My First Open-Source RPG

[John Michael Crovis]

... Actually, it's the first RPG I've ever finished. I've been lurking around these boards and other free/open content RPG sites for a while now, and I've decided that the time is ripe to jump in and say hello. So, I'm saying hello with a new game. My game, Synergy RPG, can be found at my website, . It's not much of a website yet, but I'm eager to get some feedback regarding my game. It is PDF formatted, rules-light, universal, and GM-less. Please tell me what you think thus far; any constructive criticism would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[John Michael Crovis]

Hello? Anybody? Even if all you have to say is "Meh - it's been done before," I would still appreciate the feedback. Seriously - I won't take it personally. It can now be found as a download on the home page of 1km1kt...

Please?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

[vulpinoid]

Hi...

...and another apology for not saying so sooner.

I check through new threads every week or so because my own projects keep me pretty busy (I'd imagine most other folks around here are much the same in that regard).

I'm downloading your stuff now to have a look through it. Maybe some feedback soon, but Chainsaw Aardvark's comments are pretty solid advice.

[John Michael Crovis]

[John Michael Crovis]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I'm glad you found that helpful.

It is not so much which specific typefaces to use, but how each is arrayed. In my classes on technical editing I was taught the CRAP principle - Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. (Unless there were children present, then we learned about CARP...). Similar items should be grouped together, texts that serve different purposes (headers, chapter openings, examples, etc.) should be different fonts, but these should be repeated for each use of that concept, and and try to define how the eye travels across the page. Centering, underline, and bold don't really direct the eye much, and ALL CAPS just turns words into SQUARE BLOCKS rather than distinct shapes, making it harder to read. Generally speaking, you use a a serif font for the body body and a sans-serif headings.

Most of here advise a story first method of designing games. After all, a story can guide you to what mechanics are needed, and players pick up the game because the setting strikes them as awesome - not because it uses their preferred dice. I would also argue that "don't arbitrarily kill players to keep the game going" is one of the nigh-universal, if unwritten, rules of role-playing. All games are sandboxes, some just have closer sides than others.

If you're going to codify these things into actual rules, you might want to at least give some sample settings, if not go so far as to make this the engine of a larger story machine.

[Onix]

I did a light read through. Any time I hit something I didn't understand I skipped around looking for something that would grab my interest. I did this because that's how I think people in general will read it when they first download it. This is what was unclear to me. The answer may be in the text there somewhere but if I'm downloading your PDF, unless I see something in the mechanic that I really want to play I'm not going to dig.

So this is where I got hung up. Rule 3 says you begin with four traits and then you rename one. Do the rest stay the same? why am I renaming one? I assume it's to say what my profession is, like Police Officer?

Rule 4 seems more like an extension of Rule 3 I would suggest Rule 3 to leave out mention of the other traits, just have it say "Pick a profession trait". Then in rule four introduce the idea of the other three traits.

I'm not sure what the sentence "Each player chooses 3 Traits for each of the remaining categories" means. What are the categories? Am I choosing 3 Traits for each of the Physical, Mental and Social categories (for a total of 9) or one for each (total 3)? The sentence points to the former but the first sentence of rule 3 says there are only 4 Traits.

I'll stop there with that for now. I don't want to have it feel like I'm beating you up. I have to go through this stage of clarifying frequently. I give the text to a friend and ask them to play it and I record the session. I don't talk or play and I stay out of visual range so I can't influence their interpretation of the rules. Then I listen to the recording and edit where they went wrong.

Instead of numbers for the rules, give them descriptive names. The "Rule 1-12" style seems very authoritarian which is odd for a rules light game.

[John Michael Crovis]

[John Michael Crovis]