I. Introduction to the Concept of /tg/'s Game
1. The Project is announced.
a. Project interest will be evaluated, and hopefully will be enough to launch this off the ground.
2. The methods involved in working out decisions will be discussed.
a. A brief list of concepts and potential methods will be examined and debated, and once the methods are decided upon, the rest of the project may continue to move.
b. A proposed method of decision making will follow this outline, and will be the first object of debate.

II. The System's Foundation.
1. Through a series of threads, the most essential elements of the game will be examined, debated, and discussed.
a. The method/degree of random elements (dice, cards, competitive pools, etc.)
b. The degree of cooperation and competition between players
c. The question of what are the necessary subsystems (combat, magic, technology, healing, etc.)
d. The tonal range of the game will be decided upon (what genres should be able to use this system, what level of humor, etc.)

I'm intrigued, Carry on.

III. The Subsystems
1. Each individual subsystem will be developed, evaluated, and play tested.
2. The Core System will be simultaneously developed, taking cues from the subsystems while ultimately ensuring a framework as well as setting guidelines and benchmarks.
a. A "simultaneous development" concept will permeate throughout this entire project, with individual subsystems being designed with other subsystems in mind. The core system will work to maintain a sense of unity throughout the game.


IV. Compilation and Expansion.
1. The major subsystems will be combined, and a working prototype system will be made.
2. Short modules will be designed and play tested.
3. The System is reworked, and reworked, until the project reaches a point in which we can collectively consider it "good", if not "excellent".
4. The finished project is published in various formats and distributed.


There will be delays, and their will be problems, but it's not impossible, nor is it even unlikely. With our almost natural disposition to the hedonistic carnival we call gaming, our collected variety of experiences as well our individual ideas, I have a great deal of confidence in this project.

Now, for the first matter of discussion, the nature of these discussions.

We can proceed with a much better chance of success with a more systematized approach than simply having the loudest group's opinions take control of the project. As their is no way to ensure a 1 vote for 1 person democracy, /tg/ primarily relies on simple anarchy for its decisions. Though this enables the highest level of freedom, it isn't optimal for a project of this nature.

I will act as a organizer, and will be held accountable for all decisions. If at anytime there is a person who believes that they could better manage this project, then they are completely free to attempt to persuade people towards their views. However, I plan to ensure the utmost quality, but more importantly maintaining the nature of this not being "my" project, but /tg/'s project, to the point in which I goddamn welcome all challengers on an open playing field. There's a time and place to be humble, but my irresponsible love for /tg/ is something I take enough pride in to ensure this project accomplishes its goal.


As far as the rest of the decision making process, subleaders will be chosen through their level of competence in their decided designation, and will maintain their positions only through the merit of their ideas. The ultimate goal of making this game is to make it better than any currently available to the point in which it won't just be /tg/ playing it, but others will abandon their old systems simply thanks to the merit of the new one. Without only the best of /tg/ guiding this project, it won't reach that level, and everyone's going to have to strive hard to prove that they are the best.

Beyond that, the majority of the decision making process lies within the manner in which there's no contract other than your personal interest. If the game is not heading the way you like it, explain why. There's no time for silly internet debates based on pointless pride and laziness. If you support something, make sure you understand why you support it, and try to convey that. If you dislike something, explain what you dislike, why you do, to the point in which the level of discussion in /tg/ reaches a point in which all the other boards start having to harbor all of our ignored trolls and twelve year olds who can't keep up.

So now, after that lengthy introduction that deserves an apology from me, I open everything up to discussion, with the current topic being the overall interest in this project, ideas and concepts that will help the decision process, and general project discussion.

WHOA
i read your trip as "Profit" there.
that was close.
...i guess i should read the thread now.

I shall follow you, Project. This idea is great, and you have given me a summer project I can believe in.
Of mediums, if we go RPG, there are a lot of ones in sup/tg/ that could be pulled form and melted together to form something great.

Is this supposed to be some universal RPG system like GURPS?

>>4892381
It may be possible to straddle more than one aspect of gaming, such as how Dungeons and Dragons could potentially be used for miniature war games (and tried to do so with modified rules in Dungeons and Dragons miniatures) or how some people try to use Magic Cards for roleplaying games.

Primarily, I'd like to focus on developing it as a simple roleplaying game with potential war subsystems and even potentially a card magic subsystem, but that's for everyone else to decide and argue for.

