I’m roughly halfway through writing the core rules, and I went back to edit… and I hate them. Okay, that’s a bit strong. I don’t feel inspired by them. I’m endeavoring to write the rules in a clear, direct way, defaulting to tried and true game design concepts: you start with an overview of the game and the system, lay out terminology and the fundamentals of the mechanics, get into how you play and how you make a character. It’s all very conventional… but it’s stuff I’ve done dozens of times now. I’ve designed games this way. There’s something to be said for doing the simple stuff well (actually, there’s a lot to be said for that) but I’m finding the text boring to work on. And if I’m finding it boring, you sure as heck are going to be bored by it.
I don’t want to be innovative just for the sake of being innovative (as if that’s even possible anyway). I just don’t want to put out another formulaic game system using a vanilla approach. It seems like there has to be a simpler way to design this whole thing- to lay out the basic concepts quickly, and spend all of the time applying those concepts. I can see the finished product in my head pretty clearly; I just still can’t work out the logistics of getting there.
In short, don’t hold your breath for the finished rules in the next few weeks. I’m still ironing out a lot of stuff in terms of the overall design (even though the fundamentals of how the game actually works are pretty much locked down across the board). Thanks for your patience. I have a vision for how this game is going to go forward and I’m not willing to compromise on having the core rules be anything less than my best stuff.
I await eagerly!
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