Any pnp Roleplaying Gamers around here?

[Bob Whitely]

Hi avalonimperium,

Glad to hear you are having fun with that Seeds of War game.

Yes, I think for many that enjoyed D&D 3.5 in the past, Pathfinder is probably their best bet, at least if they want to stay with a very D&Dish game (that sort of game mechanics and feel).

As I'm spending thousands of hours revising and playtesting my Cosmothea RPG, and have spent a big chunk of change on it too, I'm of course hoping in a big way that there will be at least some who are willing to pay for a new set of rules because they want a different sort of experience than they can get with their existing game books - those who are looking for something that's more flexible, able to tackle more themes and tackle them well. Cosmothea's a campaign setting too, so if some don't want to try out new rules, I'm still hoping they'll get excited about the setting in time.

Check out my video link from the previous post if you haven't, avalonimperium. You won't regret it - great art and overview, I think!

No worries regarding my dreams - I'm not quitting my day job, but I do feel that it is worth pursuing, come what may.

Anyway, have fun with whatever games you play!

 

[avalonimperium]

Hi bob thanks for the link WOW! That looks like some epic win with a dash of awesome sauce. Ill speak to my group once i get it back underway and see what they think of it.

 

[Bob Whitely]

Thanks for the kind words, avalonimperium. It will be awhile before I have the second video up. I'm tackling things on several fronts right now. We have all the authors, cover painter and many other details in place, but I'm researching like mad all the other elements we need to take care of (like Kickstarter rewards, and best places to get the rewards manufactured, etc.).

Anyway, Cosmothea is coming along, but it will be quite some time yet before I'm ready for a blind playtest. We are playing it in both tabletop and PbP, but that's it for now, as I slowly work on it, in between my anthology work and preparing for the anthology Kickstarter.

Well, have fun with whatever RPG(s) you end up playing in the days ahead. Take care and have a great week!

 

[Proctor]

Hi everyone!


First thing to know is that im hungarian, so if my english will leave some mistakes, sorry.

So ive got a question, what is realy important to be answered for me and my mates. We are a small group of hungarian people, came here 1,5 year ago (London), and we carried a dream with us.
A long time ago, we started to create, a pen-n-paper RPG back in Hungary. The era lays on science fiction, the world what we created already took more than three years from us, and we are still on the project. No, its not a couple of 14 yrs old kid"s project. We are taking it seriously, its not a copy of star wars or star trek, its different, more or less, but different. But probably you guys dont know, in Hungary, the RPG gaming used to be a realy popular thing, played by tenthousands of people. Hungary has its own Dungeons and Dragons as well, called M.A.G.U.S. (d20). In the time, when we started to create our own, sci-fi game, the rpg in the country was getting dead, or was already dead. When we came here, all of us were hoping, if there is a chance to find a place, a group, a community what could support us. Not realy support, but something what shows interests. And i found this site, 2 days ago, where now, i can ask this:
" Should we continoue to develop an RPG here, in english. Do we have a chance that we can make something, what can be "popular" ?. Even if its just half popular than the Vampire, ADnD, Shadowrun and others. "

Anyway, thanks for reading this, and mostly if u give some advices, answers
Proctor out.

 

[hopewrites]

Proctor, I have found, that no matter where you go, people are people, and the things that interest people will be the same no matter where you go in life. Everyone has hopes and dreams. Everyone has fears and secrets.
Do I think you will find interest? Sure. If your thing is interesting, you will find that passionate people will find you. If your passion drives this thing, then it will draw other passionate people to you who will draw other passionate people to them.

My advice is to go for what you believe in. If you stop to ask if it is something you should believe in, you show that you question yourself, question your belief, and you loose momentum.
If you cannot stop these questions, then maybe it is good for you to loose momentum and look around. See where your passions are driving you. Reassess if it is a path you want to be on. Maybe take another road.

Best of luck ether way.

 

[Bob Whitely]

Hi Proctor and hopewrites!

Good to see you both around here.

Proctor, I only know English, so you are doing quite well in my book!

