Interesting Projects

[kylesgames]

Anyone working on any interesting projects?

My latest game is velotha's flock, a free-verse RPG of were-ravens.

It fills a gap in my schedule, since I find that I don't have enough time to work on my more intensive projects (Project Hammer is a huge complex nightmare that requires very careful tweaking due to how interconnected everything is), and I enjoy working in the free verse format.

It also makes it really important to write clearly and concisely.

[Evil Scientist]

Indeed interesting! Care to give us a writing sample?

[kylesgames]

[Evil Scientist]

Rules in free verse! Hilarious! I actually really dig that piece, and I think if kept terse (a maximum of 4-6 lines for each important piece of rules), it can be easily comprehended.

When you get the rules in such form, it's intriguing, and it has novelty to it.



The setting description reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith's prose poems (e.g. or ). However, this is hard to get right. And you have to keep it short as well! I don't think I'd read pages of free verse just to get some info on the setting. However, if you break it up with subheadings, and provide info in short blocks (e.g. one important event or the description of a capital city) of 4-8 lines, then it's good.

[kylesgames]

Yeah, the rules have actually been interesting. I think it's honestly made me a better designer just in a few days worth of work on the project because of how it makes me be concise (he says in a sentence that is not concise).

Sometimes I've been blending the setting/rules, especially for stuff like character creation. I think it works, and normally I'm a pessimistic judge.

I'm probably a few days away from being finished with a playtest version. Character creation is done, the core mechanic is done, combat is done. Since the game is about wereravens, I am sorely tempted to call it the "Early bird" edition.

It is going to need so much editing it hurts my head to think about it.

Not very familiar with Clark Ashton Smith, but I like his stuff. I've never cared for writing prose poetry, but I do enjoy reading it.

With that said, it's definitely not a game for everyone, both because of how esoteric its themes and inspirations are and also because of the fact that it'll probably total around 50 pages of free verse, broken up with illustrations, rules examples, and in-universe notes.

[Rob Lang]

I'm enjoying the rules in free verse. I was wondering, on a similar vein, if rules could be entirely described using pictures. I find that when I'm writing a bunch of rules (like I am for Icar) that I kind of get bored reading them. If I get bored as the author, how bored must the reader be?

[kylesgames]

Not sure how well it would work in photos, but I could totally see it working via comics.

You could make a game entirely independent of language.
A game to surpass Metal Gear, dare I say?

velotha's flock is probably going to get done some time in February. I'll keep people posted.

[kylesgames]

[Evil Scientist]

[kylesgames]

The free-verse wereraven game is finished now.

We'll see how it does. It'll be up on 1km1kt and DriveThruRPG soon-ish (just waiting for approval).