Skip to main content

TTRPG Tuesday: Clarity on the DOLLIE Extraction

Hahaha what up Google search results.  It’s me, something not relevant to your query, degrading your SEO. You most likely do not want to click this! Anyway, buckle up no one, it’s time for another TTRPG Tuesday.

So as I alluded to a couple of days ago, I finally scheduled a meeting with one Mr. Logan Dean, the designer of The Company RPG (and an all around good guy rough all around the edges).  It was an excellent chance to get some real clarity and re-calibration considering the wheels I’ve been spinning on this particular project.  I was heartened to learn that a lot of the work I’ve done so far is usable for the kind of scenario he’s looking for, and pleasantly surprised to learn that the target scope of the project is more manageable than what I’d been planning out.  If anything, it’ll behoove me to scale down a little, and I won’t have as many gaps to fill in.  Here’s my big takeaways from the meeting:

  • Scenario Target Scope: 2k words, 1.5hr – 2hr 
  • Think about how the scenario would play out if the players weren’t there
  • How is Drive incentivized? Challenges should have solutions for multiple roles
  • Err on the side of fun and beatable, and then layer unbeatable odds on top
  • Should not be TPK
  • Should be frustrating for people with executive dysfunction, but not frustrating for all audiences
  • They inevitably split up; What creates inter-team conflict?
  • Bog down one person and the team will naturally split up
  • When the hacking challenge is complete, the acknowledgement includes updated mission objectives or wrinkle
  • Break the map into six real sections, with each section tied to one Shepherdess

With all of that in mind, I think I can start work on a first draft, and I’ve got an October deadline, so I’m going with EOM September for the first draft.  Man am I glad I did all these TTRPG Tuesdays though; while I was approaching the point where I may have gotten lost in blind alleys, the work I did leading up to this point eliminated a lot of subpar or non-functional possibilities, and raised the stakes on the possibilities I’ve chosen to explore.  Thank goodness, for instance, I reached that crossroads on tone and genre, and hit on the coup as the unanticipated circumstances the players find themselves in.  That’ll help me flesh out what would happen if the players weren’t there, and that basic skeleton will help me to sketch the rest of the mechanics, chiefly the Signal Triangulation bit and the Turn in the Action that will put the players on the run.

Now, not everything I’ve written is going to fit or be applicable/necessary to a 2k chunk of text, but I think it will ultimately all serve a purpose, and cutting the reams of my freewrite down will be its own useful exercise.

All of this may kick off this week or next, but I mustn’t lose sight of the priority for these two weeks: Rehearsal Drafts of Other Rockpools.  So, now that I’ve got this taken care of for the week, I’ve got to go focus back in on that.  Til next week!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself.  Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs.  I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away.  Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

  Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023.     This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever.     I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show.     I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here.     Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn.    I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the application was rather more literal, which was a fascinat
Post a Comment
Read more