Update: City Builder, Design Shift

Due to the fact that I am playing in and game mastering several games now, in addition to doing a pretty heavy load of reviews, I have not had nearly enough time, as I would like, to work on my City Builder game. But, hopefully with some help in the coming weeks, it will be growing up big and strong.

Part of the hang-up that I have been having is my re-evaluation of the core system and mechanics. If you are at all familiar with my Game Chef Entry this year, you know that I used a dice pool mechanic, and a system similar to the one used in WoD and Shadowrun. You roll a certain number of dice and try to get a certain quantity of those dice above a target number. The target number changes from time to time, and the quantity of dice that you have to hit also escalates as the game gets deeper and deeper.

I have kind of decided to do away with this mechanic, at least for now, and make the game into a more traditional RPG format, rather than the format I had been using. What I am trying to do now, is adapt my idea to several existing RPG systems, and then use that base system for the Characters and NPC’s. For example, I am hoping to be build this City Builder system using the Wyrm rules, developed my Michael Wolf and used in his hit Warrior Rogue & Mage, as well as the newly released, Resolute, Adventurer, & Genius. I like the simplicity of this system a lot and I feel that It would work very well for developing a more large scale format for the system.

As you might know, I am playing in the Domain Game, running right now at Hill Cantons. It is proving to be quite the educating experience, as it is really showing me the kind of game that I want to design, but on an even bigger scale. This City System game would essentially be something similar to Domain level play, but in a bit of a smaller scope. However, through his game, and through reading some other game books lately, I think I have a pretty good idea of how I would run City System without turning it into a board game.

City Builder - Update - Call for Playtesters

I have been hard at work at home this week, virtually every day, trying to get more done on my new game City Builder: Architects. So far, I am really liking how things are shaping up. I have been redoing some of the game mechanics that went into Edge of Annihilation: The Last City, and hopefully, the new edition will be much easier to get through. I have done all the major formatting for the book and it is looking pretty good, I must say (lacking art, but looking pretty good).

The free PDF of City Builder Architects will include:
All the basic rules for the game.
Character Creation Guide.
Guides for Buildings, NPCs, and Citizens.
Event and Item tables.
And... much, much more.

With any luck, I will be done with this before the big X'mas break here, but that might be pushing things considering my massive work load at the moment. I am going to need playtesters for the game, so If you are interested in joining my City Builder Playtest, I would love to get your comments on how the game plays out. Leave a comment in this post and I will add you to the Playtest. Playtests will have access to the setting specific versions of this game for free as they come out over the next year.

City Builder RPG - Free General Rules PDF coming soon

I have been doing some serious hacking to my Game Chef entry for this year. If you didn't catch what it was called, you missed a big flop. Edge of Annihilation: The Last City, was too long, wordy, needed editing, the rules were hard to understand, and the system was overly complex. Hopefully, this will all have changed when I release the first edition of the City Builder RPG - general rules next month. This RPG will be available in a Free PDF form. I will also be releasing several different versions of the game over next year - these versions of the game will be based off building a city, cooperatively and competitively, in fantasy, post-apocolyptic, sci-fi, and survival horror based worlds. Each of these games will use the same basic rules set, but slightly modified to fit the setting, and, have added flavor to make the game fit the mood better.

Stay tuned to catch the game when it makes its debut in early 2011.