How about something fa/tg/uys can actually play together online.

This looks like it'll be fun.

Except we don't have a theme/topic/central idea yet?

>>4892488
Actually, this wouldn't be bad. I have yet to see a system that takes advantage of the special qualities a forum has to offer for example.

Make it so.

>>4892473
RPG, but you can have some cards to modify rolls?
Cards could have limits on who could use them. They could also have a point value (can only have up to X points worth of cards), or you can only have X number of cards. They could have straight advantages, or positives with varying drawbacks.
Quick Ex: Metal rocker unleashes a killer riff; but he botches the end. Bassist steps up and covers for the Lead Guitar so it looks like it was purposeful, but the Bassist gets a penalty to the rhythm check he then makes. (Player A rolls 15 against a DC 17. Player B uses the "Assist" card, which requires an ally to fail a skill check by 5 or less. The player of the card then gets a penalty to the skill check of the same kind equal to the modified number...2 in this case.)

Just shooting ideas in the wind

An ideal RPG to me would:
-have alot of support for mindfucks and horror. Be it the horrors of war or jacob's ladder horror.
-Be realistic and have a high support for technology and firearms. At the same time, also support magic and have some more arcadey abilities.
-Encourage creativity in-game for the players and DM.
-Narrativist while still having real, solid combat mechanics.
-Rules won't overwhelm the typical newbie, or atleast written out in such a way that it doesn't.

It's impossible to build the perfect game, as everyone has different objectives which the perfect game would have to cover - objectives which are often contradictory. Thus, the entire project is rather silly.

>>4892272
/tg/ has tried many a time to create homebrew systems. Nothing usually comes of it because its hard to get all of /tg/ on the same page, and keep them interested with the project.

If you can get /tg/ to actually finish a project I will applaud you.

However it IS possible to build a flexible framework that can be modified to fit your needs. And no, I'm not talking about GURPS.

>>4892400
My experience with universal game systems usually leaves me with every player playing their own personal, conflicting game, with everyone on a different page.

I definitely would like to see a high level of freedom and options, but I think it would be better to have a more limited range, to the level of something like a setting consisting of planes/planets/times of different levels of magic/technology, to better enable the fluff aspect of the game to be fully a part of the mechanics.

I'd much rather see fellow /tg/entlemen come up with more detailed abilities/classes/whatever we come up with as well, and I think a fully universal system would be too broad of a range to do so effectively. Of course, those are just my thoughts, and most likely, the core system will effectively be capable of being used as a universal system.

Personally, I'd like to see a medieval/modern hybrid focus, and I'll be explaining why when that its time for that discussion. I don't want to make any predictions just yet, but we most likely won't end up with anything like that.

>>4892488
Definitely something for consideration. Especially since that will definitely make the play testing go faster.

>>4892611
That's very similar to the way 4e allows players to print out "cards" of their abilities. Ultimately, it's just a method of reference. If cards are to be used, I think the factors of them being capable of being randomly drawn, flipped over, turned, oriented, and other things inherent to them should be examined and potentially used.

>>4892613
Not bad, and don't stop there. You have things you like, now you just have to figure out why you like them, how they could work, and what ways to make them better.

>>4892658
A lot of contradictions are only seen as such because only one element is examined. Hopefully, this project will at least allow us to look deeper into the various disputes, and help find some answers to at least a few of them. There may not ever be a perfect game, but that's no reason not to reach towards that goal and end up making simply the best one.

>>4892696
/tg/ fucks around with fluff too much. If anything, this ought to be a more universal RPG with no focus on fluff.

>>4892873
The problem with this that without fluff the system is pretty much "doomed" to be no-class. Though we could work with... archetypes?

Not saying every RPG needs a class (in fact, I was thinking about trying to make a classless one...), but in my experience, it helps. A lot.

Systems should be created to realize a concept, not the other way round. You'll just end up with something so abstract that it is hardly useful for any game that already has a more specified system catering to it.

>>4892873
From what I can see with /tg/ fluff, it does seem to be made in a chaotic manner that basically boils down to people stitching ideas haphazardly together.

Maybe I can entertain /tg/ with a bit of a setting competition, where people submit there ideas and then we collectively vote on them using some third party voting site. If none of them are good, we just go ahead with going the universal route, but there's still other options to explore before we go there.

>>4892902
meh. People don't have classes and can only limit what kind of character you want to play. Perhaps class templates, but that's it.