I am a game designer and am on my 5th major revamp of an RPG I designed a long time ago. I've also designed a couple dozen prototypes for card and board games over the years. Sadly, I haven't had the money to publish anything, but I'm hoping Kickstarter will help with that in the long run. I also designed a huge campaign setting. These things eat huge chunks of my time, and currently I'm about to launch a Kickstarter to start publishing books that take place in my campaign setting. I say this to give you context. I've always been a dreamer and I dream big. Yet publishing RPG's is a tricky thing and extremely time-consuming and usually expensive to do well, so you will want to be very careful moving forward.

I think we can follow our dreams and not sacrifice our passion or momentum (or at least I consider the time commitment to "doing it right" which should improve your odds of success, not a loss of momentum but an investment in your future).

One thing you could always do, and I would highly recommend, is to study the market - what's already out there, what's been done well and where some games fall short. Read reviews of RPG's. Play a lot of RPG's and read forums about what gamers are looking for, what they complain about and what they praise and talk to other gamers beyond your group. I don't mean to stop designing to do this, if you are feeling passionate, but the sooner you do research, the more it can help your bottom line. There's actually a lot to designing an RPG, or at least a good RPG. It's far harder than designing a "homebrew".

I agree with hopewrites. If it's your dream, go for it. But every dream needs to be carefully considered and brainstormed and tailored, so you get the most bang for your buck. Your time is precious, so you want to do everything you can to ensure the best possible outcome. You need to know what your goals are and make a battleplan for accomplishing them. If you are designing it with others, you also need to sort out how you will handle the financial and credit side of things as well. It is very difficult to make money designing RPG's, though it's lots of fun.

Of course, if you are just looking to make a fun game for you and your friends to play, or to share as a free RPG in Hungary, that's another matter altogether. You can do it anyway you want to and ignore market research and much of what I said above.

If I were you, I would design your game in your own language, have a blast with your friends, playtest it and polish it. You can always pursue publishing later, once you've had a time to sort out if that's the proper route for it and as for doing it in English, you can always hire someone to translate it into English once it is ready for publication. I wish you all the best!

 

[Proctor]

Thanks for kind replies guys, I was happy to read them, and they were quiet "useful" to get closer to a final decision.

Bob:
We already did some research back in Hungary. We already know almost everything about the financial part of publishing, printing. We did researches about the communities there as well. What im doing at the moment is, is the same, but in the UK , at this time. Thats the point of my post above.

I forgot to mention, but we were testing the game in our language for 2 years, and it was quiet fun. We enjoyed more than any other games, including ADnD, Vampire, Shadowrun. Probably because it was our own child nvm...
So the true story of this game is,: we created a world, a realy unique one. We created the rules of the game, so we could start testing it. But for some reason, it wasnt a completed, proper, publishable game. These days, it is thousand pieces of a puzzle. We just need to put"em together, and open a champaigne. But we are not doing it.
We are not doing it, because, WE, the developers, can play with this from of the game. For us to enjoy it, doesnt need to be completed. I know it sounds weird, but im pretty sure, as a game designer, writer you know what i mean Bob.
At the moment we are seeking for a reason to finish the puzzle. We want to share it with people, we want to show it to the world of RPG communities, we want people in Hungary, in UK, (actually, anywhere) to enjoy the game, we created. We dont want money for this, but still ready to spend some to make it done. We want players to tell us " man, this world, this game is awesome, i wanna play it ". This is our dream.
So the reason we are still not finishing our game is, we dont know if there is anyone out there, who"d be interested in this.
I know as long as im not sharing information about the game, i shouldn"t be expecting interested people. Thats why I asked about the RPG, especially PnP gamers around here. Do they exist? Are there a lot of them? Are they interested in sci-fi, or only in fantasy? And i could keep asking more. Thats why i took place in your topic Bob (oh, yeah, sorry for interrupting it ).
Probably we will get back to designing, polishing it again. Which language are we gonna choose? i dont know. But its our dream, and we will finish it.

 

[Westie]

Hi There. I'm an avid PnP gamer too, playing games from DnD, 3/3.5/4, Star Wars, James Bond (which I run!) Traveller (where I killed the whole party except me by accident) Vampire: The Masquerade, Cthulu by Gaslight, Brave New World and many others.
I used to play every Friday night for around 4 hours with a group in my home town, but work and other things got in the way.