characters (How much power do characters gain with level, if they even advance)
• Realistic vs Cinematic

I do apologize if some of these elements are jumping the gun and belong in later chapters.

[Rob Lang]

Ah, CA, you're just too much of a useful fellow to have around. What would I do without you, I wonder?

How does outlining and thoughts webs differ from my description in 'Expanding your idea'? It's a top down associative approach that will have a mind map like diagram in my example. I'll mention free writing and writing a story - both good ways to firm an idea.

I'll mention reading other people's games for inspiration and use Sheikh's excellent "I like... " sentances. However, reading other people's games is really the subject of research (next chapter).

I am not heavily ploughing on the idea that you have to write a setting because the guide is generic enough to work for those people with a mechanic idea that just want to write a rule system. Jeff Moore (Free RPG Powerhouse) made a good case for this. Although I will note that if you want people to play it, it has to be novel and a setting is a good way to achieve that. You know, CA, our standard arguments for. That will come later.

Thanks for the other dichotomies. All good, I'll group them together.

btw, I'll be crediting the help I get, natch.

Thanks everyone, I hope together we can make this the simple no-nonsense guide we send people to when they ask how they go about writing an RPG.

[jeffmoore]

Rob,

Personally, I think this is great stuff. I like the mind map approach to idea exploration that you define here. I've never done this before but I can see it being exceptionally useful. I also love that you have your creator "advertising" their game before it's actually created. This process looks to fuel enthusiasm and set a "mission statement" for creation that will support everything that comes after it in a positive way. I personally don't see anything here that I feel needs changing. CA makes some good suggestions for some additions, but I can see much of that being added later in the process.

I do think this is structured well and designed in such a way that it can be easily followed. I will keep a close eye on this and comment as you go. Are you planning to preview the entire series here before posting it "live" on the Free RPG Blog? I think that you should. It occurs to me that although I don't have any feedback right now, I might find that when you get to "chapter three" suddenly something in "chapter one" might need to change or evolve as this article does.

Regards,


Jeff Moore

[Rob Lang]

Hey Jeff, thanks for the kind words. As one of the publicly obvious consumers of my last guide, it's great that you think I'm on the right tracks. I will be posting the guide in bits here as I get them into a good state. I think it is more important for the guide to be good than for it to be just all my own work. As ego-maniacal as I am, I want the guide to be the best it can be and I know I need the input from you chaps. Perhaps you might find more to comment on when we get to the meatier chapters (such as Setting ).

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I think I figured out the answer to the difference between brainstorming and expanding your idea.

The three questions are essentially asking why you want to make a game, and from what direction to approach it. (To improve on something else, tell a story you like, or show off a neat idea you had)

Brainstorming is just listing possible topics, or things you might like to work with.

Expanding your idea is clarifying a chosen topic.

Of course with any creative endeavor everyone approaches it their own way. Perhaps these aren't necessarily separate for everyone.

So for some the process might be:

• I hate short combat, I want something that drags out tension or is a mini-game in its own right.
• What are extended forms of conflict: Submarine hunting, Errol Flynn fencing, sniper duels, super-tough cyborgs
• A game about snipers: Location advantage, patience as an attribute, stress, Stalingrad?, human skill vs gun abilities

Another model, for those who remember middle school is the classic five paragraph/three point essay.

• Consider possible topics
• Write a thesis sentence
• Give supporting elements

I want to say something like "Approach, Brainstorm, Correlate" - but that seems a bit forced. (Correlate doesn't seem like the right word anyway.) Trying to nail things down to acronyms and mnemonic devices is probably going to torture the syntax and make the guide less clear rather then help. Just keeping plain language and the steps as you have so far will be better than trying to create new jargon.

[chgowiz]

Using a notebook
The common tool for all writers is a notebook. Keep one with you at all times. Although I have a powerful smartphone/laptop/desktop/digital device, it is much easier to scribble down an idea, perhaps with a picture on paper. Moleskines are globally recognised as

as... what? Horrible creatures from outer space that will eat your faces?

This looks like it will be fun!

[Rob Lang]

The sentence pixies have been eating my tasty script again! Thanks Michael and welcome to 1km1kt!