>>4892696
If you insist on fluff...modern/medieval hybrid, as in the setting has elements of both?

I think an RPG with an American Gods-esque setting could work perfectly. You'd have various modern Gods (John Moses Browning or someone based off him as the God of Firearms; Bill Gates or some fictional character as the God of Computers etc) and various 'modern' mythos (Urban Legends, belief that technology/science is the only hope for mankind, political ideologies), and then the more medieval Gods/mythos.

>>4892922
However, the concept does not have to be fluff dependent. It could be just "a system where you can have epic, strategically interesting battles between diverse but still balanced characters". That can be fluffed from fantasy through modern to sci-fi without much of a problem.

>>4892922
I'm not so certain that's a hard truth, but even so, it's still possible for us to discuss first the concept, with the system following.

In about a week I will have nigh unlimited amounts of spare time to devote to this project. Until then, I am afraid I can be of no use.

GUYS

Wargame (and at what level)?

RPG (obviously all-out game)?

Card Game (perhaps a system to design yuo own)?

An American Gods setting would let you do both fantasy AND modern. Even scifi.

Oh, one VERY important thing needed. Rules to allow you to homebrew your own things.

>>4892864
Mindfucks and horror are personally the more interesting and mature elements to me, and they can work in either fantasy or in a contemporary setting.

How it could work? Well, you need some narrativist support but things like sanity, fear, stress....and pretty much the mind and self/ego would play into the horror/mindfuck elements.

There's either games that are very narratitivst (Dogs in The Vineyard etc.) that lack realism/solid game mechanics (they're mostly just vague) or games with very good game mechanics, but aren't very narrativist.

New players often feel overwhelmed when they see several hundred pages, and just don't bother learning the mechanics much. So there should atleast be a few pages that just list the mechanics, and then they can learn the rest later on.

I really want in on this, as I think I could add a personal flavour that a lot of players will enjoy. I can also writefag my heart out.

One thing I'd like to see in an RPG is to have a... double blind kind of thing. Like, you both do an action at the same time and not taking turns, so you have no idea how your move will interact with what your opponent is doing...that is, if you don't guess what he is planning. The WW SFII RPG actually did this, but it was all around meh save for this quite interesting battle mechanic.

>>4893045
Also, I can weave intricate plots and backstories that will make the players go "Ohhh, so that has to do with that, cool!"

And will make players question their very fundamental aspects. Sometimes.
I also do comedy.

>>4892696
why the fuck would we do that? you realise that almost all the time people will say fuck this to an established settings shitty fluff and just use their own right?
we're /tg/ we should at least know how to fluff shit on our own.

I'm already working on a universal system myself, rather than releasing a ridiculous amount of lolbooks like gurps I'm going for a more dedicated system that can be adapted so supplements can be thin, ideally, players will be making their own character's abilities themselves, but the thing that stops me in my fucking tracks is magic, which is practically different from setting to setting mechanically, I'll probably just have to hope that the rules for creation are robust enough to cover it. I'll be looking at anima, mutants and masterminds, and probably the 2nd ed point system, I also really like the skill system in serenity, and will probably use something similar.

>>4892978
Patience. Rather than just letting this project snowball out of control into some monstrosity, let's take it step by step.

Of course, since this is also a general discussion thread, it's alright to hear the opinions.

As far as wargaming, a great amount of the appeal comes from the actual miniatures, which unless we're harboring someone with their own factory, we won't be able to really capitalize on.
Cards also have a physical limitation, thought they can be printed without too much of a hassle. Printing thousands of cards though is a bit of a different story, though I do know plenty of people who've printed several entire proxy Magic decks.

Perhaps looking at the materials is a good place to look for ideas, as dice may be a staple of many role playing games, but there's other things that may enhance the game. For one thing, I definitely want to see what computers can bring to this game, and it might even be a good idea to design with the idea that the players have access to at least one laptop.

I'm in. Where are we doing this, primarily? Should we have an IRC channel set up?

>>4893150
We are on the goshdarn internets. Cards don't have to exist physically... not if we don't want them to.

Bump. This is what we need, not fucking troll and summer shit on the front page.

>As far as wargaming, a great amount of the appeal comes from the actual miniatures

old military way? bent cutouts can be made out of an image to fit practically any genre, basing is the only issue

If I may make a suggestion, I think that starting out, RPing mechanics should take a back seat to combat mechanics. You shouldn't have to roll to tie knots, for example.

>>4893118
The major design reason to have an integrated system and setting is to ensure that there is no feeling of disassociation between the two. That means that if the system uses classes, classes are understood within the universe of the setting. If the universe doesn't allow time travel, than their are no mechanics that enable you to go back in time.

Of course, with a multi-genre universe with few limitations, it's not much different from just a universal system, but that's another thing altogether.

And, the thing I want to make sure of, above all else, is that even if I can't provide the best quality work, I can ensure we don't accept anything but the best quality work. That hopefully means that the fluff won't be "shitty", but will be good enough for people to take, adopt, and add their own fluff to the mix.

>>4893026
Easiest way I've found to make my players afraid of things is by abusing the fear of the unknown. One thing I think would be excellent for that is the manner in which even when this project is "finished", /tg/ can still continue to produce content, such as an endless amount of interesting monsters to fight with abilities that confuse and scare the players. And of course, a nice set of rules/guidelines/tips for making your own.

>>4893045
>>4893066
Some of the most important parts of this thing will be the play testing as well as the writing of the test modules. Also, though I don't think it would be best for this to be completely humorous, I know there's plenty of room for jokes embedded into the wood work.

>>4893267
I can agree with mundane things like tying knots, but I definitely want abilities to extend beyond the sphere of combat. One of my biggest gripes about D&D is that a fireball is not intuitive. It is not a ball of fire. It does not do all the things a fiery explosion does, such as blast people away, deplete the oxygen in the room, increase the temperature, etc.. It is simply something d6 points of fire damage to everything within a 20 foot radius. It serves very little purpose outside of a battle, despite the thousand and one utilitarian roles a fire ball could potentially be used for.

Of course, it gives plenty of room for malignant DM's to screw over the players, but a malignant DM will almost always screw the players over anyway, and I'm not sure just how "realistic" I'd want to do things like fireballs anyway. Sometimes, it's better not to treat clothing and items as separate targets and deal them fire damage, even though that's what would happen. A naked wizard without his scrolls, spell components, spell book, potions, and etc. is a very naked wizard indeed.

This seems like it might actually work.

So is this it?

>>4893603
Nah, /tg/'s just a little slow tonight. We should get pages up on the 1d4chan wiki, and maybe talk #suptg into letting us set up an IRC channel.

>>4893621
all you have to do is make a channel, and get a mod in there

>>4893603
This thread is simply to introduce the project and explain its eventual goal, so it's alright for it to be not overly active.

However, the next thread probably will end up a very heated debate, as it's going to open up the very core of the system for discussion, as well as the question of genre/s.

join Project on irc.thisisnotatrueending.com

bump for awesomeness

also, IRC for discussion. ^

homebrewan shit never gets done

Alright! Another group project for a tiny slice of /tg/ to obsess over and get pissed when the rest of us lose interest!

This should fit nicely between the Unified Setting Restart and the latest fooQuest!

>>4893748
we finished some projects, atleast. Uberstadt got spammed by a troll, so it died. Unified Setting had faggotry

>>4893748
Don't forget previously unfinished projects, like Rodentia, Überstadt and the like.

Join Project on irc.thisisnotatrueending.com so we can discuss this over IRC. Maybe we can then get some shit done and then show it to /tg/. Right now, I think it's just too general...vague to catch much interest.

>>4892955
Taking some inspiration from American Gods could work. It's almost like a modern setting for Exalted

PROTIP

Projects only work when there is a firm hand guiding the process & editing the shit out of the brainstorming results.

As a collective /tg/'s desires are unfocused and its tastes are too varied to create anything other than a useless hodgepodge of cliche's that should have been aborted from the start.

>>4893814
that's why I suggested we join the IRC channel listed so we can do some shit, and then present it to /tg/. then rinse and repeat

>>4893814
Have you not read the thread? The OP volunteered to do just that.

Hey OP, would you mind joining the IRC channel? It would give us a way to keep everyone on the same page and bounce ideas around a little faster.

/tg/ will get shit done? lets wait and see

>>4893928
Sadly, no. Motherfucker sure says a lot while saying nothing at all, though.

Irc is fine for brainstorming, but I think the majority of the discussion should take place on /tg/.

>>4893957
Remember, this thread is the calm before the storm.

>>4894072
Well, the IRC discussion forked and we're working on a card-based action system.
So either this is becoming its own game or we're hammering out a system to discuss in the coming thread.